Can it be just me or does it appear to be there’s more breaking news than ever? In recent weeks we’ve seen numerous stories with everything which range from Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett passing away to Sarah Palin’s surprising resignation. So what goes on if there’s breaking news as you are able to touch upon? Do you merely sit by and hope someone will call you? No way! You take action. So how do you do this? Well, to start, it’s important to get into the conversation. Especially when it’s in your topic or within your area of expertise. When you can lend insight to a subject that’s being covered on television or hotly debated on your preferred cable talk show, then it might be worth getting yourself out there. Here certainly are a few tips to hook your story on the newest breaking news topic.
1) Blog onto it: if you have a weblog that has any type of a readership, and even if you don’t: make sure you blog on it. A weblog is a great place to generally share your opinion on the subject and even (when appropriate) provide a solution.
2) Bookmark your blog post. You can do this through sites like DIGG, Delicious, Stumbledupon, and Indian Pad. Bookmarking is just a method of adding links to your article and sharing it with the world. It’s a straightforward procedure for dealing with these sites, creating an account and listing your blog post. In general it will take about 10 min per post to set this up. Worth it because it will assist you to drive traffic and interest to your message.
3) Syndicate an article: after you’ve done the article, write an article (perhaps with a slightly different take or stance) and syndicate it through sites like goarticles.com or ezinearticles.com. If the topic has legs, it’s likely the media will undoubtedly be referring to it for weeks so having some content out there might be useful to your message and a way to manage to get thier attention.
4) Contact the local media: one of the greatest techniques for getting local media enthusiastic about you is to supply them a nearby angle on a national story. So let’s say we’re addressing the deaths of two major pop icons, and you have written a guide on historic figures. Would either of these two people be considered “historic” by itself? Well, that’s debatable and perhaps a good subject for a segment. newsone When does someone or something become historic and how do locals feel about this? There’s the local angle.
5) Contact national media : When you have a subject that’s drawing national attention and your message is significant or different enough to pitch to a national show then escape there and start pitching. Remember: with so many shows on the air all competing for audience attention they’re all buying new and different angle. The only thing they can say isn’t any and if you’re right for the topic and you’ve pitched effectively, you’re likely to obtain a yes.
6) Make sure you’re getting HARO (helpareporterout.com): HARO is just a newsletter that arrives as often as once or twice a day and it’s set with media leads. If there’s a hot story there would have been a media person on HARO looking for anyone to touch upon it.
7) Get Google Alerts: be sure you *always* have your keywords in Google alerts so you may be conscious of who’s saying what about your topic. Also, during non-breaking news times this is a great way to access know media that covers your story and start networking together so that after a breaking story hits, they know you.
8) Twitter onto it: While it’s hard sometimes to split up conversations on Twitter, there’s a great system to split up out topics with a hashtag (#) – it’s as simple as locating the big story and making a hashtag because of it, so for Farah Fawcett it might have been #farah. Begin a hashtag which helps to identify your story, or search the hashtags on Twitter to find out what hashtag your topic is being categorized under then start twittering on it. Direct folks to your blog, to other sites covering this, direct them to anything that may tie into this topic. The media is on Twitter and they only will dsicover you!
Breaking news doesn’t need to make you, your story or your book in the dust. Frequently authors tell me they see “experts” on TV and they feel they can do better. Well, now’s your chance. Next time a breaking news topic hits the airwaves, hop on it. You simply never know what could happen.