“…er…I don’t actually have any stories.”

I always have clients coming to me and saying “I can’t do PR, I’ve got nothing to say”. I actually sat in a meeting last week with a highly successful CEO of a national brand with hundreds of thousands of people on their mailing list who said that journalists always called her to ask ‘what’s new and exciting’ and she never had anything to say…shock!

Shock 1: I would kill to have journos call me all the time, I’m out there on the phone 24/7 hustling to get media coverage for my clients!

Shock 2: a national brand has nothing to say…well I believe they, and you do, so let me tell you how:

Get personal A story often has a beginning, a middle and an end. So let’s start at the beginning with you. What’s your personal story, ‘personal’ being the key term here. Have you got something interesting to say, your journey to where you got to, something different which stands you out from the crowd? One of my clients is quite happy to talk about how her husband really thinks of her business and what income she’s making. This is all GOLD to a journalist as many people don’t want to share this information. Do you have a little nugget which might turn you into a media darling and someone who they’ll call again because you give an authentic representation of what it’s like to be you?

What is your Unique Selling Point? Now, let’s look at your company. What is your unique selling point? What are you doing no one else is? Why is it working? What insight can you give into your industry? Do you have any stats or can you do a survey to add more credibility to your story? Have you won any awards, how many customers do you have, do you have a product which consistently gets 5 star ratings?

Your difference is your story.

Quality AND quantity Sometimes a story is better when there are a couple of people telling it, as it adds credibility. If you come up with a great story idea you could ask a couple of people who are in your industry or have the same audience to back it up. For example I’m currently working on a piece with a newspaper and my original idea was for my client, who is a photographer, to talk about the best poses for wedding shots as we’re head into wedding season. The journo came back to me and said why don’t we open it up and have a number of differing suppliers suggest their top tips for couples getting married. Great idea. My client gets a piece and it’ll be bigger and have more impact: win – win!

Content is king Write a piece. If you’re already writing blogs then all the better. I’ve been talking to a lot of online media recently who are very receptive to receiving well written content which fits to their audience’s needs. Write a piece which has your chosen media, and their audience, in mind. You will be saving the journalist A LOT of time. Even if they have to do a bit of editing, if your ‘story’ is a good fit there is no reason why they wouldn’t publish it. To get even more traction try to give an original photo along with the article and always ensure they will be giving you credit at the top or bottom of the piece and submit a short biography and a link to your website at the bottom.

And as I always say, just give it a go. Believe that you are offering that journalist content which he/she is looking for on that specific day and just ask.