By Adam Rahim, Shermaine Loo and Tiara Chew
At Hoffman Singapore, our clients rely on us for the best counsel on how to engage with the media and to better manage their reputations. While every organisation would love to make the front page, its content must be newsworthy. Beyond that, it also has to cut through the clutter and distinguish itself from the barrage of emails every journalist receives.
In reality, the success rates of our efforts don’t always match the regularity of our outreach — on a few occasions we’ve even found our pitches being passed over, or worse … ignored. To rectify this problem, we invited the editorial team from AsiaOne to our humble Singapore office for a lunch bucket sharing session to learn more on the subject. Apart from indulging in everyone’s favourite Italian treat (i.e., pizza, of course), we got a glimpse of the thought processes behind its recent website revamp and picked up some nifty tips on how we can better grab a slice of journalists’ attention.
Before we begin, who IS AsiaOne?
AsiaOne is a complimentary news and lifestyle content portal that aggregates content from all Singapore Press Holdings newspapers, magazines and online platforms, as well as external content partners. Think of them as a Yahoo-styled site that was born and bread (heh) in sunny Singapore. Editorial and digital leads run this dynamic team that collectively boasts more than 30 years of experience with the publication.
A Few Takeaways from Our Session
- Content is key. Publications often keep an eye out for varying types of content, so tailoring our pitches to different media outlets will up our chances for scoring coverage.
- How and when to reach out. Most publications have a news cycle and particular window in which their editors and journalists are most receptive to receiving and reading pitches. If you reach them too late in the day, you can miss your opportunity. And worse — if you catch them too early before they’ve had their necessary dose of caffeine, who knows what can happen?
- AsiaOne has a foothold in the industry and delivers relevant news. With its target audience becoming increasingly tech-savvy, it’s necessary to integrate the traditional news portal with social media engagements via platforms like Facebook and Instagram. An ideal story traverses across all platforms.
- News outlets like AsiaOne depend on a variety of sources for their output. If a pitch isn’t suited for a particular section, it may very well be repurposed into a video, an infographic or a social media post to better engage followers.
And with that, our sharing of their sharing is done; we hope our takeaways are as extensive as the delicious spread we had that day.
