How to ensure media deadlines aren’t making you break into a sweat.

Are you frustrated by how long it takes to get a media response back to a journalist?

Trust me, you are not alone. 

Sometimes, it feels like no matter how quickly you work on putting a response together, it’s almost impossible to get it back to them in time.

From the outside, this can look like laziness on the part of the comms team and lead to poor relationships with journalists and unfavourable coverage. But we know it’s rarely the case. 

Being able to gather the information you need to collate a response or prep for an interview can take time and effort. On top of that, once you’ve got everything together, it can be hard to pin down the people who need to approve the response. 

So, what can you do to make this process swifter? Often, it feels like this is out of your hands, but there are steps you can take to make things run more smoothly. Here are some ideas to get you going:

Don’t start from scratch every time. Get familiar with the issues that crop up regularly for your organisation, and make sure you have a solid set of key messages and Q&As ready to go. 

This should be something that you review regularly to ensure these documents remain up to date. 

Upskill your organisation so they understand how the media works. It can be frustrating to have approvers question whether a journalist needs a response or ask how hard their deadline is. 

Meet with the key people you work with on media responses when you don’t have something pressing on the go. This is an excellent opportunity to talk them through how journalists work and why it’s usually in your best interests to respond to them quickly. 

Make your approval processes simple and ensure all approvers are familiar with them. Everyone who is involved in an approval process should know what their role is. You should also seek to have a minimum number of people who need to tick a response off. 

Again, getting key people across this process is a good idea before you have your next urgent query on your hands. 

Think about curveballs that regularly come up and try to prevent them from happening. Do you come unstuck each time because your final approver is in a meeting until the end of the day? Did you find out that there is critical information missing at the 11th hour?

List out all the things that create frustrations and think about how you can remedy them. Could you reach out to all approvers as soon as a query comes in so they know it’s coming and you can find out their availability to review the response? Are there key subject matter experts that you need to bring into your process to ensure that your responses are hitting the mark?