How to Secure Local Broadcast Coverage in 30 Seconds

When it rains, it pours

Earlier this week some wild Spring weather hit the Bay Area. High winds, cold temperatures and huge downpours of rain and hail blew through sending local news outlets into a tizzy.

As I worked from my home office on Tuesday morning a particularly large hail storm began to rain down outside. I did what any self-respecting digital media executive would do—grabbed my iPhone, opened up Instagram and began capturing the action. I figured the content would be fun to share with my kids (who were at school) and wife (who works out of town) later that evening. I took a video, wrote a quick description and shared it on Instagram before going back to my workday. Here is it:

After getting a couple quick “likes,” I noted I had also received a comment. ABC7/KGO-TV in San Francisco wanted permission to use the video as part of their 4pm and 5pm evening news broadcasts. Entertained, I agreed and they promised to credit my Instagram handle on the broadcast. A few hours later, another comment came in from KPIX5, the local CBS affiliate in San Francisco, seeking permission to use the video on their 11 O’clock news broadcast.

When all was said and done my 30-seconds of effort (15-seconds to shoot the video and 15-seconds to write a description and a couple hashtags) resulted in three separate local broadcast hits.

My big takeaways?

As I work with brands across industries and of various sizes, the next time I hear “Instagram doesn’t have a relevant audience for us,” I’ll have to strongly disagree.

The fact that so many producers, writers and reporters use it to source information and story ideas should be enough for most to engage. But when you couple that with the fact that the ability to tell a visual story around a brand is paramount and note that Instagram continues to be one of the fastest growing visual platforms (not to mention one with a high rate of engagement), it becomes a no-brainer.