It’s National Storytelling Week and while the main idea of this special event is to promote storytelling and encourage writing in schools, for those of us working in the communications business, every day of every week is all about storytelling – it’s what we do.
Our PR team at 8848 is made up of former journalists, newspaper editors and those who have come up through the marketing route, learning the craft of editorial writing by working with professionals from the newspaper industry.
To achieve good editorial coverage and results for our clients, we ensure anything we produce – be it press releases, case studies or thought leadership feature articles – is written and constructed in the correct journalistic style. This way, if an editor receives a piece that they can simply drop into their magazine, whether for print or online, without having to edit or sub it down first, then they will be far more likely to use it. It also has to be of interest to the reader profile, so discussion with the editor beforehand is vital to getting a piece accepted for publication.
There are many rules in editorial writing and to begin with it needs to be factual, generic and unbiased. It can’t make any wild or unsubstantiated claims. So if a publication news desk receives editorial that is full of sales talk and is too commercial and over-promotional in its content, then it is likely to end up in the trash bin – and that can be physical or digital.
While the whole point of a PR programme is to promote our clients, their products, services and people, we can’t just prepare write ups on how good and great we think they are – even though of course we do! Our approach to promoting our clients through the press has to be much more subtle than that and our storytelling has to be cleverly crafted to be successful.
It is important to identify what the news angle is; for example when looking to promote a new product, then we would look closely at the technologies and or techniques used to create it, what it does and how it could help a client’s customer. This could be how it reduces their energy consumption and in turn costs, how it improves efficiency and keeps maintenance costs to a minimum. Reliability also is important and this could refer to avoiding equipment failure, resulting in downtime and loss of business and income.
A by-line thought leadership feature article would then be developed around these elements and positions the client as the expert in their field. Just think how impressive a double page editorial piece in a key publication or website, demonstrating your expertise and giving sound advice to your customers would be? Clever storytelling through the editorial route is a subtle, impactful and credible way of getting your message out there.
Need help with storytelling?
If you have a good story to tell, why not contact us and see how we can help you to get it out there?