The hugely talented Mr Weatherley


Brian's B2B blog...

Welcome to my B2BMediaTraining blog – some small thoughts on life, the universe and dealing with the press from someone who crossed over from practitioner to teacher.  The following selection of short articles provides an off-beat (and unashamedly tongue-in-cheek) insight into the many different aspects of the media, along with hints and tips for better communication and an understanding into what gets journalists reaching for their pens, tablets or smartphones to cover your story...


Posts from the 'September 2021' archive...



Please hold caller....

How easy is it for a journalist to talk to you or your company…especially if they’ve never spoken to you before? Who in your organization is the best person to kick-start a conversation with the media and how far do they go out of their way to be accessible? Any journalist looking to get a quick heads-up on your business will inevitably go to your website as it’s by far the most convenient starting point.

Assuming they like what they see and want to find out more they’ll doubtless hit the ‘contact us’ button on your home page. And then what do they find? A direct landline number for your switchboard? A dedicated number and the name of the person for ‘media-enquiries’? Or an anonymous e-mail set-up with a box for enquiries and a ‘I am not a robot’ prompt to tick? Not exactly ‘user-friendly’. How long will it then take before someone bothers to reply―assuming the journalist in question hasn’t already lost interest and moved on?




Your website is the World’s window to your business, so why pull the blinds down and make it hard for any member of the Fourth Estate to interact with you? Of course, you may not like the idea of journalists ringing you up out of the blue. You may prefer to only talk to the media when it suits you. At least that way there’s a chance you’ll be in control when it comes to releasing information. If that’s your attitude good luck. Only don’t be surprised if a rival starts getting all the attention simply because they made themselves more available when the press came calling.

If you’re under the impression that the only time a journalist wants to call you is to ask awkward questions, you’re rather missing the point of press relationships. They could just as easily be calling to find out about a successful business deal, a new contract or project, or a recent major product launch. In short, they could be looking for some good news that could be read, heard, or seen by potential customers or indeed anyone else. Then again, they might want some ‘Thought Leadership’ from you on what’s happening in your market, the trends in your business, or the effect of forthcoming legislation on your industry. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be a Thought Leader if you’re hard to reach.

A journalist working to a tight deadline won’t warm to an organization whose default position on press enquiries is an answerphone message that constantly states: ‘The person you’re calling isn’t available right now, please leave a message and we’ll deal with it on our return…’ And then you don’t. If you think a chatbot could handle your press enquiries better, try it. It might work. But then again it probably won’t. Meanwhile, an organization or business that goes out of its way to be easily accessible to the media via as many routes as possible and responds quickly to press enquiries will stand a better chance of getting coverage than one that prefers to erect barriers to good communication. Which one are you?



Don't get bogged down in the detail

As a former business journalist, whenever I attended the launch of a new product and wanted to understand exactly how it worked, if I had the time, I invariably made a beeline for the engineer responsible for developing it. From a journalist’s perspective engineers and product specialists are extremely useful people to get to know, not least as they tend to deal in absolutes. If you want to know all about the features of a new wotnot, then engineers and product specialists can invariably give you the perfect insight into whatever the special thingamajig does and how it does it. Besides, engineers love telling you all about their new baby as it’s a rare chance for them to shine in front of the press. Normally, they’ve got their collective heads down in the lab or back room.

The downside of tapping into all that undeniable knowledge is that engineers can sometimes get so wrapped-up in explaining every tiny feature of their latest gizmo that they lose sight of what it ultimately-means to the end-user. In short, what it will do for a customer’s bottom-line and balance sheet. I call it the ‘Engineer Syndrome’. That’s not a criticism, it’s just that it’s possible to get so bound-up in the specification of something that you can easily forget the ‘specifics’―i.e., what it’s actually going to deliver to the buyer.




No matter the story, whether it’s sporting, political, industrial, or financial, it’s useless without the proper context, interpretation, or explanation to it. That’s why, when it comes to launching a new product or service you need to cut to the chase and tell a journalist why it’s so important to their audience and why they should be in a hurry to share your news with them.

That means delivering the bottom-line benefits of your new doohickey upfront before you start to explain in detail how it actually-works. Today’s media landscape is built around short, sharp messages, especially those that appear on digital and social media where increasingly it’s all about one-sentence news flashes, 30-second soundbites, and three-minute YouTube videos. So, you’ve got to deliver the punchline fast and not getting bogged down in an extended dialogue, otherwise, you’ll risk losing your audience.

But where does that leave all that background explanation, all those wonderful features, all that in-depth detail? Certainly not wasted. However, it’s more likely to be found in specialist hard-copy publications prepared to devote sufficient space to all that detail, or in an explanatory PDF document sitting in a well-signposted area within a website for consumption by those who have the time and above-all-else the inclination to read it. Don’t assume everyone is a techie anorak dying to learn the secrets of your hoojamaflip and has the time to do so.

And take-away message of this blog is? Whenever you’re talking to the media remember their time is short. The number one thing is to get the benefits of your new widget over first and fast, before the features. And if a journalist wants to find out more, well the engineer can always tell them…