Blog courtesy of Bridge Global Strategies

In today’s über-connectedworld, people are bombarded with messages from every direction. For many of us, the daily cycle starts and ends with TV news, punctuated by a tidal ambush of web searches, emails, text messages and snail mail.

We have primed ourselves to deal with this sensory overload through the art of selective attention. No, selective attention is not some made-up malady conceptualized by angry housewives berating their forgetful husbands. It is an innate psychological trait; an invisible firewall designed to regulate the flow of information across the complex network of cerebral servers and routers that make up our brains. It has been suggested that this firewall has been conditioned to be more vigilant (i.e. selective) as the result of constant exposure to modern communications technologies, such as the Internet and smartphones; naturally, the rampant use of these technologies is also blamed for the epidemic of attention deficit disorder (perhaps our firewalls are turning against us, blocking or distorting any information that tries to pass regardless of its intention).

If it is true that our attention is getting more selective through technological conditioning, this presents a big challenge to the fields of advertising and public relations. It would mean the more messages we create, the more sophisticated our audiences’ firewalls are becoming. The ad industry has found some creative ways of breaking through the firewalls, leveraging visuals, music and slogans across a variety of media formats to grab peoples’ attention.

With regards to PR, however, audience penetration can be a little more complicated, particularly when the strategy is focused solely on generating media exposure, which is often the case. The challenge is that, in order to gain media exposure, a brand’s message has to be strong enough to pierce the strongest cognitive firewalls on our planet: those that belong to journalists.

It is probably more difficult than ever before to engage journalists, owing to the evolution of the 24-hour news cycle, the continuous downsizing of media outlets and the constant flurry of press releases, media alerts and email exchanges with PR people.

But with proper planning and execution, your business can greatly increase the chances of catching the media’s attention. Here are three simple suggestions to help break through:

  • Ask Yourself Why Should the Reporter Care: In journalism, information is currency. It has to be valuable enough to the reporter to warrant their precious attention. Sending a reporter an irrelevant or poorly-framed story idea will not only squander your near-term opportunities, it can also leave a stain on future exchanges with the reporter. The number one thing you need to know when deciding whether a reporter will care about your story is what their audiences care about. For consumer media outlets, whose audiences cover a broad swath of demographics, this can hard to determine, but as a general rule of thumb, the odds for coverage are greatly increased for stories that either affect a great number of people or present curious facts or ideas that have never been explored before.  For trade media outlets, whose audiences are stratified by industry focus, it’s usually a little simpler to evaluate your story’s relevance, but you still have to thoroughly critique your approach with these outlets to make sure that you are tailoring your messaging to best fit each one’s unique editorial style and focus.
  • Don’t Sell Your Story; Tell Your Story: At many startups and small businesses, PR activities are executed by professionals with marketing and sales backgrounds, rather than communications backgrounds. This is not a problem as long as these professionals are adept at separating their marketing hats from their PR hats. Messages that appear salesy or hyperbolic won’t pass muster with most reporters. This means focusing your story ideas on the core facts—not subjective opinions—and doing so in as few words as possible. If you’re trying to get a blogger to review an innovative product your business is introducing, don’t just call it “innovative;” describe what makes it different and let them be the judge.
  • Provide Images and Visual Aids: With the convergence of traditional print media with online and video formats, media outlets are more image-oriented than ever before. Depending on the nature of the story you are pitching to the media, a new product shot or clean image of your company offices, may be sufficient. In other cases, you may consider using creative infographics that present data in an unconventional way; some media outlets, such as Fast Company, have entire columns dedicated to publishing infographics.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with a PR, marketing or social media campaign, contact Scott Public Relations.

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