1. Be fast. Get back to reporters within five or 10 minutes for proactive requests for comment.
2. Be gracious. Don’t complain about short deadlines—we are living in the world of the press, and if we want to be included, we have to play by their rules and realities.
3. Respond quickly. If you have an opinion about a story that happened this morning, tell your PR people within minutes. Once the story breaks, it will be over within the hour. You can get ahead of this by identifying the types of news stories on which you’d like to comment in advance, and even preparing broad points of view to fuel the PR engine.
4. Be compelling and unique. If your point of view is exactly the same as everyone else, it’s likely to get cut.
5. Be helpful. If a reporter comes to you for commentary and the request is either outside of your specific area of expertise or irrelevant for your business, don’t ignore it. Respond, if you can, or try and help them find another resource. They’ll remember the next time. I believe in karma.
As in life, PR lives in shades of gray, so there are exceptions to my black and white perspective. For example, I’m fairly certain that people such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Al Gore could easily book an in-person meeting about virtually anything (or nothing) with almost any relevant reporter of their choosing. We also secure in-person meetings for the top executives at our Fortune 500 and high-profile venture capital clients. Additionally, if you have a major launch and happen to be in the same city as the beat reporter who always covers your news, chances are fairly good that you could book a meeting.
For the rest of us though, there is reality. You have to accept the reality of who you are, and adjust your expectations accordingly. Just because I love singing in the car and my three-year-old thinks I’m good does not mean I’ll be the next Adele, no matter how badly I believe I deserve it.
Source: [PR Daily]