I love reading and lockdown has certainly given me more time to get my nose in a book. It was never out of one as a child, from Roald Dahl to Little Women, from Adrian Mole to Agatha Christie and Stan Barstow, I always loved escaping to another world.
A world that can often get lost when the pace of life is so fast. I’m definitely going to read more when we finally get back to whatever ‘normal’ is.
A general inquisitiveness (some would say nosiness – as my name suggests) is probably why I went into journalism and PR. I love finding out about people, their stories, their history, what makes them tick.
And people love reading about other people’s lives. Why do you think autobiographies sell so well?
I started my career as a newspaper reporter and in the town where I’m from everyone bought the weekly newspaper – to see what was happening to their neighbours, their colleagues in the town, their friends. Who was in trouble, who was having success, who had got married? All the things that we use social media for now.
Look at Netflix hit Bridgerton – which focusses on Regency-era London and is definitely worth watching for the plot – not the Duke, I definitely did not watch the entire series in three nights for the Duke.
Anyway, the premise of the story centres around the scandals Lady Whistledown writes about in her society newsletter and everybody clamours to ready a copy as soon as it hits the streets. Why -because people liked knowing what was going on under their noses, who was courting who, who was succeeding, who was at the centre of scandal? Think the modern-day tabloids – love them or hate them, scandal sells.
Scandal aside that’s why PR, communications and media are still so important. The vehicles we use to get our information out there might have changed but reading your company stories and updates will still be of interest to your clients, prospects and suppliers if and I stress you know your audience and you craft your message correctly.
SO when you’re putting your PR strategy together think about the stories you can tell and what your potential clients would like to read about. If you don’t know, do some market research to find out, that way your case studies, interviews, articles, or blogs will be far more effective.
Anyway, that’s me signing off, ready to escape into another world, this time it’s Romesh Ranganathan’s latest book – well after another groundhog day working from home, we all need a laugh, don’t we?
Speak soon.
Tamsin
