Public Relations Tips: August 2006

« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »

August 31, 2006

Media coaches and publicists, when to hire

If the very thought of talking to reporters and editors or appearing on a radio show frightens you, hire a good media coach. A media coach will give you all the training you need to feel comfortable during print and broadcast interviews and can prepare you for what to expert during your publicity campaign.

Many publicists know who the best coaches are, so you could actually hire a publicist first. After all, there’s time to get training while a strategic plan is being created and while the media kit is being written. Plus, the publicist may have some ideas and angles that should be covered in training.

Don’t use a publicist as a crutch or as someone who can shield you from the bulldog reporters you’ve heard so much about. The closer you are to your own publicity campaign and the more you understand it, the less susceptible you are to getting stuck with the Publicist from Hell.

For more on hiring publicists, check out How to Hire the Perfect Publicist.

August 30, 2006

4 Keys to Effective Blog Entries

1. Write with a voice.
Does everyone in your industry write like a bunch of lawyers or academicians? Does everyone carefully pussyfoot around, never calling a spade a spade? If so, step up and become the person who does things differently. In other words – make your writing interesting. It will attract a following.

2. Short and sweet is good, but so is long and impactful.
The blogging world is accustomed to short, 3-5 sentence posts. But many business bloggers have discovered great success in longer posts, often the equivalent of 2-5 pages if they are printed out.

3. Use your post titles as headlines designed to get people to read the entire story.
Blog post titles are a bit deceiving. To an inattentive mind, they may appear to be a place to summarize your entry. But in reality, they’re much more than that. Blog post titles are, in reality, a headline, just like in a newspaper story. And the primary purpose of a headline is to get people to read the story.

4. Use categories to sort your blog.
This makes it easier for people to find similar stories on your site, plus it gives them another archive for search engine purposes. Categories won’t show up in your initial blog index page, but will show up as part of the archiving process.

Find out more at Blogging for Business

August 29, 2006

Tips to helping journalists cover your story

Journalists love a person who makes their job easier. As a PR person, that should be one of your main goals, as journalists are more likely to grab a story where all the legwork is already done. In your pitch letter, include a link. Include a list of sources other than your own and what angles they could provide. Let them know you can connected them to research material that will help them.

Show that you’re willing to help on anything that they need, by providing them with any kind of information that ties into something they’re covering right now and that gives them a local angle for a national story, or a way of solving a problem for their audience.

For even more ways to entice journalists to cover your story by writing pitch letters, check out Transcript—How To Write a Pitch Letter.

Contemplating a press conference? Contemplate this first

While planning your news conference, write down the goals you need to accomplish. For example, are you calling a news conference to refute criticism by one of your competitors? Are you trying to rally public support for an unpopular project your organization is spearheading? Are you calling it to set the record straight after someone besmirched the reputation of one of your key people?

Keep your goals in sight, and plan accordingly. You might not have a lot of time to stage a well-orchestrated news conference, and you want to make sure the precious time you do have is spent wisely. The ideal length of time for a news conference is anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.

For even more things to contemplate and consider before holding a press conference, check out The News Conference: When to Hold It and How to Do It Right.

August 26, 2006

What Should I Write about in My Blog?

Finally, you blog’s all setup and ready to go. Now it’s time to start blogging!
But, a key question remains...What do I say? Here are a number of suggestions that have created successful results on business blogs.

Write about what your company does. Making off-topic posts is great, but do it on your personal blog. Confine your business blog to stuff that is of interest to your target consumer. There’s nothing that’s more disconcerting when you go to someone’s blog about machining parts and see the recipe for their mother’s killer potato salad.

Write about stuff that your company doesn’t do that your audience wants to know about. Think of your blog as a trade magazine. You serve a small portion of the needs of that audience, but they have needs for lots of other information to help them do their job. So give it to them. This is a great way to build credibility with your audience, return traffic, and relationships with others in your industry.

Write about the stupid things people do in your industry. This is another never-ending source of content for your blog. Take all of those times when you shake your head in (lack of) admiration for something someone’s done and blog about it. It’s guaranteed that if one person’s made that mistake, thousands more have too. You’ll give them tips that will help keep them from making mistakes, at the same time building your reputation.

Find out more blog-writing ideas at Blogging for Business

August 25, 2006

Online portals, submitting articles and reaching readers

A portal is the key tool that you’re going to use to start submitting your articles online. Essentially, it’s a centralized website that specializes in receiving expert articles, and then distributing the articles around the Internet.

Portals do this in a couple of ways. People either go to the portal and just read online, or editors come, collect articles, take them away, and post them to their site and/or distribute them in their weekly or monthly magazines.

Portals are another great way to publicize your company on the Internet. For more information on portals and how to make them work for your company, check out How to Submit Online Articles That Pull Traffic to Your Website.

August 24, 2006

Follow-up calls: the inside scoop

It’s generally known that reporters hate follow-up calls to news releases and pitch letters. That’s true, but only if you call and say, “Did you get my letter?” The answer is, invariably, “yes” but unless you offer something else—dangling carrots, so to speak—the reporter will not even give you the time of day. These are people who don’t want to talk to you. But if they’re interested—and you have to give them something to be interested in—then they want to talk to you. You’ve got to call.

Follow-up calls can also be the place to customize further your pitch letter. You should know something about the reporters you’re pitching to. Closely watch their shows, read what they write, and figure out what angle they like to take on stories. Give them a taste of that angle in your pitch letter, but use your follow-up call to drive home your point. Reporters love that.

For the rest of the inside scoop to pitch letters and follow-up calls, check out Transcript—How To Write a Pitch Letter.

August 23, 2006

When to hire a publicist

Certain situations lend themselves, even to the point of requiring, to hiring a publicist. Some of these situations are:

You are familiar with the basics of how to get local publicity, but you want to take
your campaign to the national level and don’t know how.

You want publicity in a certain part of the country and would prefer to work with someone who has strong media contacts within their own region or state.

Even though you feel comfortable interviewing, you don’t like the thought of calling reporters and editors on the phone and asking them to cover your story.

You’re doing most of your own publicity yourself, but there’s one aspect of it that you don’t know how to do or don’t want to do, such as setting up an online media room. The perfect publicist can help smooth the rough spots in your publicity campaign by doing small-project work.

Publicists are trained and experienced in doing all that and more for you and your publicity campaign. For more information on publicists and how to hire the perfect one for you, check out How to Hire the Perfect Publicist.

August 22, 2006

Copyright made clear

Copyright law is a vehicle that protects the creators of original works. You can’t copyright a title, an idea or a fact. But you can copyright any other tangible, fixed, creative expression. It’s the creative expression of the ideas or the facts that is protectable. The law recognizes that you own those rights, and therefore have the ability to decide exactly how they’re going to be used for reproduction or to create derivative works or to display in public, or to publicly perform. It’s important to copyright your articles, or to maintain your copyright, to at least not give away, or lose, the rights to control how that work is used in the future, so that you can determine how it’s used for your lifetime plus 70 years.

For more clarity on what copyright is and how you can make it work for you, check out Legal Issues You Must Know When Writing Articles For Fee or For Free.

August 21, 2006

How to handle reporters’ questions during news conferences

At the end of a news conference, it is common courtesy to open your panel of experts up to questions from the press. This can be terrifying and spin madly out of control if not done properly.

The moderator should ask reporters to raise their hands, identify themselves, and ask their questions. If you allow a free-for-all, bedlam could ensue. Use this Q & A time as an opportunity to weave into the answers the most important sub-points you identified before the news conference. In other words, this is yet another chance to drive home your key messages.

One of the ways you can do this effectively is by practicing the bridging technique, in which you “bridge” from the reporter’s question to a response you want to give. Examples of bridges include “that’s a common misconception and I’d like to set the record straight” or “we’re asked that question often and the most important point we want to make about it is…”

For more tips on how to keep the ball in your court during a news conference, check The News Conference: When to Hold It and How to Do It Right.

August 20, 2006

Contact information: don’t hide it!

Perhaps the one thing that can make or break your company website or online Media Room is hard-to-find addresses, phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses. Don’t hide this information under a “Contact Us” key. Post it right out there on the home page, or on every page of the site.

Provide the PR person’s telephone number, fax number, cell phone or pager number, an e-mail address and, if you’re really helpful, a home telephone number. If your PR person isn’t comfortable with so much personal information out in cyberspace, one option is to provide some of this information behind a password, although the media generally hate having to jump through this hoop.

If using a password, make it easy for journalists to sign up for it. Remember, journalists are on a deadline and will often need to contact someone within your company outside regular business hours. If your contact information is not readily available, the media will not hesitate to pass you over for a story.

For more ideas on constructing a media-friendly Media Room and some great examples of companies’ successful media rooms, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

August 19, 2006

How To Set Up Your Blog To Build Business

Most blogging software allows you to format a navigation area around the actual blog content with your own links, graphics, and marketing materials. There are several key elements that every business blog should include in their navigation section:

Links into the “money pages” of your website.
When I refer to money pages I mean the pages that make you revenue. Don’t bother with linking to your privacy policy, etc., focus your blog’s links on the pages where you earn money either directly or indirectly from visitors to that page

Advertisements for your specific products/services.
Remember that many, if not most of the people who will see your blog will enter your blog directly through a search engine listing, rather than entering through another page on your site. That means that they have no idea who you are, what you offer, and why they should buy from you rather than someone else. That’s why advertising for your set of products and services can be a great moneymaker on a blog.

Google AdSense advertising.
Google AdSense is a program that allows you to place advertisements on your page that earn you money each time that someone clicks on an ad. Google has developed a program that reads the page, figures out what that page is about, and then displays ads that are related to the subject matter of that specific page.

More suggestions can be found at Blogging for Business

August 18, 2006

New media requires new approaches: the pitch letter v. the news release

Email is a very intimate kind of a medium. And it’s perfectly acceptable to be personable and chatty. Try to take a formal business letter and put it into an email is nonsensical at this point. Emailed pitch letters are a new medium, you need a new approach to it.

Because what you want a pitch letter to accomplish is to make the journalist feel like they can talk to you, want to talk to you. If you can talk to a journalist on the phone, you can pretty much get a placement. You want to get the journalist interested in finding out what you are talking about and what you have to offer. You want to do it really quickly. You don’t want to waste your time trying to get the journalist to talk.

For more tips on new approaches to this new and fascinating medium, check out Transcript—How To Write a Pitch Letter.

August 17, 2006

Where to find headline ideas that grab editors’ attention

Regularly scan the headlines on the front of the major magazines while they are waiting in line at the grocery store. Start compiling a list of the ones that catch your attention. Then when you need a headline for a how-to article you are writing, or a speech you will deliver, simply remove one or two words from the original headline and substitute them with your own words.

Professionals utilize and teach this technique in workshops around the nation. You can study their methodologies and suggestions in Tips for Writing Eye-Catching Headlines for Your News Releases and Articles.

August 16, 2006

4 Tips on How to Post Your Press Release Online

1. Don’t bury your press releases where no one can find them. If you’re going to have press releases at your website, make sure that there’s some way to find them from the home page.

2. Post your press releases in plain old HTML. Don’t put them in PDF format. Believe it or not, some people put their press releases on the web site in such a way that you have to download them.

3. Make sure your website is set up in such a way that search engines can get into the inner pages of your site.

4. Put a button on their home page called “media room” or “press room.” If the media is coming to your website just to nose around, to see if you’re worth interviewing or calling, they can click on that button and immediately go to the new releases and backgrounders, Q&As and profiles.

More helpful tips can be found at Secrets for Getting Through to the Media Online.

August 15, 2006

Deciding who delivers the news during your news conference

One or two people speaking on behalf of the organization that is calling the news conference is ideal. Many more than that, and it becomes too confusing. The media will usually want to hear from people at the top. So try to recruit your CEO or president as one of the spokespeople. You should also have a PR person on hand to control the news conference and possibly even to speak. Though it isn’t always possible, whoever speaks on behalf of your organization should have formal media training.

Never call a news conference with only one spokesperson. It can be overwhelming to stand in front of all those reporters who are screaming questions. Providing two or three people in the front of the room gives the spokespeople the chance to decide who wants to answer the question, depending on their background and expertise. It also gives them each time to gather their thoughts before answering the next question.

For a more in-depth guide to holding news conferences, check out The News Conference: When to Hold It and How to Do It Right.

August 14, 2006

3 Steps to Promoting Your Blog

As you probably know by now, on the web, if you build it, they won’t come. You’ve got to promote anything you do on the web to generate traffic to your blog. We recommend the following steps to promote your blogging empire online:

Step 1: Write Several Excellent Posts
Promotion doesn’t do much good unless you’ve got something excellent to promote. So, the first thing you need to do is to sit down, and over the course of 3-5 days, post 3-5 excellent, highly informative and interesting posts to your blog. This gives you a content base once you start promoting, giving others a glimpse of what kind of blogger you will be as they make the decision whether they will link into your blog.

Step 2: Link Into Your Blog From Every Page On Your Website
Classical search engines love to discover new material by following links. In fact, one of the biggest myths on the web is that you should be regularly submitting your sites to the search engines. Most engines actually penalize you for doing that. The ideal site, in their mind, is one that lots of other sites have found and created links into.

Step 3: Submit Your Blog Into The Blog and RSS Search Engines
Most non-bloggers are unaware, but there is a whole network of search engines that focus on listing blog and RSS feed content.

For the top 50 places to list your blog, go to Blogging for Business.

Build An Active Cross-Blog Linking Campaign

One of the core elements of the blogging world is the tradition of bloggers commenting on and linking to other people’s blog posts. Indeed, if you look at many of the top blogs out there, you will see that the vast majority of their posts link into someone else’s blog entries or websites.

It’s like a snowball rolling down a mountainside. Most of the time it will stop on its own, but every once in awhile it will trigger other snowballs rolling, some of which start even more, and pretty soon you’ve got an avalanche on your hands!

What a great opportunity this presents! You can actually get other people to link into your blog, increasing your traffic, your notoriety, and your incoming links for the search engines.

The theory’s great – but what about the practice? How do you go about getting other people to link into your site?

The best way is to start by commenting on other people’s posts first, while continuing to write great, impactful, insightful posts of your own.

As you do this process repeatedly – commenting on the posts of others, and especially if you add value to their posts, eventually these other bloggers will begin to see your work and will start following your blog and cross-posting back to you. That’s when you know that you’re starting to arrive on the blogging scene.

Check out Blogging for Business to learn more useful tips.

August 13, 2006

Tips, options, and ideas for your online media kit

Before you build your online Media Kit, think about what you want to accomplish. Your Number One goal should be to include anything that will make a journalist’s job easier and faster. Provide lots of free information, including articles and speeches written by company executives, a list of your products and services, with product photos, a Q&A sheet, links to related sites, etc.

More sophisticated web sites even give the reporter the option of searching archived company news releases on a particular topic, then reading the releases that come up after the search. Remember that journalists are usually on deadline. They shouldn’t have to wade through mountains of information to find what they are looking for.

Journalists love anything and everything that makes their job easier. For more a more in-depth look at how to make your online Media Kit everything a journalist wants, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

August 12, 2006

Introducing a new medium: the pitch letter

Some experts say that new releases have seen their day. There are, of course, situations where you need to use them, but they’re getting to be few and far between. Especially when thinking about the fact that most of us are doing our pitching via email these days. When you pitch via email, you have exactly four lines to make your point because most people are looking at email in the preview mode, and they can see two to four lines of your pitch. So, the meat of it better be in there. That’s pretty hard to do with a press release. The point is to be short and sweet and think like a journalist, and give them the elevator pitch. The best way to do that is in a pitch letter.

There are times when—if you’re announcing a personnel change or you’re sending financial results or something where there are legal requirements for you to put specific information in—then you have to do that. But the pitch letter is quickly become the vehicle of preference for today’s journalists to receive their tips.

For insight into the pitch letter, how to use it and what’s in it, check out Transcript—How To Write a Pitch Letter.

August 11, 2006

4 Ways Blogging Can Help Communication Within Your Business

Blogs don’t have to be public. They can be on intranets, behind firewalls, and/or password protected. This, plus their ease of use, makes them a great source for internal communications, project tracking, issue resolution, etc. Here are a few ideas:

1. Set up a blog for each of your major customers. Your account manager for that account coordinates the blogging, and the customer is able to use the comment features on the blog to reply as part of the blog itself. Or, you can grant customers the ability to write their own posts to the blog.

2. Set up a Letters From The President blog for your employees – allowing quick and easy access to the most current and past letters from the president to your company’s employees. Because blogs are so easy, this is a great way for the President to be able to develop a stronger relationship with your employee group.

3. Create an Human Resources blog – reporting answers to questions, company picnic plans, benefit explanations, new hire announcements, etc.

4. Use blogs as internal knowledge management tools, enabling your people to record, communicate, and easily search the knowledge gathered throughout the company. Here’s an interesting case study on the subject:

Any of those ideas spark an idea for you? Get more ideas at Blogging for Business.

August 10, 2006

How Can You Reach Your Target Audience on the Web?

Many people are online and using search engines to find the information they urgently want to find. If you can put information on the Internet that is designed to catch the attention of potential customers, then you can do that directly without going through the media.

How do you reach these potential customers on the web? Try these two tips:

1- Post press releases on your own site or at certain industry portals. These are special sites set up for dissemination of topical information, many of which offer the opportunity to post your press release for free.

2- There are many discussion groups, discussion forums, and mailing lists where people interested in a very specialized topic congregate and exchange ideas. This is something that was very hard to duplicate in the offline world unless you spent money and went to a conference where there were several hundred or thousand people, in the same place at the same time.

For more tips, look at Secrets for Getting Through to the Media Online.

August 09, 2006

Headlines: making your article a cut above

Editors toss the best news release into the trash if the headline is flat, dull or lifeless. Your article is likely to be forgotten, too, if the editor can’t figure out from the headline why readers should care about what you have to say.

That’s why writing attention-grabbing headlines is absolutely critical. Surveys taken in the newsroom show that an editor spends an average of only 5 seconds reading a news release before deciding whether to use it or toss it. Half that time, two to three seconds, is spent just on the headline.

You can apply many of the tips you read in Tips for Writing Eye-Catching Headlines
for Your News Releases and Articles
not only to news releases but to headlines you are writing for informational products such as special reports and audio tapes, speeches and headlines posted at the top of pages at your web site.

August 08, 2006

Bad news? Make the news conference work for you in a crisis situation

The news conference can serve you, the news-maker, very well if it is used sparingly and staged correctly. When you’re at the center of a bad news story.

Your product gets recalled. Your competitor files a multi-million dollar lawsuit against you for copyright infringement. A major explosion in your factory leaves 10 employees dead and 15 others injured. A member of your senior management team has just been arrested for operating a massive cocaine distribution operation out of your company’s warehouse. Your organization did something stupid and you must publicly apologize, then get on with business. If the media all get the same story, they might not give it as much emphasis because it isn’t their story exclusively.

For even more ways the news conference can help your public relations people put out fires, check out The News Conference: When to Hold It and How to Do It Right.

August 07, 2006

What journalists love and hate about online media rooms

Just as you create a paper media kit, create an electronic media kit right at your
web site under a button called “Media Room” or “Press Center.” This is the place reporters can stop if they need background or story ideas without having to navigate the entire site. They are less expensive than producing and mailing hundreds of media kits.

It’s easier to update electronically, as printed kits can become outdated very quickly and updating them can be very time-consuming and expensive. Journalists, also, don’t want to have to store big, bulky media kits in their newsrooms. They can simply bookmark your site, then return to it when needed.

For more tips on creating an online Media Kit that keep journalists coming back for more, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

August 06, 2006

How Should Your Press Release be Presented?

Making a good impression is important when pitching your press release to media outlets. Over-extravagance, however, can produce the wrong impression. Try to avoid these mistakes:

-Wasting money on expensive, ostentatious “packaging” for your news releases, such as a release rolled up and tucked inside a gift box that’s then wrapped in colorful plastic that’s tied at the top with a big bow. This problem seems to be an epidemic among those who are publicizing fund-raisers and society balls.

-Particularly annoying are news releases sent in packages that also contain confetti or glitter. An unsuspecting editor removes the release and watches the entire mess fall into her lap.

-Even worse are news releases that cannot be extracted from cardboard mailing tubes.

Learn more mistakes to avoid in 52 Tips for Kick-Butt News Releases.

August 05, 2006

The Best Months for TV Publicity

Did you know certain times of year, you are almost guaranteed to get your story on the air? You just need to understand the schedule of television and sweeps periods.

Sweeps periods are crucial months for TV stations. Stations beef up their coverage to draw in as many viewers as possible. February, July, October and November are sweeps months.

These are very, very busy times, but as soon as these sweeps periods end, freedom opens up in newsrooms. The non-sweep months are easier to get the attention you desire from the media.

December is the month when everybody is going on vacation. In addition, there are fewer people around providing pitches. Lean newsrooms are even leaner, and reporters are desperately looking for stories. The week between Christmas and New Years in an ideal time to pitch your story.

Find out more at How to Get on Local TV News Tomorrow.

August 04, 2006

Why Does Your Business Need a Blog?

Blogs are an incredibly easy and inexpensive way to publish on the web. The following points illustrate how blogging technology can help your business:

-Blogs are a great way to get your site noticed by the search engines - search engines love blog entries. Many people who have blogs have discovered that their blog entries are getting faster inclusion in the search engine, and more importantly, higher rankings on the search engines. Try it for yourself - you may be surprised!

-Blogs are a great way to position your company in the eyes of your customers, your industry, and the press. Blogs can be used to support whatever positioning you wish to achieve: superiority, innovation, playful, giving, environmentally conscious, etc.)

-Blogs convert into sales and profits – those companies who actively use blogs as part of their marketing program have discovered that blogs bring in more visitors to your website and that a high percentage of those who visit a blog, if properly influenced through that blog’s content, will actually buy from their company.

For more information about the advantages of blogging, check out Blogging for Business.

August 03, 2006

Are People Still Afraid of Opening Attachments?

Absolutely. Media people hate getting attachments. Do not send attached files until you have permission to do so. You want to send an ordinary, plain old email. No fancy HTML stuff in it. No attached files.

If you’re a reporter in a hotel room and you happen to be paying for Internet access by the minute, it’s incredibly expensive. When somebody you have never heard of sends you a huge attachment that can take 15 minutes to come through you find out it’s this press release that could have been sent in text, and besides which it has nothing to do with your magazine, you’re so mad.

There are other reasons why not to send attachments. Many people don’t open attachments due to concerns with viruses. Don’t do it until you’re invited to do so.

For more information on writing and sending news releases, look at Secrets for Getting Through to the Media Online.

August 02, 2006

Optional Attachments to Get Your Press Release Noticed

If appropriate, consider a “tips list” to accompany your news release.

For example, if the release is about your tips booklet on “51 Ways to Make Moving Day a Breeze” attach a separate sheet with 7 tips taken directly from the booklet. Include the phrase “Permission to Reprint” at the top. Below that, list a headline such as “7 Tips for Moving Day,” then list the tips.

At the end, include a paragraph explaining how the booklet can be bought, and the price.

Find out more ideas that will draw attention to your news release at 52 Tips for Kick-Butt News Releases.

August 01, 2006

What Should You Wear for a Television Interview?

Wardrobe has changed a great deal in television. It used to be the suit was the only way to go. Today’s wardrobes are far more casual and relaxed.

The key to dressing for your interview is dress for your image. If you are being interviewed about something relaxed, be dressed naturally and real. Ask, “How will the host dress?” You don’t want to be underdressed, but at the same time, don’t be stiff looking.

What about colors? The safest color on television is blue. Contrary to what some people might say, reds also photograph well. Avoid white and avoid black. Always avoid patterns and prints, because they are distracting to people, and the camera can’t read them very well. If you’re going to have any patterns or prints, for a woman, put them underneath in the blouse, never on the outside.

What else do you need to know before your television interview? Find out at How To Be A TV Show Host’s Dream Date.

Copyright © 2006 by Breakthrough Consulting, All Rights Reserved.