Just about everybody would like to see themselves or their business featured on NBC Nightly News, CNN, or the Bloomberg Network. But how do you get the attention of producers looking for new topics?

To give your business exposure with millions of TV news viewers, you have to think hard about the needs of the media outlets and how they choose businesses to spotlight. Keep in mind factors that are part of every producer’s mental checklist:

  • Newsworthiness: Does your pitch look like a breakthrough or radical departure from the status quo, one that my TV program can be first to highlight?
  • Star power:  Who are the well-known personalities I can interview or cite that will carry weight with my viewership?
  • Reality:  Will I have access to an actual user of the product or service? Can my TV crew follow that person, showing how they benefit?
  • Visual:  TV is a visual medium – what can you offer that will give me a great visual?  Without a good visual, even the best story won’t get covered.
  • Venue:  How much travel will my TV crew need to reach you? Will it be worth their while?
  • Action:  What is the implied take-away from my piece – what will people watching be able to do now or in the near future as a result of what they see in my program?
  • Facts:  What facts and statistics do you have to back up your notion that your story or business is newsworthy?

As one of the top pr companies in Seattle and Washington, D.C., we often help clients “sell” their story to a wide range of media outlets, TV included. Sometimes that includes saying “no” – not every initiative a business launches is ideal for TV. But that’s part of our job: Taking a close look at what our clients are doing, and then figuring out the best way to get them the exposure they can use to help grow their business.