Make it about people (if you want to get your news read and shared)

You're sitting in front of a blank Word document, trying to decide how you should go about sharing your business’s news. 

It seemed exciting when you talked about it, but now that you're faced with that blinking cursor, you're not so sure. 

Where do you start? Which angle do you approach it from?

I'd suggest: Begin by thinking about people. 

In the first paragraph above, I could have said: “Here are some tips about writing a press release”.  

Instead, I tried to get you to put yourself in the position of someone was already trying to write one and wondering where to begin. I won’t claim it was great literature, but you might briefly have pictured yourself in that position.

We journalists are taught early on to ask ourselves: Where are the people in this story? 

How journalists are told to put people first

When I was on my first training course as a journalist, more years ago than I care to remember, I recall writing a story from a council report about a big increase in planning applications. My first version was okay, but a bit dry.  

That's when I was given the pointer: Think about people.

Sure, you could write it this way:  

The borough council saw planning applications rise by 50 per cent last year and is taking longer to deal with them.  

It does the job, but this is not a tale that’s going to be shared at the Dog and Duck (or on social media, come to that). 

How about this? 

Hard-pressed council officials are struggling with a deluge of planning applications. 

That’s a bit better. There are people in the story now – the poor overworked Town Hall staff. 

Or you could try it this way: 

Home lovers eager to improve their houses are flooding their local council with planning applications. 

A bit tabloidy for some tastes maybe, but it would do pretty well as long as the rest of the story backs it up (i.e. the applications aren't all from commercial developers building on every spare plot). The point is that versions two and three put people at the heart of the story. 

If you want to make the most of the news you have to share with a journalist, you might want to do the same.  

Some ways to find the people in the story 

There are people at the heart of just about every possible piece of business news. You just have to spend a little time thinking about who they are. 

Has your company just achieved an industry accreditation whose name might not mean much to outsiders? If so, what does that success actually mean? That your workers are among the safest in the industry, perhaps. Or that they’re among the best trained or best looked after employees in the country.

Has your business increased turnover or won success with new products? Who are the customers driving that? What impulse is driving consumers to spend their hard-earned money on you? What do they love about the products they’re going crazy for? 

If you’ve landed a big new contract, what jobs will that create or support? If you’re opening a new factory, what difference does it make in the lives of your workers?  If your shop is moving sites, what will the shopper notice? 

You may be launching a new product, in which case you’re surely doing that in response to a customer need – so put that customer in the story. Maybe your software will take the terror out of tax return deadlines for small business owners, your warehouse will dispatch people’s parcels faster, or your app will ensure drivers never miss a bus or get a parking ticket again. 

It’s possible that your story might be about the people who founded or run the business. That’s fine – but if you go with that as the human angle, I think the story needs to be particularly compelling. If other people are going to enjoy reading about a stranger, that stranger needs to have strong opinions, unique insights, or to have expended blood, sweat and tears to make their company what it is today.  

Every story needs to reach people. People as parents, employees, residents of their local area, drivers, joggers, phone users, patients, TV watchers, football supporters, music lovers. 

If you can be a bit human, you're well on the way to getting noticed.