How to get coverage for your Manchester commercial property scheme

Gaining media coverage for your Manchester-based commercial property scheme is a key way to get your scheme noticed on a huge scale.

Achieving that big hit, however, is more difficult than it seems.

The Manchester Evening News receives 2,000+ emails to their main news desk each morning. In order to get your commercial property scheme good PR, you need to stand out from the crowd and begin building relationships with credible journalists. This blog is going to give you some handy pointers on how best to do this.

Email

Newsrooms are shrinking everywhere and PR has more power than ever before. After all, journalists rely on good content to fill their pages. Making sure you develop strong connections with journalists will ensure your Manchester commercial property scheme gets the coverage it deserves.

Journalists are under increasing pressure and work to incredibly tight deadlines, so keeping things short and simple is vital. Make sure you:

• Send your news release to the right person. It’s much more effective to have a named contact at a publication rather than just sending releases to the general news desk. Connections are key
• Keep the subject line short & sweet. Make sure you actually summarise what the news release is about straight away so the journalists know if it’s of interest without having to open the email

The Telephone

Follow up your release with a phone call – this shows your interest in the publication and helps you build up trust with the journalist in question.

If you remain in touch with journalists throughout the press release to publication cycle, and feed through any information that will help with their story, you will find that journalists will inevitably come to you for news on your Manchester commercial property scheme. This will help increase your scheme’s exposure across the city.

The length

KISS the journalists – Keep It Short & Simple.

Write your press release to the length the journalist requires, and send it as both an attachment and in the body copy to ensure ease of access for the journalist.

Including a note to editors with some background is also more likely to get your Manchester commercial property scheme coverage as it will provide useful information that would be out of place in the press release itself.

Photos and videos

If you’re sending a press release to a journalist without a photo, you can guarantee it’s not going to get published anywhere. Similarly, as publications are increasingly moving online, video content is a HUGE benefit to a story and will put yours on the top of any journalist’s list.

A video can be anything from an interview with the developers to a first-look on site. Always ask yourself if there’s a possibility of getting video content for your story, and if there is, go get it. The journalist will thank you for it, and they’ll certainly remember you.

Manners

Manners cost nothing. If your Manchester commercial property scheme press release is published, make sure you say thank you. This is a great way to build a relationship between yourself and journalists and they’ll remember the people who actually thanked them for their efforts.

And that’s it!

Are you feeling ready to sell in your story?

If you need help with your own commercial property scheme media efforts or would like to discuss other PR and marketing activities, get in touch with us at Roland Dransfield and we’ll be able to help you out.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to stay up-to-date on all things media, marketing and PR.