Why story telling is so important in PR

We are really good at storytelling. Most of us have done it with our own kids, nephews and nieces, really successfully, and have landed impressive images with active minds.

Yet when it comes to writing content for PR purposes though we have an irrational habit of forgetting all that practice that we have had and diving into paragraphs of deep corporate strategy that no one except ourselves has any interest in.

So, in putting your PR messages together, fall back on your storytelling experience. Storytelling has the power to engage with an audience, and that is exactly what you are trying to do.

Think about those bedtimes, please go to sleep as I need my recovery glass of gin, success. They had a good guy, a bad guy, a problem and a good happy ending.

Use the same structure in your PR. Remember, you are trying to hook an audience, initially, the journalist who is going to write about you, and then the reader whom you are trying to entice into parting with their cash.

Think of the bad guy as the problem. The macabre side of us all is always on the hunt for bad news that we can blame someone else for. Then, the good guy as the solution, where we can feel warm that we are part of fixing the problem. Why it's so important, and how the happy ending comes into play.

Simply then, when you put your press release together, structure it as a story.

• What's the issue
• What's the solution
• How it works
• Why it's you that has fixed it.

Have at the front of your mind that your reader isn't really interested in you, but they are interested in the story you are telling and how they relate to it.