When the owner of a Harry Potter inspired holiday cottage near Saltburn wanted help getting the message out to the world about the quirky new accommodation she turned to the power of presenting a good story and pictures (PR).

You might think that publicising the cottage’s quirkiness, which looks very similar to the films’ portrayal of Hagrid’s Hut in the Harry Potter novels, via just social media might be enough but the difference of some media coverage over the last few days has been nothing short of phenomenal.

There was already a good level of engagement on North Shire’s facebook page but to make the news really fly and go viral relied on the media telling the story and having excellent pictures to use.

Together with photographer Charlotte Graham’s pictures and my storytelling we created our own bit of magic to help elevate the Groundkeeper’s Cottage to new heights of awareness.

We knew that anything Harry Potter would be like catnip to the online press such is the strength of Potterdom worldwide. We also knew that once some of the nationals, in this case the MailOnline, The Sun, The Metro and the Independent had picked up and run the story, together with some influential online sites such as LadBible, the viral bit would soon follow.

Sure enough over the next 48 hours more online news sites piggybacked on the initial coverage, aided by the media’s own postings on Facebook and Twitter, and hey presto, the story was there on Buzzfeed, MSN as well as American and Chinese news.

To put it in perspective the MailOnline piece had been shared over 5,000 times within less than two days, and one Facebook post by LadBible with a link to their version of the story attracted 28,000 comments and 5,000 shares.