Get Featured in Delaware Online

Space in a local publication goes first to public affairs, emergencies, schools and sports. That leaves little room at Delaware Online for a business owner or professional who sends in a story idea cold, even when the story has a real local tie. A guaranteed placement works differently: it is arranged with the publication before any writing starts, you sign off on the draft, and it goes live on delawareonline.com within a window stated in writing, usually one to two weeks. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What Delaware Online covers

What does a local news publication cover? Whatever matters to the people nearby. For Delaware Online, that means news for readers in Delaware: the kind of reporting on local government, business, schools, roads, real estate, events, sports and community life that larger outlets leave alone. A story earns its place by being relevant to the area, not by being big. Its reporting is published at delawareonline.com.

Local reporting treats a community as a set of people and places with names. In that setting, an opening, an expansion, an award, a new hire, a charity drive or a new service is news, provided it is told with facts. Owners, professionals, nonprofits, event organizers and creative people with a local tie are all familiar subjects of this kind of coverage.

Who reads Delaware Online

A local audience is small compared with a national one, and far more relevant to a local business. Readers of a publication like Delaware Online live, work, shop and vote in the community it covers in Delaware. Many of them are deciding where to spend money, whom to hire and which organizations to support close to home.

If your customers are local, local news is the most direct press there is. Being featured in Delaware Online puts your name in front of people in your own market and gives you a news story to use in marketing, on your website and in conversations with prospects. For out-of-area companies, it signals a commitment to the community.

Why coverage in Delaware matters

For most companies, the people who matter most are within driving distance. A feature in Delaware Online speaks to that group directly, because its readers have a stake in what happens in Delaware. Coverage there can support word of mouth, give your sales conversations a local reference, and show up when someone in Delaware looks for information about you or your company.

Those who ask for coverage in Delaware are often professionals whose work depends on reputation in a defined area, such as attorneys, physicians, financial advisers, builders and agents. Event organizers, schools and hospitality venues are common as well, along with national brands that are launching a new location in Delaware.

Out-of-area companies and longtime locals face the same test: is there a reason for people in this community to care? For a newcomer, it may be jobs, a new location or a service not offered nearby. For an established name, it may be growth, history or community work. Either way, specifics carry the story.

The angles below are where we begin. One clear angle, backed by real details about your work in the community, makes a better local story than a list of everything you offer.

What weakens a pitch

• No local connection. If the story could run unchanged in any town, readers of a community publication have little reason to stop on it.
• Sales copy presented as news. Readers come for information about their community, so a list of offers and slogans reads as out of place.
• Vague claims. “Best in the area” and “top-rated” mean little without something a reader can verify, and everything we write must be true.
• Too many messages. One opening, one milestone or one person, told clearly, is stronger than a tour of every service you provide.