Thoughtful, Timely and Truthful: Basic Strategies to Media Engagement

Media engagement is a powerful tool to keep in your communications toolbox: whether it’s a feel-good story that you want to get out to the masses or something disastrous happened involving your organization, leveraging the reach of media outlets helps you connect and inform thousands of members of your audience. W.

But achieving accurate and fair media coverage isn't a breeze. By following these three strategies, you can collaborate with journalists across a wide range of platforms to amplify your message

Be Thoughtful

Journalists and other members of the media are eager to work with you and want to cover your story fully, accurately and fairly. Be thoughtful in how you work with them. Bring them stories that they want to cover, that are newsworthy and relevant.

Research is one of the first steps you take in any public relations strategy. In this case, research journalists or news outlets who have reported on your topic. Using this information, thoughtfully develop your pitch and relevant content so they can envision how your story is relevant to their audience – finding the sweet spot in the Venn diagram between your audience and their audience is how you create success in pitching media.

When developing media strategies, we spend just as much with clients developing a thoughtful media strategy that captures the interests of journalists as we do prepping for the interviews themselves.

Be Timely

In addition to creating a timely, relevant pitch to journalists, be mindful of their deadlines. Journalists are always looking to link a story to current events or recent happenings in their market. When we help clients develop media pitches, we discuss when is the best time of day, week or month to approach journalists. Print and broadcast journalists have varying deadlines, we can help you learn them and how to shape your strategy to meet them.

Availability of spokespeople, visual content, along with timely and accurate responses to follow up questions are all helpful to meeting the tight deadlines of journalists.

Be Truthful

Being truthful is the most important of all. If you can’t be truthful, don’t say anything. If you don’t know the answer to something, say so! Don’t speculate or make assumptions.

Your credibility with journalists and your audience is paramount, and any hint of less-than-full truth can destroy your reputation and the reputation of your organization. As you craft your talking points, data, and more, ask yourself, is there any way a person could perceive my information is less than truthful?

It is possible to build long-standing collaborative relationships with members of the media. Taking time to craft your pitch to be thoughtful, truthful and timely goes a long way in successfully reaching your audience through the media.