Finding News in the Same Old Stuff

We want to devote our attention here to the hunt for news, and some quick exercises you can go through every day or every few days or every week to find news angles in those same old things you always do. What familiarity breeds, you see, is not so much contempt as complacency. A few quick questions can help you find the news angles that help us all do our jobs better.

Technology.

What are your engineers or designers working on today? What were they working on last week? Are they solving a particular problem? Answering a particular need? Developing a particular feature? Have any of those answers changed? Ever?

Support.

Have a chat with your support groups. What are they hearing from users? What updates or changes or notices are in the bulletins? Is there some problem that is fading or appearing, enough to show a trend? What problem is most common? What problem that they expected isn't showing up?

Following orders.

Check your sales figures. Are your dollar sales up, down or steady? How about units? Over what period? How long has this been the case? Are you seeing more or less dollar share in your more expensive or less expensive products? How about units? Are average quantities per order up or down? Is the use of a particular form of payment up or down? How about orders from a particular channel? Or region? Or size of company? Or orders for demos?

Hoisting the sheets.

Checked through your literature lately? What's the newest piece you have? What's the oldest? When are you going to retire or replace it? What's in the works now? When will it be ready? How much does it cost? Are most literature requests coming from users, inquirers, resellers or Boy Scout paper drives?

Know the enemy.

Take a look at each of your products. Do any of them face new competition? How are you doing against its competitors? Why? What's the difference in features? In price? In benefits? In distribution? In demand? In support? In current, in-stock availability? In adjunctive products? In third-party support? In warranty? In ease of repair? In packaging? In advertising support? In reviewer ratings?

Local charm.

Check out your coworkers. Is this a totally smoke-free company? Have the dieters there lost six tons this year? Are you completely sugar free? Is the average bowling average over 150? Is everybody in Scouts? Anything you find in common can - once - give us a nice little hook for an end run into ink.

Author, author!

Has somebody there written an article or a book or given a speech or delivered a paper that has anything to do with the business? A white paper? An application note? A neat picture, maybe an x-ray? Any recent filings for a copyright or patent?

Help wanted, mail.

Have your customers written anything interesting? Any mash notes on warranty registration cards? Any fan mail? Any unusual applications? Is customer mail coming by mail? By e-mail? By fax? Is there more of it than before? Less? Has the flavor changed? How?

Landmarks.

There may be some milestones in your company or your sales or one of your products. Think of numbers that begin with a 1 or a 5 and have some number of zeroes following: have you passed one of those numbers in unit sales per day? week? month? year? life of the product? How about dollar sales? Is a company or product about to celebrate an anniversary?

Hook baiters.

These may add up to stronger news than you anticipate. Certainly, they help us both with the exercise of finding "hooks" to get the attention of editors in any venue. And that, the being sly manual says, can make all the difference in getting into ink, and in being there often.