I recently had a chance to talk with Metro reporter Leyla Emory about the ups and downs of starting a new business. We talked about everything from financial pressure to straight up missing time with family due to over-working oneself. I was grateful for the opportunity to share our story with her. Leyla wrote a wonderful piece in the end. Check it out under our Media section.
Thanks for reading everyone
Timeliness-
This would seem to be an obvious value. You want to give your clients information appropriate to them at the time they read or see it. Timeliness isn’t usually enough to make something news worthy.
Depending on the news organization delivering the news, the frame of time in which the event or situation happened matters. A headline news channel is geared for reporting breaking news as it happens. A daily paper will usually report on events that happened within the last 24 hours.
Timeliness can be positive or negative. For instance due to BP spilling oil up the east coast of the U.S., that would not be a good time to launch your campaign about offering shares in your oil company. A professional communications specialist has to be able to be able to read the news landscape.
Human interest-
A story or new information that triggers people’s emotions would be human interest. A story about a number of animals in a shelter in city “X” having to be euthanized will hit home with potential clients. So if you have a good communications specialist, who can read the news landscape effectively, it would be a great time to campaign the need for animal adoptions for your shelter in city “Y”.
Human interest comes up all the time, so your communications strategy has to be able to take advantage of that.
Interest-
This is fairly straightforward, right? You want your story or information to appeal to a large amount of people. Maybe they learn some new and relevant facts about your company. Or maybe it is an ongoing story line that unfolds over a period of time with new facts emerging frequently about your work or product. This is a great opportunity to utilize your company’s social media tools, and if your company isn’t using them they should be.
Getting media attention can be a difficult task sometimes. Journalists are often inundated by piles of junky and useless story pitches. There are seven “news values” that add importance to your story. By ensuring your story has at least one of these values, you are giving your story a better chance of getting picked up. We’ll start today with the first four.
Prominence-
This means stories featuring public figures and well-known persons or institutions i.e. politicians, bishops, leaders, celebrities etc. People want to hear about what the powerful people are doing, especially when they mess up. A story with strong prominence is high up on the values scale because it attracts a lot of readers.
Unusualness-
New York Sun editor John B. Bogart said, “When a dog bites a man, that’s not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
Readers love the bizarre. Choose wisely though, trying to push something from ordinary to bizarre without good reason, will be quite obvious and leave your story in the recycling.
Proximity-
People are engaged with their communities and are usually part of more than just one. They care about where they live, work, go to school, where they go online etc. Having local angles for your story will make it easier for the people around you to relate. There is not a very good chance a newspaper in Nowhere, ON would cover an election in Nigeria, unless of course a member of their community was there helping to count the votes.
Impact-
We’re talking about strong emotional response here, something like the H1N1 outbreak would carry quite a bit of impact. It is something that has everyone talking. The HST is another example of impact carrying a news story. This is one of the easiest ones, in my opinion, to piggyback off of. The stories are always out there and it just takes a bit of imagination to tie into them. When you do, it usually works.
So when creating your angle, make sure you make the most of the news value you fit into. There will be occasions when a story fits more than one value and that’s great. But, always be sure to know what is making people read your articles.
When we were deciding on a name for our business we had list after list of potentials. As everyone knows, a name is important. It is your identity, your brand, and your message. You want it to reflect you and your persona.
We decided on KITSUNE (pronounced KIT-SOON for our purposes) for a few reasons. Let me explain to you what the word itself means. It is the Japanese word for fox and foxes are common in Japanese folklore. The word is often translated as fox spirit and they are thought to have superior intelligence and possess many powers. They are usually female in legend and take on human form.
In classical Japanese, the word has more of an attachment to the legends. Kitsu-ne means come and sleep and ki-tsune means always come. One legend from AD 545 tells of a man, Ono, who after searching for many years for his ideal female beauty finally meets her one evening on a vast moor. After the birth of their son, the family dog grows more aggressive towards the lady of the moors. Finally the dog attacks her and she turns back into a kitsune and leaves. Ono calls out to her that while she may be a fox she is the mother of his son and will always be welcome. The legend goes on with her returning every night as a woman and leaving every morning as a fox.
One of the interesting thoughts on these mystical creatures is they gain intelligence and wisdom as they age. That is kind of like people, no? As the kitsune gains more power and wisdom, they grow extra tails. The tails are seen as a symbol of their abilities. In legend, they grow up to nine tails.
After reading the legends, we felt kitsune was a powerful, mystical, intelligent, and, creative creature. Our new name paints us in the same light, which we feel honored and determined to live up to.
Networking is the backbone of any communications venture these days. I remember my professor in college asking us each about our extended networking plans. At the time I really didn’t think it was important, but I did it anyway.
Before starting KITSUNE, I stopped in to see this professor. I asked him why people weren’t getting jobs. He talked to me about the changing ways companies and the people in charge are looking at hiring now. You’ll never get a job by sending in resumes online, he explained. People want to see your face, get a feel for who you are.
From that meeting I went in to see a friend of his who runs a very large firm. At the time I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to learn from this meeting, but was excited to find out what I would. After leaving this man’s office I was immediately reminded of the importance of networking my professor had stressed in the past.
During the meeting I learned some tips and had some tricks of the trade shared with me. It all came back to networking though. I was put in touch with yet another professional who would later share her great knowledge and advice with me.
Now that I’m in business for myself, I call these people occasionally. Sometimes just to say hi and other times for guidance. These have been some of the most powerful networking experiences I’ve had to date. And they worked wonders for my business sense. Now, I ‘m the one who thinks everyone needs to have an extended networking plan.
When we started talking about starting our own business we were a little nervous. In this economy, risk taking can pretty much be the same as insanity.
My father is a self-professed ‘Job Guy’. I get that. I get the need to have a stable paycheck to rely on every month. However, as I pointed out to him last week, ‘Job Guys’ are always working for the risk taker. And behind every great organization, corporation, small or large business, there is a great risk taker.
So here we are.Take a look under ‘about’ for more on KITSUNE. And thank you for checking in on us, we invite you to read along with us as we take our next steps on our exciting journey.
Emilie Dugas and Will Hancock
KITSUNE Strategies
