Public Relations Tips: January 2006

For some reason, most of us naturally drop into long drawn out story pitches, somehow thinking that something in our diatribe will attract the reporter's attention.

In reality, the exact opposite is true. The best story pitches are short and to the point.

Here's the outline for a successful story pitch:

Tell them the problem, and then tell them how you're the solution to that problem!

That's it, short and simple.

In doing so, you want to punch-line the problem, and you want to punch-line the solution: 15 words or less, even 10 words or less.

One good method is to pitch them the headline: the best headline is 10 words or less. So if the best headline is 10 words or less, the best pitch should be 10 words or less.

Try it!

For more information on how to successfully pitch stories, check out How To Create The Perfect 30-Second Phone Pitch For Your Story

Posted by DK at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Briefs are very short articles you can use to build your publicity. Why spend your time writing briefs?

- They fill odd-size holes on a page, and they can sometimes stand alone. If you offer a 75-word list, it stands a much better chance of getting published than a longer, 900-word article, which an editor has to have a lot of space for.

- Briefs help portray you as an expert in your field. You can send the same tip sheet to a variety of publications. For whatever reason, the media (particularly magazines) are not as concerned that the same information appeared elsewhere. So you don't have to worry that "I can't send this to Woman's Day because I've already sent it to Family Circle." Just go ahead and send it and if they've got a space for it, they may use it.

- You can promote yourself with briefs much more so than if a reporter wrote a long story about you. If you're going to pitch an idea about yourself and they call you to do an interview, and write a big story, they decide exactly what goes in that big story. Many editors are going to make sure that it doesn't sound too promotional and doesn't include too much hype. But with briefs, you can promote the heck out of your product, service, cause or issue much more than in a longer story. For some reason, editors will let you get away with it in those shorter briefs.

These are just a few of the many tips you can find in Briefs, Fillers and Quizzes: How to Write Them and Why Editors LOVE Them

Posted by DK at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the toughest things for many business bloggers is to think of things to write about. Here's a great technique that helps to generate ideas that are guaranteed to be of interest to your audience.

First, I believe that one of the best things that everyone should be doing is reading the publications that your customers and the others in your industry read.

Gather at least a year's worth of issues of those magazines (hopefully 3 years) together into one place to use as resource materials. Then make copies of their tables of contents and post them side by side up on a wall someplace. Look at the commonalities that you see between those publications.

These are trends that are being consistently being talked about through published trade media for your particular industry. So you can assume that either those trends are what your audience is interested in knowing about, or that your particular trade's media is suffering from mass delusion (somewhat unlikely).

Those trends should give you a pretty good idea of you what you should be blogging about. Of course, the more recent issues should be weighted more heavily in your analysis.

It's one of the most powerful tools you can use because you're being told exactly what people are interested in.

Want to learn more about how to write better business blogs with less effort while still ensuring that appropriate review and control procedures are in place to help keep your company out of trouble? Check out our new report Business Blogging Results: How To Create and Write A Blog That Builds Your Business.

Posted by DK at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So what do you do if you make a pitch to a Morning Show, and they give you the ambivalent "we'll get back to you?"

Although this can be frustrating, there are two things to remember: first, producers really are busy people, and they probably don't have time to make you a priority.

Expect that you'll need to be the one pressing them for an answer, because it shows you're dedicated enough to do your part.

Continue reading "Pitching morning shows - how to handle the brush-off" »

Posted by DK at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

You've sent out a press release or story pitch and now it's time to follow up. You dial the reporter's number, and get sent to voicemail. Should you just hang up or should you leave a message?

Especially if it's your first follow-up call, don't hang up! Leave a powerful message, one that makes them want to return your call.

To do so, you should have a scripted message. You don't want to sound like you're reading something, but you do want to clearly know ahead of time what your message is.

So your message may consist of something like, "Hi, this is Jill. I'm calling about using publicity in a down turned economy," and then give them the bottom line of your message really quickly - in 10 to 30 seconds. Your message should be clearly benefit/solution oriented. And then you say, "I'd love to talk with you further. Please call me at ..." and state your phone number twice clearly, then hang up.

Continue reading "Story pitch follow-ups: what if you get sent to voicemail?" »

Posted by DK at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What's the best way to send a press release? E-mail? Fax? Or regular snail-mail?

For immediate attention fax is best. If you're doing a local publicity campaign, you can do that campaign for pennies - just the cost of your local calls.

If you have an urgent story, don't depend on mail, because by the time they get it, the news is dead. A good idea is to fax them and follow up with mail.

If you have a story that needs a photograph to really put juice into it, yes, mail the press release along with the photograph. So don't be opposed to snail-mail. It's just that faxing is preferable.

Continue reading "The best way to send a press release" »

Posted by DK at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If the headline doesn't do its job, the rest of the press release is worthless. The job of the headline is to force the reporter to keep on reading. Don't be worried about be overly creative.

What you need are called "formula" headlines. All you have to do is take a "formula" headline, replace a few words, and you've got your headline. For example, a "formula" headline may be "14 Ways to End Headache Pain Immediately." That's a formula headline. Now what makes it a formula headline? If you saw that headline in a book on publicity, or example, the number "14" would be underlined, and "headache pain" would be underlined. Any time you see something underlined, that means take it out. Eliminate it. And put in your information.

Continue reading "Use formula press release headlines to get the reporter's attention" »

Posted by DK at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just as each different type of media outlet (radio, TV, newspapers, magazines) communicates their stories in different ways, each has a different set of needs for information in a media kit. Tailoring your media kit to fit their needs not only saves you from having to send out unnecessary materials, it also makes you look great in their eyes because you're sending them exactly what they need.

Radio

The radio bookers hardly do their research a lot of times, so a lot of times if you do provide good interview questions, they will practically read right down the list. You also want to provide some backgrounders for them so that if they actually are doing their research, they can read up on it and feel knowledgeable. They usually will not look over the product or the book all that carefully. They may not even get into it all. You just want them to be able to look at it, do a talk show, and sound credible based on what's right there.

Newspapers

Continue reading "Tailoring your media kit to fit the recipient" »

Posted by DK at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why is drive-time radio so valuable to somebody's publicity campaign and why should you try to get onto it?

There are probably more than a dozen reasons why it's important for you to actively pitch your story to drive-time radio hosts. Probably the most obvious of all is that you can make a lot of money at it. Drive-time radio can work for both big companies and for individuals who have a book to sell, or they're professional speakers, or consultants.

Some people underestimate the power of drive-time radio. They think maybe that when they're called by somebody in a small town somewhere who wants to do an interview with them about whatever their subject of expertise is that there will be only a couple of hundred of listeners. Well, I would still submit to you that even just a couple of hundred people, if you get in front of them at one time, that's not a bad deal. But if you get into some of the bigger cities, you can get in front of literally thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people at one time.

Consider the example of Bart Baggett, who's a handwriting expert. He's been on more than a thousand radio shows during his career. He was on with Howard Stern one morning. Well, first of all, that takes some guts to even get on Howard Stern's show. But Bart had plenty of experience. He handled it very well, and in one morning, he sold $25,000 worth of products and services, just from being on The Howard Stern Show. That's a home run. There's no question that you don't get those every day,

Continue reading "You need to get on drive-time radio!" »

Posted by DK at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One key to getting on your local TV news is to pitch your stories to the right people.

Here's how most TV newsrooms are organized, and who is best for you to pitch:

Everyone goes to the "Queen Bee," that main assignment editor. For the purposes of this, I'm going to call them an assignment editor. Everything gets funneled back to them because they're the gatekeepers. They have all the press releases that they take into the 9 o'clock morning meeting. They know everything that's going on. They know all the trials that are going to take place that day. They know all the stories that are going on because everybody funnels it to them and it's good to be in a relationship with them.

But it's a really good idea to bundle your information to more than one person. So it's great if you want to send your press release to that "Queen Bee" or managing editor, but the next person in the chain of command is the producer.

There are two kinds of producers, so I'm going to educate you a little bit. One type of producer is what's called an online producer. And newsrooms will have many of them in one day. Each online producer is in charge of one show. They're kind of like the quarterback of the show. They come in 10 hours before their show starts, so the people who are in the morning show are in at 11 o'clock at night working on their show, getting ready. They're writing all the teasers for the show. They're responsible for all the stories in their show. They're responsible for all the reporters and gathering the information and bringing it back to them and writing the openings and closings of each piece, where the commercial is going to air. So they're completely quarterbacking that show. They never leave the newsroom. It's great to know their names because you can always pitch to them.

Continue reading "Pitching stories to local television stations" »

Posted by DK at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)