Catering to your audience is a writing necessity no matter when you sit down to compose written material. Anything from a letter to your grandparents, to inquiring about a job, means you need to step back and make sure you’ve formatted the writing for the receiver.

When pitching to the media we are told to “think like a journalist.” But, as non-journalists, what does that mean? There are several values media/journalists look for in a story. It’s the values that make a story good, worthwhile and intriguing. Here are eight of those values to consider:

1. Prominence – the people/person you discuss in your pitch to media need to be known to make it important. When neighbor Joe discusses Kanye West’s appearance at the Music Awards with impressive verbage nobody writes about it. But when President Obama does it…you get the idea.

2. Timeliness – if the story isn’t recent it isn’t news. TV in particular requires immediate reaction to stories. The media cares about a story that happened last month, or last week even, as much as they care about what you ate.  The only exception to timeliness is with important anniversary, something like September 11th.

3. Proximity – where was the event, and is the audience going to care? Whats the local impact? Not everything is going to be national news, and when pitching to local papers and stations you need to have a local swing to your story to make it interesting to the public.

4. Impact – how is the story going to effect the audience? Your story has to matter, if you wouldn’t walk away with a lasting impression from your story, chances are no one else will either. Think about how you want to effect the audience before writing, then use that angle.

5. Magnitude – sometimes stories have so much of an impact, everyone wants to know about them. Anytime you can have a story that big, you should obviously pitch it.

6. Conflict – nearly all stories are based off of some sort of conflict. Think of your pitch as a story board, define the problem and figure out how it is resolved, then share it. Every conflict makes a boring story more interesting.

7. Oddity – what makes your story unusual? The media gets a huge stack of press releases every day. What makes yours more interesting than the rest? What makes it different?

8. Emotional Impact – we’ve all heard the puppies, children and women antidote for advertising. Pitching stories is the same. Whenever you can swing kids, animals or senior citizens into your story, you’ve found your emotion.

(Photo procupine babies? nope, hedgehogs By Shade McVay)

There is no excuse to not follow current events. Choose the platform of your choice – radio, TV, news sites, blogs – and take a ½ hour everyday to fill yourself in.

Knowing what media is talking about is crucial to your businesses pitches. You should never run the risk of sending out a story that will be pushed under the radar. For example, it’s probably less than wise to pitch something the day of a State of the Union Address, or a few days after.

But it is a good idea to pitch a money saving venture when there is talk about the poor economy. Learning to time your business with what the rest of the country, or world, is talking about is crucial to success. Look for themes in the news; know what’s coming up and plan when the right time for your story is based on when it will be a benefit.

It’s also important to keep track of which journalists are talking about what. When pitching an idea you need to hone in on the right journalist, the one that you already know has an interest in your business and story because they already write about it.

Start logging journalists and following the work of the one you want to write about your pitch. They’ll appreciate you knowing what they’ve been talking about when you contact them. Even better, now that almost all news sources have commenting and sharing abilities, you have the opportunity for journalist to appreciate you before they know you have a great story for them. Start promoting their stories by commenting, posting their articles on Twitter and linking to them in your blog.

Finally, it should go without saying that current events are conversations. You can’t talk to someone in media if you don’t know what they’ve been talking about. Nor can you successfully attend social events without humiliation. So in case you don’t already have your favorite news source in your reader, it’s time to add it.

(Photo Paparazzi by elbelgasturiano)

Contests are a great way to promote your B2B brand. If you are willing to look around, contests of all genres and sizes are on the web, with typically little to no annoying requirements for entry. Entering contests is a great business venture. It gives you the opportunity to try your company out against competitors. You can see who your competition is and what they are doing. You’ll learn how to improve your product against competitors, and you will get pain free company promotion.

Winning a contest, or placing in one, make great bragging rights. Every customer wants to hear that their company of choice is the best, and these simple web entry contests can help you get that. Sometimes these contests will also give you the opportunity to include you customers by asking them to vote for you. It’s marketing, PR, branding and customer relationship building all rolled into one.  If nothing else, look for contest that provide financial incentive for the purpose of helping your company grow.

We recommend keeping track of contests, even if your company isn’t ready to enter them. Start a spreadsheet and spend a little time each week researching what contests are going on. Keep track of the information and sign up for emails, maybe next year your company will be ready for it.

Only enter contests that are relevant to your business, and be careful not to overdo it. Analyze the contests before entering them. You don’t need to be in every single one. Of course, as Mom and Dad always told you, if you don’t win its not the end of the world. Take losing as a business learning experience. Make improvements based on the companies you saw rank in the top, then come back and try again.

(Photo fly (relay race anchormen part 3) by Shenghung Lin)

Pick whatever PR or Marketing blogger you want and they will all say that companies will be getting more deeply involved in social media as a way to connect with customers.

The next thing they will say is that in order for any company or person to connect, they need to be genuine.  While everyone agrees with the statement, many have a different opinion as to what genuine means.

While most successful companies let you know that you’re reading a blog post from Scott or interacting on Facebook with Tony, there’s a key difference in how these companies set standards to communicate so that people feel like they’re connecting with the company and not just the specific person themselves.

Some good examples are Zappos and HubSpot.  Both companies have a great online presence and if you see the way they reach out on their own blogs, “TV” videos, tweets, and other forms of social media, they do very well at representing their companies while educating, interacting, and some times entertaining.  But here’s the part that really stands out; if Tony moved on from Zappos or Mike or Dharmesh moved on from HubSpot (Disclaimer: I haven’t met these people (yet) and I know nothing about their future career plans.), yes, I would probably follow their new blogs or interact with them wherever they went.  More importantly though, is that I would still continue to follow and interact with HubSpot and Zappos.

Some companies are mistaking being genuine for being too personal and while your community manager is doing a fantastic job connecting to prospects, customers and everyone else, those people are associating themselves to that one person and not your company.  That’s bad.  What happens when that person leaves your company?  How many people will continue to follow them and have absolutely no interest in your company once they leave?

The key point I’m trying to make is that getting into social media takes a strategy just like every other part of your marketing plan and while being genuine and helpful are critical, if the people you’re communicating with aren’t connecting with your company or brand, it doesn’t really matter.