9 top tips for getting your story read on Bloomberg News
Bloomberg is a wire to be reckoned with – news comes in every few seconds, the best stories on business, finance, renewables and the emerging markets, get taken up by one of 2,500 writers and if your story attracts interest (of which half do) your news will be published online at Bloomberg.com.If you’re lucky enough to have access to the $20,000 Bloomberg intranet terminal you will see a lot more articles in the Bloomberg newsletter. You can search on subject, share prices, industry, analysts and people, while also looking up trends and survey figures. Suffice to say, Bloomberg is read by some very important people.I recently attended a briefing with Managing Editor, Paul Addison, who revealed his top tips on how to get your stories seen by Bloomberg journalists.
Timing – The mornings are a blizzard of press releases so if you send it before 7am it’s more likely to get missed even though there are 150 people looking through everything that comes in. The best time to send general news is later in the morning for that day. For financial releases the early afternoon of the previous day is best, so we can put it up before the stock market opens.
Subject – The story is more likely to be picked up if it’s a public company, one involved in a merger or with increasing stock prices. However, Bloomberg journalists are interested in private companies doing well in the renewables, new energy or finance sectors.
Don’t bury the news – Bloomberg journalists hate it when people bury the news at the end of a press release. Ensure all main points are high up.
Tone & language – Cut the cr*p and CEO speak. Make it human. Do not write like a robot! Otherwise it won’t get picked up anywhere.
Snappy – Keep it short and snappy. Be specific, for example use correct figures don’t just say ‘lots’. Reporters at Bloomberg deal in facts not opinions.
Layout – A sharp heading with a two or three-lined, bullet point summary is ideal. Don’t include more than two paragraphs of text in the main body; Bloomberg writers are trained to see a story quickly and write to very fast deadlines.
All about the verb – Ensure your heading has an active verb so writers know whether your news is good or bad – a drop in sales or an increase to the share profit perhaps?
Tweet – Social media is changing the way we work and although those with desks in the city are not allowed to access Twitter – putting relevant tweets at the end of press releases will ensure they get seen. Bloomberg does have speed desks monitoring the data roll of Twitter, ensuring stories are legitimate and not fake.
Global – A news angle that has global appeal will ensure your article is more likely to appear on Bloomberg.
photo credit: p_c_w