6 Tips to Hook Your Audiences with a Holiday Tale

“How to make a story ‘newsworthy’ to journalists?” That is one of the most frequent questions PR pros wonder.

Then here is another popular question: “What if I don’t have anything ‘newsworthy’ happening within my company?”

Besides the typical “breaking news” you see on CNN, there are certain events and holidays happening over the course of the year that you can ride on to produce some cheerful stories around your company. From the generally known special days like Halloween to the more unique days like World Emoji Day, there are plenty of opportunities for free coverage with some well-written, creative and timely stories.

Tying in your company’s news with unique holidays or popular events can help your story gain more traction because people will be paying more attention to holiday-themed stories. The secret is to combine a timely topic/event with relevant and quality content. A company cannot simply release a story about the big sales it will have on Christmas day and expect journalists will be happy to do the free advertising. Instead, the company can try offering timely holiday tips, trendy topics around the event, or providing an engaging story about the holiday that might be more appealing to the journalist’s readers. Read on for more ideas:

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1. Find the holiday connection with your company’s service/products: When Valentine’s Day is around the corner, no one wants to be reminded of their single status. Fortunately, Real Office Centers was there to offer some tips for those who would like to ask their coworker out and say farewell to their status quo. Think about what advice you can offer that can help your audience out. It can even be a recipe for holiday pot-luck – see this great example from SC Johnson.

2. Think from your audience’s perspective: Develop a relevant story that can elicit the right emotion and inspire your audiences to act. What types of news will they be interested in reading around that specific holiday? What is the main element you need to highlight in your story to catch your audience attention? This news release on Cantonese Spring Festival, for example, features a Chinese New Year themed tour that allows local families to join the city’s cultural celebration and enjoy some unique family moments. Not only is the news story relevant to the audiences who might be looking for places to spend time with their family during the holiday, more importantly, it highlights the importance of family unity and togetherness, which resonates with audiences around this family-oriented holiday.

3. Give back: Everyone loves a feel-good story, especially when it’s around the holiday. While your company is putting a lot of time and effort into supporting a great cause, it’s also important to share your commitment so you can build more awareness around the charity work and your company’s vision. The American Chamber of Commerce inSingapore (AmCham), for example, embraces the iconic American holiday – Thanksgiving – with a fundraising golf tournament to support a local charity.

4. Offer a twist on the holiday: Providing a new spin on the typical seasonal stories may help set you apart from other holiday-themed stories. CropLife Asia, for example, spices up its holiday story with appreciation to farmers and also takes the opportunity to raise awareness to food security and sustainability. By providing provoking research data and tying the subject to the holiday, the organization offers journalists a new twist to write for their holiday feature and catch their viewers’ attention.

5. Share some expertise: Offering valuable research results and timely holiday trends can also make your story stand out from the crowd. CareerBuilder’s news story “1 in 5 Employees Determined to Land a New Job in the New Year, According to CareerBuilder Survey” is an excellent example of sharing interesting research and timely tips to audiences who plan to ring in the New Year with job search.

6. Top your holiday story with some sweet multimedia elements. Infographic, for example, is a great element to engage your audience and encourage social sharing.  See how World Design Capital utilized infographic in its news story “Five New Ways to Spend New Year’s in Taipei”.

To make things easier for you, we’ve created a PR calendar that lays out some of the major holidays, awareness days and events in the Asia Pacific region. Bookmark this calendar now and engage your global audiences with some creative content. Have fun!

For more storytelling tips, download our eBook 10 Tips to Leverage the Power of Storytelling to learn how to earn more media pickup and grab audience attention by using multimedia assets.

Eki Isabel Lau is the Marketing Executive for APAC (excluding China) at PR Newswire.