20th Jul 2015 by Shannon Peerless

10 Yetis Insight Blog: 7 Ways to Piggy-Back off a Breaking News Story

When working in public relations, it’s important to keep up to date with the latest news stories. Relevant breaking news presents a great opportunity to generate coverage for your clients by piggy-backing off the news story by adding comments or related news. Often, if successful, your story can get tied to the original and be carried right through all the spin as a result. Because of this, it’s the dream of every online and SEO PR agency as it is a perfect example of PR for link building, as well as gaining traditional coverage.

It’s busy territory, though, as almost every PR agency up and down the country fights to get their statements and reactions to the journalists before everyone else. It is a tough, dog-eat-dog world out there but, by considering the following tips, you will have a good chance of generating coverage for your brands from piggy-backing off a news story.

1.Stay On The Ball

This may seem a bit of an obvious one, but it’s probably the most important place to start. You really do have to stay up to date with the latest news to ensure you can get your statement or reactive news out as soon as possible. Being realistic, you need to be able to react to the news within an hour at the very latest to have a realistic chance of getting your client covered.

There are a number of ways to ensure you are always up to date. Having the news on in the office is always something I would recommend – we’ve constantly got a news channel on here in the Yeti office. I’d also recommend setting up news alerts on your smartphone so that you get any breaking news through immediately.

Social media is also a great way to keep up to date, with Facebook and Twitter posts often breaking the news sooner than media outlets. Make sure you identify social media influencers in the relevant fields, so you can see influential discussions and topics as they arise.

2. Reactive Statement

Reactive statements are a really easy and quick way to get your client’s opinions out there, with the intention of getting them included in future articles written on the subject. With some news, journalists are actively seeking additional context and insights from related bodies, particularly if they really want to string the story out or pad it out a little more. These statements can just be a couple of paragraphs of comment or something a bit more substantial, including stats, research data or site search statistics. The important thing is that make it worthwhile; don’t repeat what everyone else is saying, try to put out a controversial or somehow different statement that will give the reader a new take or some new information.

3. #Journorequest

I’ve mentioned above about the importance of keeping a keen eye on social media in order to react quickly to any potential breaking news. It’s important to have a social media strategy in order to ensure you are able to react to the news as quickly as possible.

#Journorequest is a really great way to do this. Journalists are always looking for comments, someone to interview or statistics to accompany their stories, and the hashtag #Journorequest can be central in finding these as soon as the journos sit down to write.

A quick search of #Journorequest on Twitter will bring up a load of requests that you can easily react to by firing back 140 characters to let the journo in question know you have something to contribute.

4. Stay Social

It’s important to stay on the ball with your social media and to have a dedicated social strategy to ensure you react as quickly as possible to news. It is great to be able to interact with journalists and get your client’s name out there and the up-to-speed nature of Twitter is the ideal environment for fast-paced PR. We have an in-house social media agency, who we work closely with to ensure that we can stay up to date with things breaking or trending on social networks, which really helps us ensure we can piggy back on any potential news stories.

5. Response Source

In a similar style to the #journorequest, Response Source is a fantastic way to keep up to date with any journalist requests. I think this is definitely a more sure-fire way to find a journalist who needs what you can provide as a lot of journalists from big publications use response source. It’s a really simple service to use and is really great to have quick access to what a journalist wants. Response Source is a great service which connects journalists and PRs, getting straight to the point. Best bit? The service is all free. Journalists or bloggers fill in a form on the Response Source website, which is sent via email to all of the PR subscribers. All us PRs need to do is go back to them with details of what we can help them with. Within a few clicks you are centre-stage to pitch with a journalist, knowing full well what they want – easy!

6. Influencer Outreach

A great way to jump on the back of a news story is to identify potential social media influencers and to target your content to them. Influencers do exactly what they say on the tin, influence others. Getting them on your side can be extremely beneficial for your brand, especially when it comes to jumping on to breaking news and linking your own client to it.

7. Get on the Phones

Emails are great, and are often journalists’ preferred way of contact, but if you’re reacting to breaking news and want to get your client noticed quickly, picking up the phone really is the best option. It’s the only way that you can reach a journalist directly in a matter of seconds. It’s then down to you to sell your client to the journalist and make sure they see the link right away.

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