Media article
Suitable for:
All types of organisations.
What is it?
Text that a person writes and submits to a publication interested in the topic.
Benefits:
If well written, the article could be published in a key title providing you with a lot of potential readers.
Journalists may ask you for more materials or be interested in organising an interview with someone from your organisation.
Limitations
- Journalists receive a lot of text every day. Therefore your article really needs to stand out in terms of quality to gain a journalist's attention.
What makes a well-written article?
- Write an article that you'd want to read.
- Target the publications carefully. Focus on the ones your stakeholders and target audience are most likely to read.
- Avoid advertising in your articles. Nobody wants to read an advertisement when they are expecting an informative article.
- Invest in a good writer:
- Check in-house resources. If you have someone who is very good at writing articles, use them. If not, consider appointing an external freelance journalist to write it for you.
- Writing a boring article or one that is too technical will defeat the purpose of the exercise.
- Include your contact information in your by-line.
Submitting the article for publication
- Send your article to your chosen publications.
- It could also be advantageous to select one key title and offer the article on an ‘exclusive’ basis. In a competitive market, many newspapers want to offer their readers something that no other publication can.
