Story Placement Services

by Michael B. Perini, ABC
perini & Associates

Have some news to tell?  Don’t know how?  The best advice is to use the story placement service provided by our company as well as other consultants.

It makes sense to have someone who knows the process to complete this work for you.  It can be time consuming and there is very much a skill to being successful.  Not unlike going to the dentist or auto mechanic when you have something that needs to be done but do not have the training, skills or credentials to accomplish the work successfully.

So, what is story placement services?  Basically, it the process of preparing, researching, distributing and tracking the news item.  Matters not if you are a business, non-profit, event planner or government agency.  You believe that you have “news” to share.  The process is the same.

The first step — and it’s critical — determining if what you want to communicate is newsworthy. News, to be clear, is the communication of information on current events.  The “news” is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, mobile device or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.

Here’s the remaining steps to complete the process:

Determine Objectives: Examples would be, “Create awareness and branding for company (fill in the blank) in appropriate local, regional and national story placement.” “Educate (pick industry) executives and decision makers about (fill in the blank) services for future business development.”

Develop Strategy: Use the news item as a starting point to generate articles and news coverage. For example, is the story about a contract award?  New hire?  Special Event?

Target Audiences: Research the audiences that you want to reach; those to read, view or hear your news.

Tactics: Write a professional news release and depending on the client’s requirements disseminate to local, statewide, national and international news outlets.  Target related magazines, social media and other outlets based on the objectives, strategies and audiences.

In addition:

• Work with the client to gather facts and conduct interviews.
• Ensure that the news release is in formats for print, broadcast and electronic distribution and meets journalistic style and national standards.
• Send to targeted media list.
• Use PR Web or one of several available distribution services for electronic dissemination.
• Contact editors and reporters for status and publication/air date.
• Clip and send articles/videos to the client.

In our experience, all phases of the communication effort need to be addressed to obtain results. The only sure guarantee of your item being published is if you purchase an ad which is often more expensive and doesn’t have the same credibility as a news story.

As always, something more newsworthy, in the judgement of the editor, could conflict from your story being told.  But yes, good news stories are being disseminated!  It isn’t always bad news.

Finally, this is also a long-term process due to deadlines and other newsworthy events already in the pipeline.  The story might not show up right away.  Some stores have a “shelf-life” thus the follow-up work required to check status.  Again, all good reasons why you should hire a public relations consultant for this exciting service.

So, do you have a story to tell?