Much of what goes into news coverage is popularity and relevance. The media covers what people want to hear about and what is popular at the time, whether it’s pop culture, sports, or crazy weather. The topic of popularity appropriately leads us into the third blog post of the “When to Do Media Relations” series: do media relations when something is trending.
What does it mean if something is trending? You probably know by now. If a subject is trending, it is currently among the most popular topics of the area to which it is trending. A good way to activate media coverage is to prioritize pitching during the time when what you’re pitching is trending or is related to trending news stories.
Media surrounding the election floods, and has flooded, our newsfeeds and media outlets. Some companies (completely unrelated to politics) jumped on the political posting bandwagon and earned some attention for doing so. After the Washington Post leaked the video of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, Tic Tac tweeted an opinion on the matter.
Tic Tac respects all women. We find the recent statements and behavior completely inappropriate and unacceptable.
— Tic Tac (@tictac) October 10, 2016
Then, people started talking about Tic Tac. In fact, a lot of people did, including Buzzfeed, Adweek, and Cosmopolitan, to name just a few. From less than 140 characters, Tic Tac had sold itself to handfuls of big-name media outlets and gained almost instant media coverage (and lots of it). The driving point to take from this example is that Tic Tac saw what was trending in the rest of the world and did something about it. Tic Tac is not a company that has an immediate stake in the presidential election. They are not a politically charged company (until now, at least). However, none of these facts stopped them from attaining media coverage by following trending news stories.