Why is no one interested? - The challenges of earned media visibility
Getting the visibility you deserve may seem like an easy task, but in reality the battle for media space is a brutal game of ingenuity, timeliness and reputation. Also, many topics that seem important in their own bubble are often too uninteresting for journalists to publish in the big picture. Yet even trivial information can, with the right pieces and skilled hands, become front-page news.
Do you think your company needs media visibility? Perhaps a snappy business story for the Trade Journal to start with? Then, for example, a personal story about the owner in Hesari, followed by an editorial about the industry in Huomenta Suomei? So deserved, free visibility from every corner! Wouldn't that sound great?
Yet most of the time when approaching the media, you hear between the lines that no one is interested.
Most of the tips and factsheets are not published at all
When you work on a daily, weekly and yearly basis around a particular industry and actors, it is easy to lose sight of the general interest of the job. A new innovation, for example, may seem like a world-shaking upheaval in its own bubble - even though in the big picture - which the media usually try to objectively examine - it is ultimately just a storm in a glass of water.
In my career as a journalist, however, these microstorms became quite familiar. Although many belt-tighteners or press release senders had what they thought was at least worthy of an extra TV news bulletin, unfortunately the public interest often did not extend beyond the water glass.
That is why the news tip was not used and the bulletin was not published.
The media sector is a business of interest
For many people today, the concept of commercial media seems to be an obscure one. In a nutshell, it is a business of interest. When media create interesting content, they attract consumers to their media. When there are a lot of consumers, advertisers are also interested in the media product. And when the media has interesting content, consumers interested in the content and advertisers interested in the consumers, the media business is usually profitable. But if there is not enough interest in the media content, the media business is loss-making.
Of Finland's major media, the only exception to this pattern is the tax-funded Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (Yle). Nevertheless, YLE is nowadays very closely monitoring the interest of the media content it offers. Even in smaller media or media that focus on a particular industry, for example, the definition of interest is more broad than in Helsingin Sanomat, but even in these media, interest is ultimately everything. And if no one is really interested in a subject, the media will be even less interested in it.
You can make the uninteresting interesting
Successful media communication can attract consumers, and especially media representatives, to issues that do not arouse much interest in the first place. Often, you can find an interesting and new angle on something that is normally not very interesting, which can suddenly make it interesting.
The fact that you have an upholstery company is of little interest to anyone in the big picture. But if your company has just upholstered the restored armchairs in the renovated parliament building, that suddenly makes your company quite interesting.
The fact that your football team has acquired a new substitute is still quite uninteresting. But if that bench player has played with Chelsea and England star Joe Cole earlier in his career, the same player becomes interesting in a second.
The fact that you have an online service comparing shop prices is not news either. But if your online service reveals that electronics companies are raising their prices in November just to bring them down for Black Friday sales, you'll soon have morning TV programmes on different channels fighting over an interview with your online service representative.
Just being interesting is not always enough
The examples above are real-life stories of how background work, sharpening the news edge and honing media pitch turned what at first seemed uninteresting into interesting news. These examples also show how even small efforts to gain media visibility can quickly bring excellent results.
Even interest alone does not guarantee any news or a breakthrough. On a busy news day, many a storm on a larger glass of water goes unnoticed as the media is inundated by the raging waves of the ocean. And a journalist focused on sports news, for example, may not know or have time to gauge the overall interest of the business news he hears.
So it's good to know how to approach the media: what is the right time and way to contact them? Which media and which journalist would be the best contact in this particular case? And when is it a good idea to offer exclusivity, and when should you organise a press conference?
As a journalist who has worked in several different media, I can reveal that more often than not, it is who, how and when that tip is given that is more important than the news tip itself. Bland releases about trivial matters, sent out everywhere, as well as sleeve-snatchers who pester you with useless information at every moment, are often quite a nuisance for a busy journalist. That's why their message rarely interests anyone.
A reputable news tipster is instead a source of information, whose pre-thought-out story ideas are always of interest. Read more about our media relations services.
