Back in my days as B2B journalist, I was once told by someone I was interviewing for a feature that I should be doing my bit to boost the market.
They wanted me to write a positive piece about their area of the market. It’s the sort of comment that would have me rolling my eyes.
Why? Because putting a positive spin on the market wasn’t my job as a B2B journalist. I’d be doing a disservice to the readers of the magazine if I didn’t set out what was happening in the market – good, bad or otherwise.
Misconceptions about a journalists roles are common and those sort of requests not unusual.
My response was always the same, I would politely talk about maintaining the integrity of the publication by presenting an accurate view of the market. And they would always agree that that was an important thing to do.
It didn’t always stop them trying the same tactic to steer the editorial in a direction favourable to them another time. Sadly.
Tiresome tactic
But this tactic never worked, it was tiresome and didn’t serve longer-term relationship building.
A B2B journalists job isn’t to do your marketing for you. A feature or news story isn’t an advertorial, it’s not a brochure.
What a journalist is trying to do is find out useful and interesting information for their readers.
Continue reading “How not to annoy B2B journalists and get more press coverage”
Having been a B2B journalist and editor for 20 years I often get asked for the inside track on life as a journalist, what ‘we’ are looking for and how to get quoted.