Good news sells

The launch got me thinking what a great opportunity awards are and how lots of businesses, large and small, have used the ‘good news’ opportunity to great effect. Oxfordshire Business Awards 2010 was the best year yet with 450 people at the awards dinner in June on a night when England played Algeria in the World Cup....even I attended!!

I’ve often thought that most small and medium sized businesses fail to make the most of their own ‘good news’ stories, which is clearly a wasted opportunity. When I started my first business I often looked at the business pages in the local papers and wondered how some of the stories made it in to print and also why Stephen Dexter of Grant Thornton always featured twice a week (I was later told that GT sent at least three items a week).

Generating news releases is really straightforward and you don’t need to engage with a PR Agency, not initially anyway. At STL we’ve always tried to deliver good news in two directions – most importantly downstream to our customers/prospective customers and secondly upstream to our trade publications. Both are always slightly different variations of the same story, each with different objectives.

The end-user version should always be written articulating the benefits of your product or service and the trade version can be designed to increase your profile within your own industry. Trade profile helped us to sell a business for a premium price in 2004!

With any story the most important thing is to have an angle, a reason why the reader might be interested in what you have to say. This might be because you’ve received an accreditation, employed another member of staff or won an award - and don’t be afraid to be bold.

The accreditation could be written up as, ‘industry recognition of your excellence in a given area’ and employing someone might be, ‘growing the customer support team to manage increased demand’. Quotes are always good and a great tip here is to write the quote yourself and forward it for approval – this way the comment remains ‘on-message’ and you don’t wait weeks for it.

To my mind the best news releases are brief, they get to the point and they include what’s known in the trade as a ‘boiler plate’ which should include general information about your business. Take a look at the next news or press release you receive and you’ll easily be able to adapt the format for your own use.

It’s very easy to get the e-mail contact details for local TV, Radio and Newspapers. This is because they are constantly looking for news stories and often they’ll publish your work verbatim. It’s exciting when one organisation runs your ‘news’ and brilliant when a couple go with it.

I can’t think of a better news story than winning an award and this is because in PR terms it works equally well upstream and downstream. We’ve been trying to decide which two 2011 Oxfordshire Business Award categories to enter STL in this week and hopefully we’ll do better than runners-up this time….always the Bridesmaid!

There’s also the newly formed West Oxfordshire Business Awards where the category winners gain automatic entry in the Oxfordshire Business Awards. STL are one of the WOBA sponsors, so we’ll get another perspective and we’re all looking forward to a night of revelry at Eynsham Hall next year!

Paul Lowe and his OBA team have done a fantastic job in establishing the awards as the highlight of the Oxfordshire business calendar and last year Blenheim Palace won the ‘big one’ – Oxfordshire Business of the Year. This year Paul has persuaded Blenheim and John Hoy to join the sponsors – which is why we were enjoying lunch in the Orangery…masterstroke!

All the best, Brendon www.oxfordshirebusinessawards.co.uk www.woba.co.uk

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