LET'S GET NEWSJACKING!

One of the ways to get 'visible' is to share an opinion or experience which relates to something which is 'topical' and being talked about as part of a national/international conversation during any given week or day. We call this 'news jacking'.

This should be done with sensitivity and with a humble tone to serve people - not as a blatant attempt to just get seen with some kind of tenuous or self-serving tone of voice. As readers, listeners and viewers we are actually very good at picking up on the wrong tone of voice.

This can be difficult to get right so it's best to work closely with your PR partner to 'choose' when you do this and you have to be clear in your own mind that you wish to share your opinion or experience - as inevitably people will have varying views and opinions and may call you out.

I often say to my clients this - 'if you are absolutely confident that you would stand before God/the Universe and express this then do it'.

As one of my mantras is to walk my talk - here's an example. It's hooked to the conversation going on at the moment around Baby Reindeer. Here's my experience which relates to it - my experience comes from a desire to let people know that 'stalking' is far more common than people realise and it can happen to anyone.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STALKED??

This is something we talk about far more than in the past. Yet stalking is incredibly common, sadly and the key thing to remember is that the definition of stalking really hangs on the phrase ‘is this unwanted?’. Also stalking related to both real world and in the digital world.?

In the past in law, it was difficult to deal with because when someone is charged and tried for an offence in court, you usually cannot refer to past behaviours or offences. This meant many stalkers went unpunished and victims went silent and were not believed. Fairly recently, the law changed because in stalking, past behaviours are part of the crime and they show a pattern of behaviour over time.?

Also occasionally, someone who is stalking doesn’t realise their behaviour is stalking. They may genuinely believe (even if deluded) that the person on the receiving end is happy about their attention or it doesn’t bother them. The recent drama Baby Reindeer explored some of this, so it’s part of a topical discussion over the last few weeks.?

I once experienced stalking many years ago and it was interesting to remember when the attention I was getting flipped from something that was okay – to something that was not okay.?

I was training to be a journalist full-time on a course in Sussex. I was young, I was single, I was enjoying life and at the very start of my professional career doing something I loved. It was a very happy time of my life.?

Every morning I walked to the training school from my digs early – as we had to treat it like a working day. On the way, I passed a house under extensive renovation and a young lad (I was in my early 20s then) took an interest in me. He was very handsome and we greeted each other daily over several weeks. Eventually he asked me out but then added the fact that he was married. Disappointed that he was committed I refused as I didn’t want to get involved with a married man however handsome. A week or so later, he was gone. I never saw him again.?

However because the team working on the house had got used to saying ‘hello’ to me over a period of weeks, the person who’d taken over from this lad (and may have been there before) also kept saying hello to me. Within a week, he’d asked me out and I politely declined. Frankly there was no attraction for me.?

He then asked me every day, morning and evening, so that it became increasingly awkward for me as he’d walk alongside me down the road.?

After this had happened for a while, I began to walk a different route to work to avoid him. However I couldn’t avoid, crossing the top of the relevant road about 100m from the house and to my horror I realised he was looking out for me. So even though I was taking a different route, he would still do all he could to catch up with me and kept asking me out. He would either run up the road to catch me up, or take another route to ‘surprise’ me along the way. In the end I had to be firm and tell him to leave me alone.?

Then when walking home from my workplace, he started turning up near my digs. Again I told him to leave me alone, having to abandon any pleasantness. Yet it started happening every day. Then one day he turned up with a bunch of 20 red roses and shoved them into my hand. I told him I didn’t want them, he was wasting his money and to go away. He forced them on to me and short of a massive scene in the street I took them and put them into the bin when I got to the office. All of this time, I was still not taking that usual route to work. I didn’t mention any of this to anyone.?

Then even worse he started following me in his car, clearly waiting until I’d finished work. On the final day I saw him, he pulled up and begged me to see him romantically and that he could make it work. Beside him on the seat he had the biggest bouquet of flowers I’ve ever seen in my life – from that day to this – and I screamed at him to leave me alone or I would call the police. I simply lost the plot. This man was now scaring me. I’d never given him any indication that I was interested in him beyond polite interaction with a stranger.?Yet he clearly saw things so differently that I became terrified.

I screamed that I couldn’t say ‘no’ any more clearly to him. He was crying and I was screaming. It was absolutely horrible. However I didn’t take the flowers, I ran off and luckily I didn’t see him again and I suppose he finally got the message. A few weeks later, my course was over and I returned to Somerset.?

Today I’d probably have acted a lot sooner, told people at work I was having this issue and couldn’t shake this guy off and asked for support. Truth was I felt like a fool. I felt horrible for not fancying this guy who, at first, appeared perfectly okay. I felt a fool because he may have been on that site before and seen me acting differently with the other guy – who I did fancy. Had my actions led to him making assumptions about me? In other words, I felt somehow responsible. Now I know I was not and I was very lucky it didn’t escalate further.

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