6 tips to sell your startup story

TIME POOR? Here’s The Fast Facts: Press releases are good, Pictures are perfect. Stats are essential. Be topical. Avoid calling. Put a catchy headline in email message.

In this age of digital content, citizen journalism and the growing dominance of owned and paid media, does the old art of good PR sell-in have much relevance any more?

According to a panel of newspaper, magazine and digital media writers at Enterprise Nation’s https://www.enterprisenation.com Meet The Journalists event last week – the answer is Yes. Well packaged topical PR stories get the coverage & the relationship between PRs and media is still going strong! 

As an insights event geared for SMEs and startups, journalists from The Sunday Times, City AM, The Telegraph, Seen in the City and others shared some useful tips and reminders tips on the perfect story sell in.  

1.    THE BIG PICTURE. With a decreasing number of news team staffers and a disappearing number of photographers - anything we can do to make stories easy to process will give us a greater chance. Quality and plentiful imagery is key.

2.    STATS AND FACTS case studies & sharing facts together with good stats are key – it will help your media targets choose your story when up against short deadlines.

3.    BE RELEVANT. Is your story topical? Are you slotting into the news agenda? What kind of stories does your target media title cover and how? Keep your eye on developing news so you can match up your story. 

4.    CATCHY HEADLINES Phones are generally not answered in the news-room (so many redundancies/lack of staff). Email is best – with a short & succinct format: Who, what, why. A catchy subject line really helps too.

5.    ALL CHANGE. If at first you don’t get a response, its always worth sending again but don’t keep re-sending the same press release! Find that topical angle.

6.    PICTURES ARE POWERFUL. 100% of the journalists emphasized the need for good quality imagery

 Need more help crafting your startup story? Just let me know....