Guest article: Matt Baldwin, Coast Communications
The article has been commissioned. 600 words due a week Monday. The deadline is met but 1,200 words are given.
A journalist wants a couple of lines for a story they are writing. Again, the tight deadline is met, but instead of a few short paragraphs, over 500 words of technical explanation is provided.
Pretty much every PR pro will have found themselves here, irrespective of how well they’ve briefed the would-be contributor.
It is because a long article is easier to write than a short one. And nowhere more so than in professional services.
Lawyers and accountants deal with highly complex subject matter. It can be challenging to explain a detailed point of law in a few short sentences or explain the tax or reporting implications in 600 words.
The subject matter demands detail. Because it matters. Clients make big decisions on the advice professionals provide.
But here’s the rub.
When lawyers and accountants share their thoughts with the press they might see it as the same as providing advice to clients. The two are very different.
Professional services firms have a duty of care to their clients. Advice needs to cover everything, with caveats. It is professional caution, and rightly so. That duty of care simply does not exist with the media.
So how should we help busy professionals bridge that gap?
Here are three approaches.
One – Suck it up and make the edits. It’s easy to dismiss it as part of the process. The PR is given everything and then edits down into usable copy. It can be time-consuming, can leave both the busy professional and the PR frustrated, but you get there in the end.
Two – Dump it on the journalist. Here, the PR can let the journalist decide what to use in their story or make the edits needed for the commissioned article. It’s risky. Not all the expert’s comment will be used. The technical nuance may be lost, with the individual left believing they’ve been misquoted. An overly long article is likely to be simply thrown back at the PR.
Three – Let the PR take control. Here, the PR should ‘interview’ the expert, asking for the top three points so they can provide first drafts.
A good PR should be an accomplished writer, knowing instinctively what to include. Yes, there will be some toing and froing between the PR and expert, but it will save the expert’s (more valuable) time.
It is, of course, the expert’s job to know everything. Ours is to know what to leave out.
Matt Baldwin is the joint managing director of Coast, a media relations agency.