Why journalists don’t use your press releases
By Paul Green
Every day journalists across the UK are bombarded with press releases. No wonder – they are still an effective tool to communicate a story idea and get free publicity.
A quick check of the system Publicity Heaven uses to email journalists shows that last month alone (November 2008) more than 40,000 emails were sent to journalists on behalf of our 20 active clients. Phew, that’s a lot of press releases. And the team are very careful with our targeting to avoid annoying journalists.
The reality for most people however is that their press release will go straight in the bin. When I was a news editor in the old days of fax and post it would take me up to an hour a day to look at the releases and bin them. Most news editors now just whizz through their email, some judging the release by the subject title alone.
Sound like a hopeless situation? Not at all, when you understand the five reasons why journalists don’t use your press releases:
1) It’s not relevant: Take time to understand the outlet you are trying to get free publicity with. What audience is it aiming at? What area does it serve? What is the editorial tone, or voice (is it serious; cheeky; outrageous)? If your story idea doesn’t fit into these it’s irrelevant.
2) Bad targeting: Even if you get all of that right, are you speaking to the right journalist? The bigger the publication, the harder you must try to get hold of the right journalist. If you have a story on a new food supplement to improve health, the news desk of a national newspaper might give it a glance and bin it, but the health editor could be very interested.
3) There’s no story: Unfortunately no journalist will ever be as interested in your business as you are. The Publicity Heaven team refuses to do “vanity” or “ego” stories for our clients, because they rarely work. Why would anyone else care that you have hired a new receptionist or moved offices? Your challenge is to turn that dull story into something interesting. A client recently moved offices, so the team created a story saying they found £50 in loose change during the move, doubled it and donated it to charity. Got a nice photo spread in some of the local papers.
4) Bad timing: The worst time to suggest a new story to a journalist is when they are on deadline. Most media outlets have immovable deadlines. If you want to have a chat with a radio journalist two minutes before they are due to read a news bulletin, it’s going to be a short conversation. Find out when the deadlines are and work round them. It’s also worth looking at when outlets are going to be quiet, for example Publicity Heaven always has a lot of success getting stories in the media the day after bank holidays, because there’s not a lot of news around.
5) They simply don’t notice it: If you had 100-200 emails a day to read and digest, you would miss some good ideas. That’s why it’s OK to make some follow-up calls to journalists to check your story idea has been seen. Don’t ask if they received your press release; ask what further information they would like. Follow-up calls are generally not well received by the media (for obvious reason, they are like phone spam). But they will be grateful if you point out a story that fits all of their criteria that they may have accidentally missed.
