Five tips for getting your story in the Post

Amid all the changes in business journalism I’ve seen in my career, there’s one constant: People still want to tell their stories, pitch their products or promote their companies to business journalists.

At speaking engagements, such as moderating a recent panel at a Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce breakfast this month, the most often-asked question I get is, “How do I get in touch with you and/or your reporters?”

Here are five tips for approaching us:

1. Know whom you want to reach out to

The one thing about our industry, whether it’s online or in a newspaper, it’s that we’re pretty transparent. Any story you read, if it’s produced by a Palm Beach Post writer, will have a byline and contact information. You can always email me as well.

However, the trick is reaching to the right journalist. If your topic is astronomy, our business reporters are really not the ones you want to contact.

Invest the time to read the stories our reporters are writing and the blogs they are posting. Do that and you’ll get a good grasp of a reporter’s interest and the beats or trends he or she is focused on. Then try to make your pitch as relevant as possible to what they are covering.

2. Who’s your audience?

You’re pitching your news to us because you’re trying to get in front of our audience. We get that.

But in the social media age, we also want to get in front of your audience. So, tell us how many followers do you have on Twitter? How many friends/ fans do you have on Face-book? Are you on Snapchat? It’s not the reason we will, or not, report on your company; that’s really still decided by how newsworthy the pitch is. But it helps to know whether you have a sizable, meaningful social media audience — because that can be an indicator of how well your product or service is being received.

3. Local, local, local

Our staff ’s mission is to cover Palm Beach County business news. If your law firm is based in Orlando, or if you’ve hired 12 more employees to your Jacksonville warehouse, it’s unlikely to interest our readers. For our audience to be interested in a topic, and for our reporters to devote time to it, there must be a direct and definite Palm Beach County connection.

4. Newsmakers

Some of the best-read content we produce isn’t on the front page. A good example is our weekly Newsmakers section about people on the move in Palm Beach County businesses and civic groups. These listings run on the cover and second page of our Local Business section on Mondays. You can submit announcements to pbbusiness@pbpost.com.

5. Video

The way we present news continues to change, and you should embrace those changes along with us. Our digital news platforms, palmbeachpost.com and mypalmbeachpost.com, give us options and features far beyond what the pages of a newspaper can accommodate. One of those amenities is video. So if your business has “good visuals,” drop in a link to some B-roll video that we can attach to the story. It may make the online presentation all the more intriguing to readers, and keep them on the web page with your story longer. afins@pbpost.com