One of the most common things clients say to us is: “Nothing much has happened here lately, so I don’t think we’ve got anything for PR.”
They’re almost always wrong. Not because we’re running a business and need to keep the wheels turning. But because the best stories are often not what you think.
Some of the best PR stories aren’t big announcements, new contracts or shiny new products. They’re often sitting right under your nose.
The problem is that when you work in a business every day, the things that make it interesting stop feeling interesting to you.
Where to find PR stories in your business
That employee who’s been with you for 40 years? You just know her as Doris from accounts.
The apprentice who started with you at 16 and now runs a department? You’ve watched his career develop, so it doesn’t feel particularly remarkable.
The customer who has been buying from you since 1987? He’s just someone you’ve known forever.
To a journalist – and, more importantly, to their readers – those could all be stories.
So, when a client tells us there’s “nothing going on”, these are some of the places we start looking.
Your people can be great PR stories
People are nearly always more interesting than businesses and, at the end of the day, people like reading about people.
We want to know who’s working there and what their story is. Who has an unusual job? Who has overcome something? Who has achieved something brilliant? Who has been there the longest?
Sometimes the strongest story a company has isn’t about the company at all.
Customer stories create PR opportunities too
Your customers can provide fantastic stories too.
Perhaps you’ve helped someone solve an unusual problem, worked with the same family for generations or supplied something to a particularly interesting place.
A good customer story shows what your business does without having to tell everyone how wonderful you are. Let your customer do that for you.
Use business numbers for newsworthy stories
Numbers can turn something fairly ordinary into something newsworthy.
Your millionth product. A 200% increase in demand for something unexpected. Ten thousand customers. Fifty years in business. An unusual spike in enquiries.
And sometimes the smaller, quirkier numbers are even better.
Your best PR story could be something that happens every day
This is one of our favourites.
We’ll visit a client and they’ll casually mention something that makes us immediately stop them and say: “Hang on. What did you just say?”
Because they’ve been doing it for years, they assume everybody does it. But quite often, they don’t.
An outsider’s perspective is incredibly useful in PR. We’re interested in the things you’ve stopped noticing.
Use your industry expertise to create media opportunities
You don’t always need company news to get into the media.
If you’ve spent years working in your industry, you probably know things that other people don’t.
What’s changing? What are customers worried about? What mistakes do people make? What’s getting more expensive? What’s becoming more popular? What do you think is going to happen next?
When a subject hits the news, journalists need people who can explain it. Becoming one of those people can be just as valuable as securing coverage about the business itself.
Turn business milestones into PR
Anniversaries, promotions, expansions, new premises, significant appointments and major achievements can all provide a starting point.
But the milestone itself isn’t always the story.
“Company celebrates 25 years” probably won’t have a journalist falling off their chair.
What has changed in those 25 years? What did the business look like when it started? What did things cost? What has disappeared? What’s stayed exactly the same?
That’s where the story often is.
Not everything is a PR story – but you might have more than you think
This is the bit you can’t put neatly into a PR plan. The strange enquiry. The celebrity customer. The product ordered for an unusual reason. The employee with an extraordinary hobby. The coincidence nobody can quite believe.
They’re the stories that tend to begin with “You’ll never guess what happened…”
And, quite often, they’re the ones we get most excited about. Of course, not every interesting thing happening inside a business belongs in the media. Knowing what isn’t a story is just as important as recognising what is.
But next time you find yourself thinking, “We’ve got nothing to talk about”, have another look.
Because the skill in PR isn’t always creating a story.
Quite often, it’s recognising the one that’s already there.