I’m six months into my role here at Highland Marketing. That means I’ve been working directly with journalists for half a year, and in that time it’s fair to say that I’ve learned a lot about the other side of the coin.
The other side of the coin being the journalist’s perspective on what counts as news (vs the marketing manager’s perspective).
One of the things I’ve learned is that press releases written by in house marketing teams fail to get across “the story.”
Answering the right questions
PR is written from the corporate’s perspective. Does the PR position the technology correctly? Does the message align with the corporate objective? Are the USPs clearly communicated?
For a journalist, these are the wrong questions. A journalist wants to know: what happened, and when? What impact did it have? Why should readers care enough to keep reading their story or analysis piece?
Does this mean tension is inevitable between PRs and reporters? Not at all. Let’s not forget that the role of PR is to attract your target audience. Would the answers to your corporate questions resonate with your customers? No. Then why expect them to thrill a journalist or reader?
What can go wrong
The result of misusing or under-using PR is that potential results are unrealised and investment underperforms. So, I am taking what I have learned and I am sharing some full (unedited) journalist feedback with you.
Firstly, where are we going wrong? It pains me to confess this after 11 years in marketing but the truth is that we are putting out press releases that have:
How to get it right
Secondly, what can we do better? Here’s some tips from our in-house health IT journalists to help steer you away from what one of my colleagues calls PR ‘blah’.
Some things to think about
My journalist colleagues have a few more tips. Most of these revolve around a key message: reporters are busy. They’re much more likely to use your release if they can work out quickly what it’s about and why their publication should be interested. So:
More things to think about
What type of questions should shape your PR copy?
When you get it right…
Here’s some feedback we have received recently from editors in the industry which provides some insight into what is important for them.
Matthew Driver, managing editor, The Journal of mHealth: “Of all the agencies that send me material, Highland Marketing is by far the best for providing relevant, engaging and high quality content. I can rely on Highland to provide the latest news in healthcare from a wide range of organisations, and to offer authoritative opinion pieces of interest to our readership.
Story ready material that translates complex issues into understandable and accessible copy, makes my life so much easier in relaying important healthcare stories to our readers. An email from the Highland team will always be opened by my editorial team, and I would highly recommend them to anyone who wants to get their story out.”
John Whelan, group editor, Hospital Matters, Hospital Times and Commissioning Journal: “Highland Marketing provides a rich source of content relevant for readers across our range of healthcare publications. Members of the team show a strong understanding of healthcare trends, of our readers and our editorial priorities.
“I regularly draw on the high quality material and insights from NHS organisations and technology providers sent to us from Highland, which we can quickly and easily consume for our readers. Modern day publishing requires the ability to create high quality stories quickly – content from Highland’s clients is invariably useful in this mission.”
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