Ever wished more journalists would cover your company and quote your directors? Wouldn’t it be nice to be featured in an article for Director, The Telegraph, Management Today?

This story will illustrate why, sometimes, you miss out on coverage. It happens more often than you’d believe.

A good example happened to me the week before Christmas. I wanted to interview six to eight small IT firms for a piece I was writing. I had a shortlist of companies which met my criteria and I was working my way down the list. Here’s my procedure:

1. Google the company to find their website.
2. Search their website for a press section or if there isn’t one, a contacts page.
3. If I can’t find a phone number (I’m on a deadline, remember), I’ll use the phone directory to find a switchboard number.
4. Call the best number I can find.
5. Introduce myself and explain what I want and ask to speak to a PR manager, press office or marketing manager.
6. Once I talk to someone who can actually help me, I’ll explain in more detail what I’m about and, with luck, book up an interview with an appropriate person.

So, in this case, I had the company name and Google’d their website. So far, so good. The website, however, had no press section and the ‘contact us’ page was just a web form. No phone number. So, I looked up on BT.com’s online directory enquiries service and got the switchboard number. I rang the company…

Me: Hi, my name’s Matthew Stibbe. I’m a freelance journalist writing an article for [my client]. Do you have a PR manager or a press office that I can speak to.
Receptionist: No.
Me: Is there someone in marketing who can help?
Receptionist: What’s it about?
Me: (slightly impatient) I’m a freelance journalist writing an article for [my client] and I’d like to talk to someone there about it.
Receptionist: Did you use the form on the website?
Me: No. I’m on a deadline and I’d really like to talk to someone today or tomorrow, please.
Receptionist: You should use the form to send in an enquiry.
Me: Who do the forms go to? I mean will they get it today and get back to me in time to meet my deadline?
Receptionist: I don’t know.
Me: Well perhaps it would be easier if you could find someone for me to talk to?
Receptionist: Let me check. (Long wait on hold) There’s no-one here today but if you’d like to leave me a message I’ll pass it on.
Me: Don’t worry. I’ll fill in the form.

That was a white lie. I didn’t send in the form. I just went to the next company on my list.

Small companies are as bad as large ones. It doesn’t seem to matter if I’m writing for a magazine no-one’s heard of or a huge publication. For example, trying to get someone at GE to talk to me about their new jet engine for a US magazine with a monthly circulation fo 2m involved five separate phone calls, three voicemail messages and two long, friendly but pointless conversations with managers who didn’t even work in the engine division.

The moral of the story is this: if you want a journalist to contact you, make it easy for them to do so. Have a visible press section on your website. Don’t just stuff it full of press releases. Put the names, numbers and emails of real people that you can contact up there. If you have a PR company, put their contact details up there too. Add the basic information about the company too: brief history, size, locations, factual descriptions of key products and services, financial results, names and brief bios of key management. And, for heaven’s sake, brief receptionists how to deal with press enquiries. For want of a nail, the story was lost.

For more information about writing Press sections for websites, see “Corporate Websites Get a ‘D’ in PR” on Jakob Neilsen’s useit site. For an example of an excellent press site (although it is still two links away from the home page), see Google’s.