Every morning writers and producers are looking for stories to tell through their media outlet.  They wake up every day and the pressure is building . . . they have got to quickly find multiple stories that fit within their scope and pull them together quickly.

The press isn’t looking to tell your story . . . they have a story they are looking to tell . . . you need to become that story.

We had been talking about doing the “reverse offering” for 18 months but the timing never felt right.  Then in August 2011 the U.S. credit rating was down graded and that triggered us putting the plan into the action.

The story almost wrote itself . . . people were so frustrated with the government in it’s inability to solve the financial crisis . . . rather than looking to Government we were saying that people needed to look to God.  The press who were already covering the financial crisis picked up on the story because it was a newer angle on something they were already looking to talk about.

Your job as a media contact is to keep your pulse on what stories the media is covering and be constantly thinking about how you could retell your story to meet their needs.  Here are some of the ways I keep on top of this . . .

• Google News // I scan the top page(s) regularly to see what is coming up as the hot stories.  You can have it automagically filter the news pipeline for stories that are close to relevant to you by giving it some key words to constantly search.
• Search.Twitter.com // You can do custom searches on what the twitter-verse is saying on topics relevant to you.  If there is an uptick in your relevant search terms it might be time to get the word out!
• Muck Rack // A fantastic service that is new to me . . . an aggregator of what journalists are talking about on social channels. Worth having it delivered to your inbox.
• Peripheral Awareness // You have to hone your ability to be aware of what’s happening in the world around you. Be looking for interesting tangental connections to what you are doing and see if you could exploit those.

Is this selling out to the media machine?  Or simply just being aware of what’s happening in the culture?  How do you keep up on what’s happening in the world around you?