Whenever I agree to represent a business, it must pass my "newsroom vet litmus test."
In other words, if I were writing for a newspaper or magazine and someone pitched the story to me, would I be genuinely interested in at least digging into story suggestions about this company?
In September, after a client, Robust Promotions of Villa Park, found me via my LinkedIn account, I knew in short order that the answer, in terms of its news potential, was a resounding "yes!"
So I was more than a little baffled by the media's luke-warm response to the firm's story, which teems with relevance and newsworthiness.
Over the past few years, Robust Promotions has helped nearly 100 restaurant chains boost sales via repeat business by creating innovative scratch-to-win cards.
Talk about a local small business making good--and playing a key role in helping numerous other businesses survive and even thrive amid these trying times. Fortunately, the Chicago Tribune's online user-generated adjunct website, Triblocal has emerged with a weekly print edition in 10 zones spanning 50 communities throughout the region.
This development has given more than a few of my releases a second bite at the media-coverage apple. This time around, the story got picked up. You can read about the piece on Triblocal's Villa Park community page. As of this writing, some 80 people have clicked on the story.
Or, if you are one of the roughly 13,000 Trib print edition subscribers in Elmhurst, Lombard or Villa Park, it's on page 5 of the March 19-25 Triblocal print edition.
Any Chicago-area business or group that is not factoring in the increasingly aggressive Triblocal into its media-outreach strategy, both online and in print, is squandering its external communications potential.
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