Engaging with IT journalists has more benefits than just press coverage

I noticed a sudden spike in web traffic after Tristan’s recent blog about asking for copy approval. Most of this traffic came via Twitter from other PR agencies, largely because they follow Jess Twentyman, and she had retweeted the link to the blog. 

PRs follow journalists because we want to know what they are writing about and how our clients can help, but we also follow them because we want their advice. We pay close attention to their advice on how to pitch a story, what irritates them and what is helpful to them.

There is one area where a journalist’s advice should be invaluable to PR and marketing departments – content.  If content is king, it pays to listen to the kings of content.  Guy Clapperton recently posted a piece on his blog about how important it is to explain what’s in it for the reader when pitching to him. His decision on whether to engage is based on being convinced that he’ll get content he can turn into a story that his audience genuinely wants to read. 

As Guy points out, you need to find your story interesting or nobody else will, but ultimately it won’t impact levels of engagement. Before organising an event or creating content, you must renew your relationship with the persona that you are trying to reach and define what’s in it for them.  

Journalists are often measured on how many people read their stories, so they know what they are doing when it comes to engaging an audience. Increasingly, companies are employing the skills of journalists to deliver their brand journalism (which reads like editorial but is ‘owned’ instead of ‘earned’ or ‘paid-for’ media) as a way of reaching their audience. The challenge, as this FT story illustrates, is to produce something that is equal to, or better than, what traditional media can deliver.

But it’s not just brand journalism where you can learn from the experts. PR agencies try to apply the rules of journalism to all content; such as by-lined articles, headline-driven research, quotes and press releases. I like to think this is motivated by an instinctive understanding of the interests of our client’s audience, rather than because we know we’ll be shot down if we don’t! We also want to make the journalist’s life a bit easier; they get thousands of pitches a day, so it makes sense to do some of the legwork required to develop a story.

However, taking a journalistic approach should go beyond editorial of all types, whether it is owned, earned or paid. The internet and social media have changed marketing almost beyond recognition, and the rules of journalism that relate to creating compelling content now also apply to marketing materials. Guy’s piece talks about organising meetings with the media at an event, but you could easily replace ‘media’ with ‘prospects’ and the advice would still be spot on. Marketing experts such as Seth Godin or David Meerman Scott aren’t the only valuable resources – ask us if you want some recommendations of journalists to follow. Once you’ve mastered the content, the next step is the technology to manage and measure – but that’s for a book rather than a blog post!