Summary

This podcast reveals how organisations can generate media coverage without spending a penny, featuring former TV journalist Kate Jones sharing insider tactics on turning announcements into newsworthy stories and becoming a sought-after case study. Drawing on two decades of newsroom experience, she explains why most press releases fail and how authentic engagement through social media comments can outperform traditional PR approaches.

 

Key Points

  • An announcement is not a story; to gain media coverage you must uncover the broader context, human impact, or urgent problem your news addresses [1:18] [1:33] [1:49] [2:17] [2:46] [2:55] [3:12].
  • PR coverage typically means being a case study within a larger story rather than securing a standalone article, so target outlets where your customers actually consume news [5:26] [5:43] [6:12] [7:02].
  • Journalists actively mine social media comments for case studies, making authentic, emotional responses to news stories one of the most effective ways to get noticed [7:25] [7:46] [8:07] [8:27] [9:05] [9:25] [11:01] [11:23].
  • Connect your business to ongoing news cycles by offering contrasting angles or human examples that make abstract topics relatable for audiences [14:40] [14:54] [15:32] [15:51] [16:20] [16:53].
  • Prepare three clear, jargon-free core messages before any interview and steer conversations toward them without answering every question directly [22:21] [22:51] [23:19] [23:50].

 

Transcipt

Trancsipts are auto-generated.

Kiran Kapur (00:01):
Hello and welcome. We are in the world of PR and specifically PR for organisations that don't have any money.

Kate Jones (00:07):
If you can really articulate the impact that this is having, how they are tearing their hair out, if you are someone that can speak to that and really drive home to the audience how hard it is, then the journalist is most likely to use your quotes in the story.

Kiran Kapur (00:23):
And I'm delighted to be joined by Kate Jones. Kate, it's fair to say, has seen PR from many angles, having spent two decades as a reporter and a producer for Australia's top rated TV news service. So you've had plenty of PR pitches, I suspect. And she now works as an executive media trainer and a consultant. And she has a huge interest in helping companies better connect with their audiences, which is something I think we all need to learn how to do. Kate, welcome. So you write extensively on LinkedIn and I've been following you for a while. And one of the things you wrote about was that an announcement is not a story. And I went back and had a look at some of the things that the college has sent out as press releases and not got any coverage and though, oh, that's where we went wrong.

(01:11):
So what's the difference between an announcement and a story and how do I make an announcement become a story?

Kate Jones (01:18):
It's a trap that so many companies fall into because everyone consumes news. They watch TV news or they read newspapers or read online and so they think, oh yeah, I know what a news story is. But what's more important is actually to think about what a news story is not. And that's what a lot of people don't do. Say they've got an announcement or they've made an appointment or they've got a product launch. They don't stop and think, have I seen the equivalent announcement or product launch on the nightly news in the newspaper? And the answer is invariably no, because although it's so important to them, it doesn't meet the criteria to be a news story because to be a news story, something has to be, well, firstly new, but it also has to be widely relevant to a broad audience. And if it's not, then to get it over the line, it has to at least have some element of quirkiness or something that's going to interest a lot of people.

(02:16):
It's a lot of boxes to tick. And so a lot of announcements, product launches, et cetera, that are so important to a business, they don't tick those boxes, but it doesn't mean that they can't be turned into a story if you just dig a lot deeper. So that's the difference between an announcement and a story is the story is the broader context around the announcement. So when I was teaching journalism last year, I used the example that students would come to me and say, "I want to do a story on these grants that a local council is making available for youth groups." And I go, "Okay, great. What's the story?" And they say, "Oh, well, there's these grants and they're available." And I coul say, "Well, that's lovely, but it's not the story. Why are the grants available? And is there some shortage of support available for teens that are in crisis?" And they'd go away and they'd come speak to people and they'd come back and go, "Yes, all these youth groups, they're unable to provide this programme or this programme because they don't have enough money.

(03:12):
And so these grants are going to help them do some of that." And so that's the story. The announcement might end up being one line in that story, but by digging deeper, they've actually found a way to turn that announcement into a story. And companies can do that as well. If they've got a new product, what's the problem that that product is solving? What sort of need in the market are they meeting with this product? And they might not get a whole story. In fact, they probably won't get a whole news story devoted to their product, but even if they get a few shots of it, a mention, et cetera, that's something that they can then leverage in their social media, et cetera, and away they go.

Kiran Kapur (03:52):
That's interesting. So there's so much to unpack in that. I want to come back to what actually news coverage means, because as you say, it can be a whole story or just a little bit. Before we do that, let's unpack the grant. So I would've thought in my ignorance that saying we have a grant that will meet this problem is a story, but is it not a sufficient story or was it the announcement was wrong because it just said we've got a grant?

Kate Jones (04:20):
It really depends on the outlet that you are targeting. So, local newspapers, for example, in small towns, they probably would run that as a story because there's not always a lot happening. But if you had something that was like that, that you wanted to get into a metropolitan newspaper or on a TV programme, then you do have to take it to that next level because it's not going to be relevant to the people that are outside of that local area. But if you can build on the idea on the need that's being met, often you can draw in statistics from somewhere else and all of a sudden, what seemed like just one line and that we've got these grants available, you can really flesh it out into a much bigger conversation.

Kiran Kapur (05:09):
Okay. Yes, I'm sort of understanding a bit more. So let's talk about what news coverage means or PR or media coverage means. So again, this isn't just I'm going to pitch a whole article and I'm going to get an entire article to myself in the Times, I take it.

Kate Jones (05:26):
No. And do you know what? Not everyone wants to be in The Times because while it might be prestigious, it depends where your customers are. If you run a chain of fish and chip shops in a particular city, then some of the people that read The Times are going to buy fish and chips from you. But most of the people that are your customers, they're probably more likely to read the local paper or watch local TV or listen to local radio or read local websites. So that's something that's actually worth thinking about as well is where do you actually want to get coverage? And by coverage, a lot of the time to be realistic, a lot of the time if you're a small business or even medium-sized business, you are going to get a mention as a case study. So often journalists are writing stories about something that is quite abstract.

(06:17):
So it might be a story about the unemployment rate or inflation has gone up again, et cetera, and it's numbers and people don't necessarily connect or relate to numbers. But if you are doing a story about inflation and you can get a small business owner who can show you, say for example, if you're a TV journalist, if you can get a small business owner who's running a cafe to show you a pantry full of goods that have all doubled in price and get them to say, "I'm having trouble keeping the lights on because I can't pass all these costs on to my customers," that concrete example is something people can relate to and therefore your business is getting mentioned in the media as part of a broader conversation. And so there's obviously going to be other people. They're probably going to speak to an economist, there might be a minister, those sorts of things as well.

(07:10):
But small businesses make fantastic case studies that you can anchor a story to, to make it relatable.

Kiran Kapur (07:17):
Okay. And now I'm starting to think maybe I want to be a case study and I'd like to be a case study in lots of places, please. How do I become a case study?

Kate Jones (07:25):
Okay, so that is a great question. And you know what? It is actually easier than it has been before because if we are taking that example of local media, if you are in a city where there might be a couple of TV stations, a couple of newspapers, some online websites, maybe a couple of radio stations, there's journalists that are working there. They're all probably local people or at least live locally and almost certainly they're all going to be on social media. So you can follow all of those people on social media, follow all of the outlets as well because they will all have social media pages as well. So many people now consume news, not via the television or the website. The TV clip itself is posted on Facebook or on Instagram and even YouTube is huge for that. That is where people will actually see it.

(08:16):
So if you go through and go, okay, well I see that this reporter and this reporter, they often do business stories or even this reporter often does consumer stories. Follow those reporters, follow their newsrooms, and then when you do have a story, you can slide into their DMs or you can even comment. Commenting is such an underrated way of reaching journalists and newsrooms because they're a gold mine for case studies as far as journalists are concerned. Every time something happens, especially if it's an emergency of some kind, journalists will mine the comments of their own social media, even other media outlets, social media pages, looking for someone who says, oh yes, I was a witness, I saw that happened or that happened to my brother-in-law. But also for a business story, it could be a story about inflation and you can comment and go, oh yes, inflation is terrible.

(09:13):
I'm a small business owner and my costs have gone up 200%, et cetera. If you're a journalist who's been told by their producer, oh, you really need a case study for that story, often it's the first place you go to look. And so then it's very easy to click on that person's icon, see what their business name is, give them a call and you're down there with a camera or you're ringing them over the phone to get some quotes. So you've got to put yourself out there. Of course, you can go down the traditional route of writing a press release. AI makes it really easy to write press releases. The problem is though, everyone now writes AI press releases and journalists hate them because they all sound the same and they miss the point. So that personal approach in a local media setting can actually be better.

Kiran Kapur (10:01):
There is a definite AI language, isn't there? I was reading some emails that we'd had into our inquiries box and you can tell people that have used AI, there's a definite language that comes with it. So I'm assuming that having a personality or being a real person or just sounding like you care makes a difference when you're approaching a journalist.

Kate Jones (10:20):
Oh, for sure. Because what journalists are looking for is that relatable aspect, but you also need to be saying something. And that's another reason why it's always best if you do want media coverage, know why you want it. So what do you actually want to say? Sometimes you do want to talk about your product launch or your announcement, et cetera, and that is a slightly different approach because that's when you probably would go to the point of sliding into the person's DMs or et cetera. But if you are looking to comment on and be part of a broader conversation, that's when that actually can be a good approach to get in the comments. But the thing that'll get your comment over the line and get you chosen as the case study is if you do really add to the conversation and just be really authentic.

(11:10):
You don't have to be outrageous with what you say, but it just has to be something that there's a bit of emotion. The whole point of a news story often is to make people think, feel, or do something. And so if you are someone that can really articulate, for example, if it's a cost of living or an inflation story, if you can really articulate the impact that this is having on small business owners, how they are tearing their hair out and just it's so much strain, if you are someone that can speak to that and really drive home to the audience how hard it is, then the journalist is most likely to use your quotes in the story.

Kiran Kapur (11:49):
That's really interesting. It's very interesting seeing how a journalist might put a story together. So how do you go about putting that together? Because that might help me work out where my PR should be.

Kate Jones (11:59):
Yeah, of course. So it depends. Different newsrooms operate in different ways, but a lot of the time the journalist is semi-autonomous. They'll be working with... A TV reporter is often working with a producer who stays in the office. The reporter is the one that goes out on the scene. Newspaper journalists, they will often be... Sometimes they're given an assignment by the chief of staff who's someone who's sort of overseeing everything that's going on in the newsroom, but other times they'll be coming up with their own stories. They might have sources that come to them with stories. And so essentially every story that is being told generally starts off with a what, so what is happening? Then there's a why. Why is it happening? And then there's a what next. So what is going to happen next? And all stories, it doesn't matter whether it's you gossiping with your neighbour or whether it's a story in the Times.

(12:58):
If you have a look at them, they pretty much all follow that structure because that's just naturally how humans tell stories. And so for example, the what might be inflation's going up. The why, you might have some economists telling you why, and then the what next, that's where you might get the small business owner who says, "If prices don't start coming down soon, I'm going to go out of business." Or they could be at the start of the story where they might say, "Businesses don't think they can handle it much longer as inflation rises yet again." So yeah, so journalists will generally want to have expert voices in their story, but they'll want grassroots voices as well. And that's where the case studies come in. And as I said, it's generally the small businesses who make the best case studies because they're the most relatable.

(13:51):
So you don't have any control over how much of your story ends up in the finished product. Sometimes people get disappointed because they might've spent half an hour with a journalist being interviewed and then filming lots of different angles of their business. Or if it's a newspaper, they might've had a photographer there, et cetera, and then they end up getting one photograph and one quote and they think, "Oh, is that all?" But that can be enough. That can be enough to establish some authority among the readers or among your customers that actually make you stand out and they might remember you.

Kiran Kapur (14:26):
So one of the things you say in your own LinkedIn profile is you can see angles and themes everywhere, and I'm sure with your experience you can. So could you give the rest of us a little bit of that fairy dust and say, "How do we find angles and themes?"

Kate Jones (14:40):
Yeah, it's an occupational hazard. I still do it. I haven't been reporting for a while, but I still see them all the time. But it's actually not too difficult in the sense that what you need to do is connect the dots. So you need to connect what your business does. So whether it is a problem that you're solving or a product that you have or even where you sit within the market, you need to be across the news cycle so that you can look for opportunities to be part of the conversation. So what I mean by that is, for example, let's say you're a construction company and you've just hired two apprentices, and then you see a story saying the national unemployment rate has gone up and it's particularly bad among young people. And so you go, "Well, actually, I've just hired two people." So that's where you can jump in, contact a journalist and say, "Hey, it'll take two minutes.

(15:41):
Hey, if you are covering the story about the unemployment rate today, I can offer you a positive spin on that because I've just actually hired two young apprentices." Because journalists with case studies, they don't always have to match the exact narrative of the story. Sometimes having the opposite is still fine because if you're a TV journalist, you could be doing that story, opening up with pictures of these two apprentices on site and say, "Fred and George have just started their work as a carpentry apprentice," and then buzzsaw sound, et cetera. But they're the lucky ones because nationally, youth unemployment has just hit 15%. So you can see how you can still be a case study if you are not following the exact line of the story, but that's going to be much more memorable and relatable to the people that are watching that at home.

(16:35):
And so you don't have to necessarily be reading every paper and listening to every radio bulletin every day. I mean, it helps, but even if you're in a business where trade press is really influential, you don't even have to do it yourself. You can easily get ChatGPT or similar to set it up and say, "Hey, every morning, look at all the news from my industry and give me the top five headlines." And that way it'll have that there for you every day and you've only just got to check them and see if there's anything that's worth commenting on. And so you just have to be a little bit creative like that and just look for opportunities. And you know what? A lot of the time they'll probably ignore you or they'll say, "No, sorry, don't need you." But then eventually they will. And there are always occasions in newsrooms where someone will say, "Hey, does anyone have a pharmacist that's willing to chat or does anyone have a bakery owner?" And that's where your colleague will go, "Oh yes, Jim's pharmacy.

(17:40):
He's great. He's always up for a chat." And so these sporadic appearances, they still go to building up authority among your customers, but also these days, AI authority is so important. And for every mention that you get in what is called earned media, which is essentially mainstream media, for every time that your business is mentioned there, it builds authority among the LLMs that your claws, your ChatGPTs, Geminis, which means that when people are searching about your industry in ChatGPT and it says, "Hey, who are the best builders in my area?" It's only going to throw up maybe three or four. Once upon a time you had a page of Google results, whereas now ChatGPT is just going to give you three or four and people are just going to go with those. So if you've been appearing in the media, they're more likely to think, "Yep, well, that company sounds like it's got authority and they may well mention you."

Kiran Kapur (18:41):
Yes. I think we're all finding that PR is becoming so much more important and so much more somewhere where we need to think. So bearing in mind, we're talking about businesses that haven't got any budget. How do you keep track of media coverage and how do you look at media sentiment?

Kate Jones (18:59):
Yeah, it's really tricky, especially when even for companies that do have big budgets, it can be hard to accurately track PR because it's not an exact science. With the traditional measurements, you can count your mentions, you can then estimate the reach of those publications, but it doesn't tell you how many people actually read the article and then how many people remembered your business name and formed a positive view about your business. So look, it can be a bit tricky at the best of times, but there are things that you can do. You can set up a Google alert for your business name. Now, it's not ideal if you've got a really generic business name or if yourself have got a generic name. Kate Jones, I wouldn't bother because there's a million of us out there and it would give me all sorts of false positives.

(19:49):
But if you actually are expecting some coverage to come, then yes, you could and you'd be more likely to get it. But there are other programmes that you can use that are free or at least have a free tier that will do a similar crawl of the internet looking for mentions of your business. But to be honest, sometimes with PR, in fact, all the time with PR, it really can be a long game that every time you are mentioned, you are building your reputation. And so that's not necessarily going to show up on a spreadsheet, but even when you're building AI visibility these days, it's not an exact science. Anyone that tells you that they are 100% across AI visibility, take that with a grain of salt because it's a mystery as to exactly how it works. Just when people think they've got it figured out, they're saying, okay, well, the LLMs seem to be citing Reddit a lot, and then all of a sudden you'll see something the next day that says, oh, Reddit citations have fallen off a cliff.

(20:50):
It's not citing Reddit anymore, it's citing LinkedIn. And so there's the broader themes remain true that mentions in third party authoritative locations are going to help you out. It's not the be-all and end-all. You can also get programmes that will monitor how you are showing up in socials, particularly forums like Reddit that are becoming very influential, both for LLMs, but also for humans.

(21:22):
Again, you can even do things like you can test, are you showing up in AI? I mean, yes, sometimes you can type the same question in five times and get five different answers, but you can check, you can think, what are my customers asking? What questions do I think customers would be asking that I would want my business to show up in the answer? And see if you are. If you're not, that's where you actually have to start trying to get doing a little bit of your DIY PR and see if you can get some of those mentions to see if it makes a difference.

Kiran Kapur (21:55):
That's really interesting. One last thing I wanted to finish off, and we've been talking a lot about when as a business I go out and I try to generate PR, but we all know that sometimes it doesn't work that way and you've had to know what to say and what not to say under pressure. So again, as a business owner, I may be concentrating on other things and suddenly something's gone wrong and I've got a journalist. How do I deal with that?

Kate Jones (22:21):
Yeah, so that's what I cover when I do executive media training, and obviously if you're a small business owner, you're not going to engage in executive media training probably, but the fundamentals still apply, and it does also go back to knowing what you want to say. That's your key message or your core message. So whenever anyone is doing an interview with a journalist, they should never go into it without an idea of the three is a good number, three key or core messages that they want to get across. And so that comes down to the what do you want to say? And what not to say is anything that is going to steer attention away from those messages. So you don't want to say anything controversial, obviously. Anything that you think would get you the coverage for the wrong reasons. You obviously want to steer clear of that.

(23:12):
Never bag a competitor. Usually not being critical of government is a good idea. If you are someone who is trying to advocate for a change of policy and you're critical of the government, that's fine, but be diplomatic about it because you are likely to have more authority with the viewers or the readers if they do think that you sound like you're a measured kind of person. But basically, it really comes down to having your core messages in mind, the three things that you want to get across and keeping some control of the interview. The journalist will have things that they want to ask, but interviews are not conversations. You're not obliged to answer every single question as it has been asked. You can acknowledge the question, but then you're perfectly welcome to steer it off into the direction that you want to go in. And if your message is engaging, if it's clear, concise, straight to the point, free of jargon, and if it's got a bit of emotion or just a bit of authenticity and heart in it, then there's a really good chance that that is the quote the journalist is going to use.

Kiran Kapur (24:18):
Kate Jones, that was an absolute masterclass. Thank you so much for explaining how to do no budget PR for organisations. Thank you very much indeed for your time.

Kate Jones (24:28):
Thank you for having me, and everyone get out there and get in the comments.