“Could we get coverage from this?”
It is a perfectly reasonable question, but it is not always the most useful one. Communications teams make dozens of small choices about organisational visibility: which enquiries to prioritise, which breaking stories to respond to, which experts to put forward and which conversations to leave alone.
Over time, those choices shape the organisation’s external profile. A better question is: Does this help build the kind of visibility we actually want?
Four tests of strategic relevance
For most organisations, a worthwhile opportunity will perform well across four areas.
Priority
Does the story connect clearly to an area where the organisation wants sustained visibility?
Contribution
Can you add expertise, evidence, access or perspective that genuinely helps the journalist understand the story?
Audience
Will the opportunity reach people the organisation actually wants to influence?
Momentum
Does it strengthen a longer-term position, or is it simply a disconnected appearance? The last point is easy to underestimate. One piece of coverage may be useful. A series of relevant contributions around a defined subject can have a much stronger effect. Journalists begin to understand where the organisation has genuine authority. A spokesperson becomes an obvious person to call. Over time, the organisation becomes more closely associated with the subjects it wants to be known for.
Strategy needs to work at story level
Many communications strategies contain sensible priorities but remain quite distant from day-to-day media decisions. A strategy might say the organisation wants to build visibility around climate technology, for example. The monitoring system then produces hundreds of stories about climate and technology. The difficult part is deciding which of those stories actually offers a useful opening.
Good teams make their priorities more usable. They know the sub-themes, experts, proof points, target audiences, journalists and sensitivities associated with each area. That makes it much easier to assess an emerging story quickly and in context. There is no need to force every media interaction through a rigid strategic framework. Communications still needs room for judgement and opportunism.
But if an organisation repeatedly wins coverage without becoming better known for the subjects it actually wants to own, its media activity is not fully supporting its strategy.