This is the first in a series of two Comm-entary posts that will deal with unpaid media. Part I will provide background on the concept of Unpaid Media and Part II will provide some practical tips for how you can begin to use unpaid media to your advantage.

So, what is Unpaid Media?

Well it might be easiest get a grasp on Paid Media. Paid media is exactly what it sounds like – media coverage or attention that you pay for, such as radio, television or print advertisements with a goal in mind to reach a specific target audience with a message about your product or service. Unpaid media – on the other hand – has the same goal of reaching a specific target audience with a message about your product or service, but comes in the form of news or editorial coverage.

Now, I’m sure everyone out there is interested in how can I get this kind of publicity without paying for it? And I’m certainly not suggesting that you abandon your paid advertising – there is nothing but paid advertising that will allow you to share your messages exactly as you wish. But, you may want to consider supplementing your paid advertising with an unpaid media strategy and see how it works for you. It’s really not as hard as you think.

The Benefits of Unpaid Media

• It doesn’t cost anything but time and energy
• It can provide a higher level of exposure for your business than advertising – you can’t usually buy an ad on the front page of a newspaper or even the front page of the Business Section… and if you’ve priced TV advertising lately, you know why you’d rather get into the body of the news than pay for an ad spot during the newscast.
• It can position you or your business as an expert on a particular topic
• News coverage is a kind of third party analysis that can be an endorsement of your legitimacy as a provider of a particular product or service. The reader or viewer knows that you paid to put an ad there. Nobody is paying the station or paper to report on your news story. And with that comes credibility.

Drawbacks to Unpaid Media

• You can’t write the article, so the story won’t read exactly how you might have described things.
• It could turn out negative. (If you have something to hide, for example, and you’re not forthcoming, that could come back to haunt you.)
• Things can be taken out of context unless you take great care to ensure that the reporter knows exactly what you mean and how you mean it.
• If you can stomach a little imperfection, unpaid media can pay big dividends. If you require everything be perfect and exactly how you say it, steer clear of this strategy for now.

Taught in every Journalism 101 Class around the globe are the elements that make the news… well, the news. There are 5 main things that reporters are looking for when they choose to write a news story or pitch the idea to their editor to write it.

• Timeliness – is it relevant to what’s going on around you when it’s occurring? Six months ago, a story about a local gas station struggling to stay in business because of small profit margins would have been extremely timely because gas was trading at record highs. Today, with petroleum at half of that, that story would not be nearly as interesting to readership.
• Conflict (fight) – everybody loves a good fight, wars, Israel and Hamas
• Controversy – things like ongoing economic turmoil, is the market stable today? If not, why not, and how can we recover? These things aren’t direct conflicts, but they are controversial in the sense that they affect many people and businesses and affect the way decisions are made by the government, by individuals, by corporations. There are definitely two sides – and probably more to these stories. That is what makes a story controversial.
• Proximity – is it local? Does it have local appeal to the readers or viewers of a specific area? Weekly papers have built their business on this single news element. People love to see themselves and people they know in print, and because they cover a small area, you can open a weekly paper and almost every week, you know someone or are related to someone who is in the news. Many times the things that are news in a weekly wouldn’t cut it for a daily a newspaper.
• Unique/Bizarre – Things like dogs born with 2 heads, I heard one last week about a horse roaming the halls of a movie theater in Australia after it had escaped from a nearby farm. Those are bizarre, but this category also includes just unique stories – things like people overcoming great odds to get their lives back together. Think about the things you see on the last 2 minutes of the national news cast. They have just told you all the controversial, conflict-ridden terrible things going on in the world, but they leave you with a soft, heartwarming story about a dog that found its way home after escaping from the dog pound minutes before it was to be put down.

So that’s really all there is to determining what is newsworthy. To be relevant and to get coverage, your story has to include at least one of these elements, and many times, it could include several of these elements.

Keep in mind that you might have a great story with all the elements necessary, but there may be other things in the news that day that trump your story. And, folks, there’s just no getting around that. You just have to stay open and be looking for the next opportunity to make the news.