Creating newsbreaks: examples of three effective ways

Earlier, we talked about how to set up content creation within the company. Ksenia Reznikova, head of the PR department at prnews.io, told the Exiterra business blog how to create newsbreaks while remaining relevant.

Articles and news about the company remain the most effective tool for communicating with the audience and potential customers. Their systematic placement in the media helps to solve several problems: PR, advertising, reputation management, sales, recruitment, and even attracting business partners or investors.

In order to prepare an up-to-date article or news, first of all, you need a newsbreak. In this case, the media will be interested in posting material for free, and the company will receive high-quality links and positive search results in its treasury of publications.

It would seem that everything is simple: prepare 1-2 informational materials per week, forward them through the pool of thematic media. But it often happens that press secretaries and PR people of small companies fall into a vicious circle.

In order to generate news, a certain activity of business processes and a budget (which, as a rule, are not available) are required. If the publication is not able to inspire the editor-in-chief to post it for free, an expense item appears, which, in the realities of economic turbulence, most companies have deleted from their plans for a long time. It turns out that the PR person is not efficient and does not work out the salary.

What to do? How to promote a company in the media and become an effective, interesting newsmaker for journalists? Specialists of the PRNEWS.IO content marketing platform have prepared TOP 3 tools for brand promotion in online media.

Creating newsbreaks: systematically, thoughtfully, cheaply

Most often, small companies experience difficulties in developing their own information field due to the fact that they do not understand what to write about. And they are under the delusion, thinking that only a company of the level of Gazprom is able to regularly produce news and comments that are in demand by the media.

It is a myth. In order to interest journalists in a press release, you do not need a budget or the scale of the business as a mandatory component. It is not necessary to open your own piano museum , as Petrof did, shock the world with the release of a new collection dedicated to the anniversary of the Swarovski brand, or organize a conference for 2,000 participants.

It is enough to delve into the nuances of your company’s business processes and follow a few rules:

• Create a newsbreak calendar — a quarterly plan with a detailed monthly breakdown and remember that one unique piece of news or comment is better than 5 formal newsbreaks a la CEO of Bright Future LLC ” solemnly opened the slide on the playground. Newsbreaks need to be constantly generated. The main thing is consistency.
• Journalists are ordinary people. The representative of the company is interested in the media writing about it, and the sharks of the pen are happy with expert comments, little-known facts about the market and original cases.
• To create newsbreaks, you can use: the results of processing company data (internal analytics), market news, customer cases and anti-cases, and your own.
• Even the most interesting release should be properly packaged. A concise but informative email subject line, accompanying text, infographics, and quotes from market experts will increase the chances of your material being published.

Newsjacking or “news piracy”

Some experts are cool about newsjacking as a method of attracting attention to a brand by “stealing the news”. Others call it a technology for embedding a company’s name in high-profile news and recommend its active use in information policy.

Both parties agree on one thing: newsjacking is one of the most effective types of guerrilla marketing. It allows you to draw attention to the name of the company, its services and special offers. The main thing is that they organically fit into the main news, be gracefully executed, and newsjacking does not turn into trolling.

There are many examples of the successful implementation of “news piracy”. A couple of years ago, Alfa-Bank cleverly played with the technical problems of MegaFon, which caused problems for users in many cities. The bank posted a picture of a plantain on its Twitter, the operator’s logo, which became the legendary inscription “Megafonchik, don’t get sick” – the tweet received thousands of reposts in which people discussed not only Megafon, but also the bank itself.

In order to work productively with newsjacking technology, adhere to the following rules:

• monitor the latest events, news (subscribe to industry websites mailing lists, compile a database of industry online resources, follow the news of local and federal industry sites);
• try to be one of the first to use the news;
• carefully check the reliability of the newsbreak into which you plan to “embed”, otherwise you risk getting into an unpleasant situation.

Important! Never use news about natural disasters, racial or religious affiliations, military conflicts or deaths to covertly advertise your product or brand. Don’t wash off.

Own research and forecasts

Own micro-research of the market and industry, selection of statistical data, trends, facts, surveys, forecasts are always in demand by the media. The advantage of the “Data driven PR” method is that you can analyze everything – the main thing is to build your brand and its advantages into this process.

For example, if your company produces agricultural machinery, conduct a customer survey on the ratio of worn-out and new equipment among agricultural producers from different areas. Prepare questions about how things are going with the sowing season, taking into account quarantine measures, and fill out the questionnaire, aggregating the new agro-trends of domestic farmers.

Write a catchy headline: “The shortage of new equipment for agricultural producers in region N has increased by 30%” or “Agrarians of the Rostov region do not confirm the disruption of the 2020 sowing season.” Offer your release to specialized (in this case, agricultural) and regional media, remembering to correctly format the subject line and accompanying text.

Forecasts also work well as a newsbreak.

If you represent the financial sector, share your expertise with readers on some topical issue. For example, prepare on behalf of the manager a forecast about currency fluctuations or the possibility of a “credit vacation” for small and medium-sized businesses that have suffered as a result of quarantine. Such a newsbreak will be in demand during a crisis or during any other turbulence in your market.

When creating a newsbreak based on your own analytics, remember:

• The data you make public must be concise, accurate, and verified multiple times. It is you and your company who are absolutely responsible for the quality of analytical development;
• do not abuse media loyalty and do not bombard journalists with monotonous news too often;
• monitor competitors’ websites, thematic media and generate new ideas.

Excursion, press tour, reportage

A tour, a press tour, a report – all of them have always been in great demand among readers. This is partly due to the fact that everyone wants to peek through the keyhole and see what is usually hidden from outsiders.

This technology for generating informational occasions, first of all, is very suitable for companies that have their own production: a jewelry workshop, a winery, an atelier for the production of clothes for plus-size people, etc.

Invite journalists to your inner kitchen – take a tour, show the most “delicious” moments of production, introduce you behind the scenes. It is important that journalists be given the opportunity not only to see, touch, and photograph everything, but also to communicate with employees and experts.

If you have an office work format, and you won’t be able to surprise company guests with how your strawberries ripen in April or by preparing sketches of a new jewelry collection, don’t rush to abandon this technology.

Depending on the specifics of your activity, you can organize … a museum. Of course, it’s great, like MacPaw, by chance, to acquire a museum of vintage Macintosh computers. But you can get by with significantly less investment in a product that will serve as a first-class informational occasion for journalists for a long time.

If your company, for example, is engaged in the sale or repair of printers, take on board the idea of ​​​​creating a museum-cabinet for the development of office equipment.

The effort spent will pay off with interest – thanks to excursions to the “museum” or for production, you will receive a number of bold publications that will work for a long time to promote your company on the Internet. Open doors for visitors, tell stories, communicate to the maximum – and they will definitely tell about you.

How else to come up with a newsbreak?

The business blog Exiterra talked about only three technologies that allow you to generate newsworthy events and do not require financial investments as such. In fact, there are much more tools for newsmaking.

In addition to newsjacking, data driven PR and excursions, you will need:

• collaboration (joint newsbreaks);
• official dates (professional holidays, appointments, anniversaries, for which you can time special offers, interviews, etc.);
• flash mobs.

Do not forget that all these tools work effectively if you monitor market news, current trends, opinion leaders and competitors on a daily basis. This is an important component of your brand promotion work, which will allow you to ride the information wave in time and prepare material that will be of interest to the media on a free basis.

What methods do you use – tell us in the comments.