Dominic Hiatt Blog

Monday 23rd April 2012

Tapping into the breaking news agenda should be high on your PR priorities.

As agents, you want all kinds of PR. You want the usual property porn stuff, namely pics and details of your best instructions in the editorial galleries of the national and local media.

You also want the local rag and the trades (this one being the best) to write up your new office, rebrand or cool new fleet of cars. You know the sort of thing.

But the type of PR I want to talk to you about today is the most effective way to generate publicity for your brand – and will expose you to far more eyeballs or eardrums than you get hidden away on page 9 of the weekly property supplement.

So what is this type of PR? It’s called the news.

In any one month, there are endless opportunities for you to show off your knowledge of the property market in the local media – and gain credibility for your brand as a result.

Last month, for example, there was the Government’s NewBuy scheme, there was the Budget stamp duty announcement, and there were the Land Registry, Halifax and Nationwide house price indices.

Each one of these was an opportunity for you to reach out to the news desk on your local paper, radio or TV station and give them your views. When doing this, you’re essentially tapping into the breaking news agenda. As all the media tarts in London know, it’s the secret to media success.

Best of all, your local media – online, broadcast or print – couldn’t give a damn about all those so-called property experts in the national media. They want their own local agents to give a local flavour on the big national stories. 

Oh, and the news or business journalists who will generally report the bigger stories front-of-paper aren’t going to check with those ‘parasites’ (as they term them) in advertising to see if they should be quoting you. They just want to speak to a relevant local expert asap who can give a local take on a national story.

So when the next big property story breaks, give the news desk on your local rag a call, or email the appropriate person at your local radio or TV station to give them your thoughts on what’s happened. Just make sure you do it as soon as possible after the story has broken.

Don’t underestimate how important this is. In the media, you see, there’s Mr or Mrs Right and there’s Mr or Mrs Right Now – the rentagob who gets his or her two-penneth in first and who the time-compressed hacks will almost certainly quote.

Make sure that Mr or Mrs Right Now is you.

* Dominic Hiatt runs Just In Time PR

www.justintimepr.com