Especially newsworthy stories about yourself or your company that you can pitch to media in hope of getting some free publicity.

By remembering a semi-famous quote from late Speaker Of The House Of Representatives, Tip O'Neill.

'All politics is local.'

In a sense, all news is local because even global issues often have a local impact.

Here are some powerful strategies for spotting opportunities when they present themselves.

'Piggybacking' simply means putting a fresh or different twist on something that's already in news. You might have you seen a story on Today Show that reflects something that's happening in your industry. Call station that airs Today Show and offer a 'local angle.' They'll probably interview you as part of story.

You can piggyback on news items, trends, holidays, or community events - possibilities never end.

Trends and new ideas and technologies make for good stories. When my wife and I opened first South Texas Subway Sandwich Shop inside a convenience store, we got a front- page write-up in The San Antonio Business Journal. It included a color picture of us standing in front of our location. Buying an equal amount of ad space would have cost about eight thousand dollars.

Get Outsiders on Your Side

Especially good advice for business, non-profit and association managers whose job success depends in large part on behaviors of their key external audiences.

I refer to behaviors like inquiries on increase, new waves of specialized employment applications, more and more followup purchases, new levels of membership queries, a substantial boost in capital donations, or more frequent component specifications by engineering firms.

If you are such a manager, you almost assuredly need help in achieving your unit’s operating objectives. Which is why it’s nice to hear that public relations team assigned to your operation is responsible for providing a large portion of that help.

Two things need to happen to make that a reality. One, it requires more than your oversight. You must stay involved with your public relations folks at every major decision point.

And two, entire effort must be based on more than a casual debate about which communications tactics should be used.

What is needed is your commitment to a fundamental premise that is foundation on which your entire public relations effort will be based. A premise like this: People act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

With that established, we can get to work on blueprint that will help persuade those important members of your key target audiences to your way of thinking. What you hope for then, is follow on stakeholder actions that result in your success as a business, non-profit or association manager.

Before taking any action steps, you need to know how members of your key target audiences perceive you. So, first, you and your PR team need to list those important outside audiences whose behaviors affect your unit most. Then prioritize them so we can use audience in first place on that list as our target audience for this article.