Giving your story relevance

August 22nd, 2008 at 10:44am Carrie Skogsberg

When releasing any news on your company to the media, the question the reporter always asks is “Why do I care?” or “Why will my readers care?” Relevance is one of the most important reasons a piece of news is considered news. One of the companies we saw that recently did an amazing job with making their product relevant is Rosetta Stone. They were able to tie in their product with the most talked-about news story right now – the Olympics. They were able to show how Olympic athletes used their product to learn Chinese before they traveled to Beijing. Now they are building on that brand awareness by getting athletes to talk about how their experiences in Beijing were enhanced because they knew the language while they were there.

Making connections with popular trends gives your story a better chance of being told. It gives the media a better reason to cover it if it relates to another popular trend. So how can you do this with your own company story? Read the most popular news sites every day to see what people are talking about. Most news sites have a section labeled “most popular.” Does your story have a “green” tie-in, or another popular trend? Of course, it’s a bad idea to try to connect two subjects that have nothing to do with each other and therefore makes no sense to your audience. But it just might happen that your company story somehow relates to the amazing phenomenon of Miley Cyrus or the iPhone. So get online and see what trend your business falls into – or maybe even start your own.

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