The media wants to cover stories that are relevant to the current climate. That could be related to seasonality, holidays, and trending stories. Right now what is relevant is COVID-19. The majority of mainstream news stories are related to that right now.
That being said, many lifestyle magazines and print publications will not be covering this topic from cover to cover. Additionally, these publications are planned four months in advance. The editors can’t know what will happen with the virus four months from now so they need to continue with their planned themes and the overall category of the magazine (i.e. – health, fitness, women, men, family, food, etc..) This means there is room for you to pitch your product, service, brand, or expertise to those publications whether you are related to coronavirus or not.
If you are looking to land on television or be featured in a daily or weekly newspaper, your likelihood goes up when you tie the story to the current condition with coronavirus. The good news is that the media is now looking for other stories related to this. Here are some ideas:
Health and exercise from home
Finances and investing
Small Business Loans/Paycheck Protection Plan
Keeping kids busy at home/homeschooling
Homemade masks and hand-sanitizer
Mental health
Charitable community projects
Work from home policies
Designing your home office
Virtual staging and virtual showings of homes for sale
Almost any industry has relevant value they can provide the media today to gain coverage.
Video Transcript:
Hi everybody. It’s Christina Daves with this week’s Get Famous Friday PR Tip. This week I want to talk about what makes a relevant story. And a relevant story is something that’s trending right now. It’s something that matters. It’s something that people are talking about. That’s relevant.
If you have a business related to something that happens in the winter mainly, it’s going to be hard to pitch that story in July. So what is the relevance to the to the seasons, to what’s going on in the media right now that you can tie to? And at the end of the day, a relevant story is one that really matters to that media outlet’s audience.
And we have other tips about researching demographics and making sure you’re in the right place. But what’s timely, trending, what matters right now is a good story and does it matter to that audience? So that is this week’s Get Gamous Friday PR Tip.
If you haven’t joined the Challenge yet, please do so. There’s no cost to join. It’s at YourPRChallenge.com. It’s 10 days. It’s only 10 minutes a day. It’s not even 10 minutes a day. But every day I give you tips and tools and templates to help your business get visible and get in the media. So I hope to see you in the Challenge and then I cannot wait to see you in the media.