Fresh out of journalism school I was at the CBC, a big-time broadcast media outlet. I was on my way! On the first day, I went into a story meeting wondering what special formula these ferocious news hounds had for gathering story ideas.
Did they have a secret hotline for tips? Did they sit by radio scanners all night waiting for breaking news?
It turns out what they mostly did was print out stacks of stories from small community newspapers. They would look at who those publications were talking to. I can’t tell you how many times I saw producers pillaging those community news stories for sources and ideas.
The lesson? Big media outlets feed on the ideas of small publications.
Clients love it when we get them coverage in big-name outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, etc. They don’t always see the value in getting into their local community paper. Or a niche trade publication. But a ‘New York Times or nothing’ mindset can leave wins on the table.
But let me tell you - as a PR pro and former journalist, getting published in these outlets is an essential part of any PR strategy.
Just the other day, our PR team was able to repeatedly get one of our clients into Digiday, a significant ad industry trade publication. It’s no Wall Street Journal, but it’s a well-respected outlet with a niche audience.
But then, cherry on the sundae, a WSJ reporter dropped us a line. They’d seen our client’s comments in that trade publication and liked what they saw.
It happens all the time. News makes news. Big publications look to the small for their ideas.
How can you target the niche media hits so you can get the big media hits?
Let’s look at a recent PR case study to show how this works. Geazone was launching the first hydrogen-powered eco-courier company in North America. We racked up an audience reach of 30 million readers and viewers across 25 publications when we ran PR for them in a rapid-fire campaign lasting just six weeks.
This had huge potential for news coverage, but we had to be strategic. There was of course the good news cleantech PR angle to get some hits in big mainstream media outlets.
But to hedge our bets, we had to get strategic, focusing on niches like automotive news, manufacturing and EV-industry news, hyper-local news outlets and a smattering of news outlets far and wide focused on startups and entrepreneurs.
A lot of our initial results came from niche hits in stuff like the Auto News (driving), Techcouver (local tech) and regional news standouts like the Times Colonist and Business in Vancouver. We leveraged the early wins when reaching out to more journalists, garnering national and international outlets like Business Examiner, Driving Magazine and more!
Even more PR value from getting niche media hits. Practice interview skills and do a stress test for when you hit the big time!
We had a client who was dead set on doing a live broadcast interview despite having issues with their public speaking skills.
What issues, exactly? We wanted him to adapt his list of talking points, since he seemed hell-bent on pretty much just using the upcoming interview as a free commercial for his products. (There absolutely is marketing value to doing these interviews, but if you dodge the reporters’ questions and just try to use the segment to sell hard, it’s probably not going to go well).
(We wanted to go over bridging techniques and other media training 101 tactics to ensure he didn’t just barf out a bunch of non-sequiter taglines. That’s part of our PR services package, by the way.)
The other big problem we wanted to prepare for? We knew the CEO was a low talker. He was just straight-up hard to hear. There was an easy solution once we discovered he was just not maximizing his microphone volume and would stand too far back from his laptop.
The CEO overruled us and his own head of marketing. He insisted he was too busy with CEO stuff to do any media training.
And to be fair, he pointed out that the media outlet had a small reach, so what was the big issue with just doing things his own way? (Maybe we were overthinking things, after all…)
The result was a cringe interview that I sometimes check out on YouTube just to remind myself of the importance of preparation. The CEO’s soft whisper of a voice was hard to understand. He mumbled through much of the segment. The interviewer got increasingly exasperated and eventually just cut the interview short.
Thankfully, the show didn’t have huge reach, so not too much damage was done. Better for it to happen on a small show than CNN or Fox News.
The CEO still refused to do any media training, but their company’s head of marketing still wanted us to do PR. So we came up with a solution that would make all sides happy: the CEO was excused from all future live media interviews. We gave the media training to the head of marketing, who was only too happy to use the tactics around talking points and bridging to come off as a total pro when they got bigger media opportunities.
Getting appearances on smaller shows gives you the chance to hone your skills, and there’s less downside if you make mistakes.
That way, when The Wall Street Journal comes calling, you’ll be ready to hit it out of the park.
Want to get media coverage, big and small? We’re ready to help. Contact the Mind Meld PR agency today.