A company cannot always be at the forefront of the news cycle. Even the biggest companies in the world don’t earn daily headlines, though some are closely followed. The goal of every company should be to remain at the forefront of the news cycle. Any successful communications strategy not only takes that into account but also identifies ways to present a company as newsworthy without company news to share. That requires identifying news stories that your target audience reads daily and broader areas of your industry that are relevant to your brand.
Breaking News
When news breaks, communication experts know what’s being covered. The advantage in this is you’re not having to sell a story. However, selling a story to journalists with influence over your key demographic is only part of a communications strategy. The latter half of convincing a journalist to interview an executive hinges on your communication team’s ability to convince that writer that the company leader can add expertise to that story.
It’s important for part of your communications strategy to outline how your company will take advantage of breaking news events. This should include identifying reports and beats relevant to your brand, strategizing around regularly-breaking news stories (think: jobs reports, inflation readings) and identifying which executives within your c-suite are most appropriate for these stories.
Evergreen Stories
Though the goal remains the same even during a slow news cycle, identifying stories of interest to journalists is challenging when coverage leans away from those stories central to your brand. Still, these instances are critical in putting forward a narrative that’s advantageous to your company. When developing a communications strategy, it’s important to generate ideas at a company and industry level that aren’t pinned to breaking news. While much more difficult, primarily because you have to convince a journalist to execute on an idea they previously had not thought about, evergreen stories are effective in helping to push a narrative advantageous to your company.
Doing so with breaking news is much more difficult, whereas the evergreen content you’re pitching should inherently communicate the pain points your company is trying to solve.
Data & Reports
Regularly sharing data either proprietary to your company or aggregated using in-house resources can have a long-tail impact on your media strategy.
The use of data can augment breaking news stories and help facilitate evergreen topics. Moreover, it enhances your company’s brand by showcasing an expertise in a specific recurring topic (think: the ADP Jobs Report). Over time media will expect these reports on a recurring basis and cover them as news unto themselves.
