What makes a Digital PR campaign newsworthy?

Coming up with a Digital PR idea is relatively easy, but coming up with a Digital PR idea that a journalist might actually want to write about is much harder.

There's a big difference between "this would be interesting to our customers" and "this is a story a journalist could use."

Businesses naturally think internally when PR comes up. What the business is doing, what awards they've won. But that isn't really the point of digital PR. The point is to position yourself as an expert, a knowledgeable, trusted voice. When developing a campaign, it's finding that balance between relevance and wider interest that brings out the best ideas.

Newsworthy doesn't necessarily mean exciting

A campaign doesn't need to involve celebrities, breaking news or a £10,000 prize to be newsworthy.

Sometimes the most effective ideas are surprisingly ordinary:

• A supermarket price comparison.

• A survey about people's habits.

• An analysis of search behaviour.

• A look at how much something costs in different parts of the UK.

The subject itself might be mundane, the finding is what makes it interesting.

For example, "How much does Halloween cost?" isn't particularly compelling.

But if research finds that putting together a Halloween party could add more than 50% to the average weekly grocery shop, you've suddenly got a much clearer story.

So what makes an idea newsworthy?

There isn't a magic formula, but there are several characteristics that repeatedly make a campaign more useful to journalists.

1. There's a clear story

A journalist shouldn't have to dig through your campaign to work out what the point is.

If the headline finding can be explained in one sentence, that's usually a good start.

"Households in X spend 30% more on..."

"Y is the UK's most searched-for..."

"One in three people say..."

The more clearly you can identify the story, the easier it becomes to pitch.

2. It's relevant

Even a genuinely interesting statistic can struggle if nobody cares about it, that's why timing matters.

Christmas shopping, university applications, summer holidays, Halloween, the school holidays and major sporting events all create natural opportunities for relevant campaigns.

But relevance doesn't always mean reacting to something happening today, it can also mean identifying something people are already thinking about.

A campaign about the cost of a particular activity becomes more interesting when people are actively planning that activity.

3. There's something journalists can actually use

A journalist doesn't necessarily need a huge academic study. A relatively simple piece of research can produce a useful statistic, ranking or comparison.

The important thing is that the methodology is credible and transparent.

Where did the data come from?

How was it collected?

What was included?

What wasn't included?

Can someone reasonably understand how you reached the conclusion?

4. It has an audience beyond the business

One of the easiest ways to weaken a PR campaign is to make it entirely about the company commissioning it.

"Our company has launched a new service."

"Our company has surveyed 100 customers."

"Our company thinks people should..."

These things can have their place, particularly in trade or local media, but Digital PR often works better when the business is providing something useful or interesting to a wider audience. Meaning that the business becomes the source of the research rather than the entire story.

5. There's a reason to publish it now

This is probably the question I ask most often when looking at an idea:

Why would a journalist want this today?

A good campaign can have an obvious answer.

Maybe it's seasonal.

Maybe there's a major event coming up.

Maybe consumer behaviour has changed.

Maybe new research has been published.

Maybe there's a current conversation that the campaign adds something to.

If the answer is simply "because we've made it", the idea probably needs another look.

What happens when a good idea isn't actually newsworthy?

Sometimes a campaign looks great on paper but doesn't have enough of a story.

That doesn't necessarily mean the entire idea has to be abandoned.

You might be able to:

• change the audience

• find a stronger data source

• add a geographical comparison

• introduce a timely angle

• look at the subject from a different perspective

• or simply find a better question to answer

Finding out that an idea isn't strong enough before you've spent weeks producing it is a useful result.

Start with the story, not the press release

One of the biggest mistakes in Digital PR is starting with the business and working backwards.

"What can we say about our company?"

Instead, start with the audience.

What would people actually find interesting?

Then ask:

What could we research, analyse or demonstrate to give journalists something useful to report?

Only after that should you worry about the press release. And if there's no story underneath it, no amount of carefully worded outreach is going to magically create one.

That's why I prefer to spend time on the idea and methodology before worrying about the pitch.

A good Digital PR campaign doesn't start with "Who can we email?" It starts with:

"What's the story?"