Lesson 1 of PR activities: Master media preferences and write more attractive interview notices
This article is written by Girl Karen, a newbie in the media. She once served as the editor of Taiwan’s most popular online native media, worked for a 4A public relations group, and currently works in a television media. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.
[Why we repost this article] When every company holds a media event, it hopes to attract a large number of media reporters to report on the event. But how should you write an interview notice to attract the attention of reporters and make them willing to participate in the event? Girl Karen shares with everyone her experience in filtering and arranging a large number of interview notifications, and teaches you how to write eye-catching media invitation copy.
The author is a television news reporter and has previously served as an online news editor and reporter. Although my media experience is only three years, I receive a huge number of “interview notices” from press conferences every day. However, after reporters receive event invitations or interview notices, what they consider is how to write the news content? Title How to make it interesting and attract the favor of the superiors and the attention of the audience? We will not draw a complete picture based on the information provided by the public relations company.
From the perspective of a public relations company, when companies hold media activities, they also need to calculate performance. The author has worked for a public relations company before, dealing with large brands, so I know that the number of media participating in an event generally ranges from 10 to 70. In order to achieve the target number of media participants, the “message structure” and “activity communication theme” must be drafted in advance. However, in these discussions within public relations companies, people often think that the message topics they have set can arouse the interest of the media. In fact, this is often not the case.
How to write an interview notice to attract media visits?
What reporters care about: scenes, characters, topics
Whether it is traditional media or current audio and video media, they all need image to attract attention. Therefore, when receiving notification of a media event, you often hope to receive “reference photos” or “reference videos” as well. For example, what kind of similar events has the company held last year or in other regions, so that reporters can predict what can be photographed at the scene so that they can report to the media director.
Tip 1: Combine popular issues and turn boring activities into news
For example, the author once accepted Bei Yinu to prepare for a “personal safety training”. The title seemed a bit boring. But after reading the text carefully, I found that a national martial arts coach would go to Beiyi Girls’ Middle School to teach 120 students of the Leyi Flag Team how to defend themselves. These conditions meet the scenes and characters required for the news picture: the scene is the self-defense teaching, and the character is the interaction between the Beiyi female student and the martial arts instructor that everyone is paying attention to. But such a scene may not be important enough to be reported to media executives.
So the author thought about it, combined it with the major social [issues] that have occurred in the past six months (https://www.contenthacker.today/2018/03/learning-content-plan-from-media.html), and explained to the supervisor that since most of the recent murder cases focus on women, and this event will have martial arts coaches entering the campus to teach self-defense to Beiyi female students, so there will be scenes of practicing fighting bad guys, which can attract the attention of the audience. This will attract the attention of media executives, and at the same time, the issue will also arouse netizens’ concerns about the importance of female students’ personal safety.
Tip 2: Be sure to identify key figures and do not deceive reporters with information packaging
In the interview notice, key figures must be mentioned, such as well-known persons such as the chairman or CEO of the enterprise group. Never lie in the invitation letter. For example, a publicist once claimed that the chairman will personally announce important events at the event, but when he actually called to inquire, he said that a lawyer would speak on behalf of the company. This approach will offend the media and is very inappropriate behavior.
Why?
The media reporting process usually involves reporters reporting to their supervisor after receiving the interview notice, confirming what scenes are included, and deciding how to package the news. If it is an important person, the TV station will even send an SNG truck or 4G package to facilitate on-site connection; for press conferences of important companies such as Hon Hai or TSMC, on-site connection will need to be prepared in advance. Therefore, if an important person lets the news slip temporarily, or lies to deceive reporters into coming to the scene despite knowing that there is something wrong with the spokesperson, the public relations officer will be scolded by the reporter, and the reporter will be scolded by the supervisor. The next time there is a similar event, unless the company is very confident, the media who were deceived last time may refuse to attend.
Moreover, if you prank the media during the invitation, the following headlines may appear on the news that day: “Chairman XX suddenly disappears”, “XX event changes”, “You promised but didn’t come?”, “Are you scared?” and other negative words. Of course, this situation may only happen with negative news; but the news itself is negative enough, and if it is subtitled with more negative sentences, it will have a greater impact on the corporate image.
Tip3: Prepare attention-grabbing topics in advance
The first case to be introduced is a human resources banking company. They are very good at talking about current affairs topics, so every one to two weeks, the media will reveal the company’s statistics information. For example, typhoons frequently visited Taiwan a while ago. The labor bank launched a statistical survey on “Are you willing to take a day off during a typhoon?” and also arranged interviews with real people who had experienced typhoons and had to go to work.
The statistics are there, the interviewees are there, and although the pictures are a little dry, they are all topics of public concern. Moreover, this statistical news had been prepared in advance a long time ago. The public relations officer described it as “just waiting for the typhoon to come”, which made the media feel smart and considerate. Therefore, every time this labor bank holds a press conference, many media will be present, and sources of information will be cited to increase the company’s exposure.
The second case is a cross-industry alliance between supermarkets. Consumer and food news are usually favorite topics of media executives. Consumer news comes from supermarkets that are quite creative, such as launching “micro-marts” in cooperation with gyms and bakeries, or selling beer and ice cream in summer, etc. These can create news topics that the media likes.
Food type of news usually includes two to three different gourmet restaurants. The types that are usually “selected” include: beautiful, exaggerated and special ingredients. Since television or audio-visual media attaches great importance to visual presentation, and food is a topic that everyone loves, if the subject of today’s news report is “Pink Pearl Pizza”, it is both beautiful and exaggerated, and the ingredients are a special combination of sweet and salty, which is quite eye-catching.
If the ingredient is replaced by lobster, the ingredient itself is very noble (exaggerated). If paired with different ways of eating, such as lobster mallet, lobster sandwich, lobster burger, etc. Different cooking methods can also create “topics”. It depends on how the public relations department can find such special points and attract the media to report on it.
★ Photo Credit: Pixabay
★ Vista’s “New Book Launch Conference”, welcome to register now!
★Vista’s “Attractive Copywriting Course” will help you open up your writing context. You are welcome to sign up now!
★ To improve your content power, please don’t miss the online course “[Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands] (https://hahow.in/cr/content-power)”.
Further reading
- How to get your website content included in Google News?
- “Brand Marketing Media Public Relations Skills” course experience: Understand the media ecosystem and master the direction of community management
- How to write a press release? Clarify the context and cause and effect of events, and convey the key points and benefits through titles
