October 16, 2001
Keys to Effective Media Communication

• Focus on 3-4 core messages. These are the messages that you want your audience to get. Make sure that all communications convey these messages. Consistency and repetition greatly contribute to a professional image and brand or company mission recognition.

• Define your audience. Who precisely are you are trying to reach, and what are the media channels that are best suited for those audiences.

• Develop and share internally a calendar of planned future events. Media coverage takes time and effort to develop. A calendar will help stage events and will provide adequate advance notice of individual events in order to develop media coverage.

• Exploit the resources within the company. Communication is not solely the responsibility of the communication department. It is the people throughout the company who are generating the news, who have the knowledge, who can provide the insight. Develop the channels of information flow inside the company so the communication area can tap these resources.

• Communicate in many dimensions. Good media relations requires a broad range of tools.
  
  • Some are passive: website, brochures, media kits, white papers, case studies.
    
  • Most are active: press releases, pitch letters, media alerts, available for comment letters, backgrounders, product demos, speeches, and conference participation.
• Differentiate yourself. Media interest is piqued when you must distinguish yourself from the competition - whether it is product, people, approach to the market, or anything else. This means having a good understanding of the competition in order to distinguish your distinctiveness.

• Be timely. A personnel appointment, a new office, or a contract signing may be newsworthy at the moment they occur. Announcement of events that took place two weeks or two months ago will probably be ignored, even if important.

• Be newsworthy. Tie the news you are delivering to current trends or hot topics in your industry or your customers' industries or in the general media.

• Focus on customers. Use your customers as much as you can in your communications, and tie information releases about products to specific customers This reinforces customer focus and provides a practical example of what different solutions can do. And nothing sells a new product like being able to point to someone else who has already decided that your solution is right.

• Personalize communications. People communicate, not companies. Develop and consistently use a few spokespeople; this increases their expert profile and credibility. It also helps develop over time their presence in the media for quotes and comment (with the visibility and branding that comes with it.)
  
  
• Train your spokespeople. Few people are born communicators. Most can benefit from some form of media training, be it public speaking training or workshops on dealing with the press.

• Get third party endorsements. What others say about you carries more weight than what you say about yourself. Comments from analysts (industry or financial), customers, and partners are all forms of third party endorsement.

• Press releases are just the first step. Reporters and editors have to be cultivated, and they have to be specifically pitched on new stories. Smaller stories will get completely ignored without pitching the press. Bigger stories will be more nuanced and will be more likely to reflect the messages you want to get out.

• Understand what reporters want. You are in a symbiotic ecosystem with them. They want good stories that they can sell to their editors. They need knowledge of their subject. They need sources. You have the industry information and expertise. You have the sources. You both share the same currency: credibility.
  
  • A reporter will always work harder for a story on which he/she has an exclusive - but exclusives should be used sparingly.
    
  • Reporters need to communicate with you regularly, so they can stay abreast of what is going on. Don't call them only when you need a story.
• Be straight with the media. If you have a well-founded opinion - give it to them. Unless you are a master of the art, don't equivocate. Good reporters will smoke out a phony, and they have too many alternate sources of information. Giving out bad news or incovenient facts can reinforce your credibility - and it's highly likely that the reporters would figure out the bad news anyway.

• Go on background when needed. Good reporters respect information that is given on background or 'no attribution.' Use this if you need to put distance between yourself and the information you are providing. The rules are clear: if any reporter violates the 'no attribution' pledge; cut them off-forever, and let their editors know. Good reporters may try to get you to change your mind, but they won't violate the condition.

• Occasional bad media is much better than no media at all. Running the risk of getting an occasional unfavorable story or being misquoted is an acceptable price to pay for media coverage. Bad news needs to be addressed and factual mistakes, especially if they are material, need to be be ountered. But these are small costs compared to being ignored.