Lifestyle magazines & business coverage

Well we’ve focussed on specialist business magazines and the global phenomenon that is social networking in our last two coaching programme sessions, so it’s time to bring things a little closer to home.

On August 23rd, we’ll be talking about local lifestyle magazines, like Staffordshire Life, and The North Staffordshire Magazine. There are hundreds of county mags like this around the country, and they can all represent great avenues for your PR stories. However they have to be approached differently to many other publications.

While many do run news articles, that’s not their major focus, because they are aimed at affluent homeowners – particularly the female ones. And because they are read by a largely female audience, they don’t like dry business stories about increased turnover, or product launches, or anything like that.

They want more human interest stories, which talk about the person behind the business and what makes them different. In our case, we’ve had most success with stories about:

• a former policeman who quit life on the beat to set up his own photography business
• two friends who used their business expertise to help each other recover from a broken back and IBS respectively
• an aspiring painter whose unusual, unique approach to his work had attracted the attention of Prince Charles

First we’ll focus on Staffordshire Life, which is the largest and longest-running county magazine in Staffordshire, boasting an 11000 circulation and dating back to 1982. Then later in the year we’ll cover The North Staffordshire Magazine, which has a 6000 circulation.

These are both viable targets for your stories, because they are read by affluent individuals in rural areas, and by creating the right story and writing it properly could generate coverage worth thousands of pounds.

The session takes place on August 23rd, between 12 and 2, at the Lymedale Business Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Give us a shout on 01782 472035/07880 733138, or info@richardswancottassociates.co.uk for more information.