Monday, June 14  

Finding an angle

Finding the right news angle to run with

Hello. Hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

Sales of my Web Design Business Kit are going well and the publisher wants to really push sales prior to the end of the financial year here in Australia (the financial year ends on June 30).

We're putting together the media info to send out to drum up some interest and interviews. I'm sitting here today trying to come up with an angle.

Here's a very basic process for putting together a media strategy:

1. It has to be newsworthy.

By newsworthy, I mean it has to interest people. It might do that by being unusual, different, controversial, inspiring, amazing, etc.

2. It has to interest the market the media will reach.

No good sending out a release that is hugely controversial to a newsletter for Senior Citizens. It won't get a run. (I really do have to come up with better examples!).

We've had a great example of how well controversy works here in Australia on the 'Big Brother' reality TV show.

In the last episode one of the contestants was evicted. He was a fairly insipid character that no-one watching the show really liked. My kids watch the evictions and usually change the channel or turn it off once they know who was evicted.

Which was going to be the case this time. Except for this. This evicted guy got up on stage and made a political protest by holding up a sign saying "Free the refugees" and taping his mouth shut and refusing to speak with the host.

(He was protesting Australia's policy of detaining illegal immigrants until they are verified as genuine refugees.)

Anyway, the controversy erupted. The show has been inundated, TV news shows have been running the stories, as have the major papers.

This boring little guy has created a media storm with a simple and controversial act. Easy! The TV show producers would be loving him.

I would go with controversial for my kit media, but I just can't think of anything!

Cheers

Brendon