Reporters and editors face a 24-hour news cycle. They are constantly, urgently, in need of quotes, quirky anecdotes, data. Yet, many marketers struggle to make it into the story.
Why is that?
According to David Meerman Scott, author of Real-Time Marketing & PR and Newsjacking, it’s because many marketers are not taking advantage of the second paragraph. The press is constantly looking for a unique angle to insert into breaking news coverage. With the right amount of quick thinking and creativity, marketers can create angles that the media will jump on. It’s part of David’s continued admonishment to market “right now.”
David shares how to make this happen below and will offer even more advice on marketing in real time as the keynote speaker at Eloqua Experience Europe. Check it out.
David Meerman Scott: Just an example I like to share is a couple of months ago, Sir Richard Branson’s house on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands caught on fire and Kate Winslet and Sir Richard Branson’s mother were in the house.
And the fire is raging, everybody’s got this story because it became such a big story and the media started writing about it.
Everyone had access to the basic story. Everyone had access to the pictures as this broke.
And when I went to Google News as this was breaking, everybody was showing essentially the same thing.
So, the question becomes: If you’re a reporter how do you get something else in the story that’s beyond the who, what, when, where, why, how that everybody else already has.
And that’s where the second paragraph comes in. Because anybody (you, me, anybody) has access to be able to create content that people will then find and journalists will find, because they’re searching on the story, that then can be fodder for the second or the third paragraph’s additional information in the story.
So, in the case of this example, the London Fire Brigade, believe it or not, just a couple of hours after this story broke, wrote a blog post on their website; and put it on their website.
And it said that Kate Winslet was now offered firefighter training. Kate Winslet actually saved Sir Richard Branson’s mother from this burning inferno, carried her to safety, there’s this great feel-good story.
And then the newsjacking happened. The second paragraph idea happened because the London Fire Brigade said Kate Winslet is offered firefighter training.
Here are the four things she’s gonna learn. She’s gonna learn how to use smoke alarms. She’s gonna learn how to use fire extinguishers, and whatnot.
So then that became the second paragraph.
And hundreds and hundreds of mainstream media outlets ended up putting the London Fire Brigade stuff into their story about this fire on Richard Branson’s house in Necker Island.
And anyone can do that. It doesn’t matter whether it’s B2B. It doesn’t matter whether it’s B2C. Anybody can take advantage of this opportunity.
