It's All About The Back Story...

And here is all that but in reading words...

I was invited to take part in an "Ask The Expert" event recently, where business people could ask me about their options when contacting the media. What does a press release look like, how do I spin a story to a journalist, that sort of thing.

I love these events because the questions asked are never the questions that need asking. The question that often needs asking of small businesses attempting PR is "Why are you being so middle class?"

As a journalist I'm going to shut down if someone pitches a product, but if someone pitches themselves as a story I'll listen.

Hundreds of small businesses are being run by brilliant fascinating people who have lived a life, they're merchant bankers who are now plumbers, they're welders who are now photographers, they're people who've taken redundancy and retrained to follow their dreams, they are young people who have been so driven that they want to make their first billion by the time they are 30, they are returning mothers who find they have a god given baking skill.

They are brilliant and articulate and interesting and exciting...

Their product launch bores me to tears... but their back story delights me.

Please small businesses of Britain stop being shy about who you are and what you've done; it's not gauche or self-serving to hang the story of the business on you.

It makes complete financial sense.