Category Archives: Public Relations Service

Web Sites and Publicity

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Get the most from all your media

It’s time to tear down all those walls in the office that keepPublicity and web sites departments separate. For example, let the IT people, or web people work with the publicity staff. If you source out any of these to a pr firm, or agency then have a meeting where they can discuss their projects and objectives and what plans are set for the future.

Let’s start with your company’s existing web site.

Maybe it is an eCommerce site, or an informative site to explain your services and products. Even if it is a B2B site, you need to break down the walls in your office (figuratively that is) as well as those in your mindset. The site needs to improve sales and visibility. Publicity can help if given the chance. Not all pr clients and professional publicity people can relate or understand how to make this work. Why, because everyone is caught up in doing business as usual, or old school thinking. The saying " don’t fix it if it isn’t broken" does not apply here.

I am trying to get you to think out of the box. There is a simple test to do for analyzing your web sites home page. Jamie Roche wrote an article telling people how to improve their home page visibly. After reading this you may say, well I don’t have an eCommerce site; we sell to distributors, or dealers, etc. You’re missing the point if you think like that.

It’s time to have this meeting I discussed with the PR department and IT department. Need help in trying to find how PR can make things happen for the web site? If you need help, then it’s time to bring in an outside pro. We can discuss this with you and show how to make things happen. I’m only a call away, or an email away. Just click on the Contac Us on the left of this page. And we’ll be right over.

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E-Mail Marketing for Publicity

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Using the tools can help a publicity campaign

Most public relations service companies use e-mail to disburse the press releases or to send a mass mailing announcing a newsworthy event.

As with all mass mailings, publicity can become a victim of too much mail that it gets trashed. Sending out a mass blast e-mail may not always be the best solution for a publicitye-mail marketing campaign. Sometimes it is best to target the few media reporters that best fit your press release or pitch for an article. e-Mail blast can be good for some news bulletins or to announce an event you might be holding. But I recommend that you are selective in that approach and choose the few media you really want to attend and send them a separate email with a personal invitation, not a generic one.

In our fast pace world of publicity, we need to slow down and target our audience, in this case it is the reporters or publishers. Doing this does require extra time, but it will pay off better than sending a blast and having no reporters attend.

This is true with press releases and press kits for pr clients. Not every release needs to be blasted to hundreds of media. Taking this easy approach only gets bad publicity for you and your company.
Knowing how to use e-mail marketing can be a major benefit to a company. It allows you to measure the response sooner than traditional mailings. And you have a stronger of reaching your prospect, media, than placing the release in an envelope and hope that it isn’t filtered (tossed out by the secretary) before it reaches your chosen destination.

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You Just Hired A New Grad, Now What?

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What to do with new publicity people

It doesn’t matter when or why you hired that "new" graduate into your pr department. What you need to do now is understand what you just did.

No, I’m not saying that was a mistake. I want to pass along a few pieces of advice that should help you better understand the new pr person.

new grads in prAfter hiring a new staff member most companies usually show them the process used in producing and submitting a press release. Some pr clients, or public relations firms don’t even do this. An article in PRSA gives some advice on the "Ten things you didn’t know about the grad…" I will summarize a few those in that article with my own added advice as well. These are a few things to consider with new pr grads:

  • They get bored easily

Typically, grads will keep resumes and revise them only to submit to other companies while working at your firm. To discourage this activity, keep them involved with projects. Provide encouragement while teaching how your company handles pr clients or the media.

  • Grads get jobs easily

Sounds crazy, but most pr grads find jobs easily. Some take low paying positions at non-profit organizations to get a start. This only gives them the false idea that jobs are easy to find.

  • No mentors for grads

If you hire a talented pr person, take the time to provide some mentoring. The majority of jobs filled are at small companies that cannot provide this time. Therefore, the pr person feels they are a one person department, learning by trial and error.

  • Their goal is to own their own PR Agency

The more aggressive grads are looking to one day begin their own pr agency. Keeping this in mind, work with those talented pr people to encourage their dreams. This will help you because that individual wants to learn faster. In the long haul, you too will benefit.

Overall, make sure you have this pr person work with you, not just for you. By doing this, both you and the new grad will make your pr clients look better.

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Making a Story Pitch Takes Talent

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How do you start the conversation?

publicity is like sellingProfessional publicity people know how to contact the media, know how to start a conversation and probably know what angle to present to the reporter. But do they really? Chances are these top publicity people get through the clutter by knowing the media on a personal basis. I don’t mean they go drinking together (or maybe they do), I mean they have built a long-term business relationship making it easier to contact them.

For the other pr firms and pr individuals, who make up about 75% of the publicity world, think about how you can improve your pitch to a reporter or publisher and get that article or press release published.

It’s all in the sales effort. Notice how different sales people get through and those who just never seem to. That’s because they have taught themselves over the years the fine art of salesmanship (or saleswomen ship).

I know of a great person who has taught thousands of people the art of "opening doors". You may have heard of Ari Galper. He has a web site called www.UnlockTheGame.com.

I am not trying to sell you on him. And I am not getting any commissions either. I know that he has a clear understanding how to get into meeting with people, usually by phone. But it just isn’t the sales tools that he teaches. If you apply what he explains to your publicity activities, you will be a better individual and in the long run it will help your pr clients as well as yourself.

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Are Your Publicity Clients Prospering?

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PR Clients need to deliver more

I have written several blogs and articles about involving the publicity departments with the marketing departments. Well is finally catching on. But only in few situations, usually when a company cannot meet its sales goals.

publicity incentivesPublic relations firms need to step-up to their pr clients and request meetings with the marketing staff as well as the sales departments. Discussions about how each is handling their departments to increase sales will open conversations to work collectively. Competition is not going to get less, but more intense, no matter your industry.

We are seeing that end users (customers) are expecting more from manufacturers. For example, when you make a major purchase like an automobile, you expect more than the rebates. You may negotiate for free oil changes, or extra large tires, etc. When you buy furniture, or appliances, you expect the company to provide free shipping, or some other added incentive. One of our snack food clients will be offering an “instant rebate coupon” that is on the package. It is this type of quick gratification that customers are looking for.

At PowerPR, the company’s blog also had a comment about this. The blog titled "Publicity to a PublicCelebrate incentive that wants More". PowerPR’s clientele is mainly in the manufacturing industry, so they see this as a need for publicity people to get more creative with clients to help sell products. They refer to the extras as being “surprised”.

As professional publicity people we need to address issues like this in order to have clients gain more visible and favorable publicity. 

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How To Get free Publicity

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Ask for help

If you have a unique product or a gimmick that needs to get publicity, think about asking for help. The kind of help in this case is not asking your publicity agency, or pr staff to do a lot, just have them send a press release to post that asks for publicity ideas to market the product.

Sounds like free ideas and publicity? It is. Just look at what a couple of attorneys did to market a new watch. The short article which was on Publicity Hound’s Blog this week had a posting of a watch that has the dials divided into six-minute-increments, that is how attorney’s bill you!

The frightening thing is a lot of people posted ideas telling them it was a great way to sell these to other industries.

Granted, it doesn’t take a lot of creativity to see the potential of the market.

What was interesting to me, that people were willing to offer suggestions. Plus, these people and many others reading the blogs  were probably telling their friends about this legal type of watch. That my friends is FREE publicity.

True, this will not work for all products or in most markets. But it shows you that with a little creative thought you can get publicity for most anything, even something as NOT unique as a watch.

Think about it, when was the last time a publication ran a press release on a common item as a watch? Remember, this watch isn’t a unique design, or runs on solar, or has special rings…it’s just an ordinary watch with the dials (the face) broken into six-minute segments. Incredible, but that’s publicity.

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Social Networking and Publicity

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PR people need to watch closely this meida

It isn’t any surprise that a bunch of new words "Social Networking", "Active Worlds" and a host of others are becoming part of the Internet vocabulary. PR people and all publicity companies need to keep in touch with this explosion of how networking is gaining a lot of attention.

Several articles about how social sites, like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and YouTube are now attracting advertisers to tap into this market. If you are a pr client, or have a Public Relations Service handling all your public relations activities, then you need to stay tuned with the markets as they grow. But don’t wait for the market to get saturated before becoming active in it. If you do, you will become one of hundreds of thousands trying to get visible in a crowded market.

iMedia Connection mentions these briefly in a couple of short articles on Promoting Your Brand In new Ways. They are doing a good service to keep us informed about social networking. Another writer, Cory Treffiletti, wrote an article about advertisers looking to cash in on this new media. I don’t fully agree that all of the social networks need to be hammered by advertisers. Such as Facebook, which is mainly a college "invitation" only network. If what Cory says comes true that it will soon allow political advertisers, then it won’t be long before all advertisers will have access to this media.

Notice how much attention this network is getting. Even I am addressing the issue. That’s more publicity for that market. As I have said many times before, Publicity is everywhere, you just need to identify how you can benefit from all the hype.

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Personalize Your Message

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Publicity is not generic

If you received a birthday gift from someone that said "to whom it may concern", or Occupant", you would probably dismiss the gift and be rather upset with the sender.

Well, if that were true, why would you send a publicity release, or a press kit and address a reporter in an email with a generic "subject" title? The best way to have press releases, or pitching a story viewed is to personalize it to the reporter, or publisher. Yes, this takes more time but the rewards to get published are greater.

Your public relations campaign should appear more personalized to the recipient. This means more than the name of the reporter or editor or publisher’s name on the envelope, or email address. Just as you would send a gift and personalize a note on the card, why not do the same to that media contact? If you have to ask why, then you obliviously are not getting the message I am making.

All industries are hit with hundreds of pubic relations agencies sending out thousands of releases every day. To make you stand out, use a personalized cover letter (do this even when sending it as an email), include good photos that tell or describe what the release is about, and make the press release, or story be informative, not a sales pitch.

These are just a few tips for any public relations person to follow. If you are a pr client, then make sure the people who implement your publicity campaign use these tips wisely.

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Write Press Releases With Links

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Build your image with SEO’s

Writing a press release is one part of building visibility with the media. Now you need to use the power of the Internet. Make the press release relevant to your site.

To do this, you need to add links that are relevant to your site and to the names of companies or people that are mentioned in the press release.

Although there is a mix of opinions about using links with press releases, it will add a lot of power to your visibility. How? Because the more relevant links you have, the better your position will be when people type keywords to find a product or company that offers what you do.

Don’t go wild and place a dozen links in the body of the text. This will be both annoying to the reader and it is a red flag to SEO’s, because they (the search engine spiders) think you are trying to fool them with relevant links.

Keep the text simple, yet informative, just like any press release or story you want published. Make it a point to include keywords that are in your web site. Again, be careful to not make the article or press release sound like a sales pitch. That will just get you lower on everyone’s list.

Read my blog about “Public Relations Needs Web Marketing”. It provides a few tips on how the two, publicity and web marketing, work best when you make it a team effort.

As you write releases in this manner more often, you will begin to see the value and power it has.

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Make Your Web Site Visitor Friendly

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Some call it Microcontent

What good is having a strong publicity campaign if your web site is poorly designed, or difficult to navigate.

Even a good publicity professional can do only so much to generate traffic to a pr clients web site. It is then up to your business web site to make customers feel good about the product or service.

What makes your site better than your competitor’s?
Several things. It can be the graphics, the text, the images, and the ease of navigation, among other things.

For this lesson, I want to discuss the content of the site. One writer, Ann Wylie, has an article that explains the "Microcontent" of a web site. Basically she divides the topic into several sections:

  • What is Microcontent and what it includes

  • Why it is important

Ann gives some good advice on what to do, and not do when building the content. When you use these tips, it will be helpful to your existing customers, potential customers, and above all, the media will praise it. Editors and writers will find things easily. This will bring a positive view because the good content will be easily understood.

In the article, advice includes these areas that are needed for Microcontent, such as:

  • Page Titles
  • Navigation Bars
  • Headlines
  • Subheads
  • Highlighted Text
  • and many other sections

A good example of why illustrates when you do a “search, find and save” and it is now in your bookmark. Then when you want to go back a few days or weeks later, the bookmark reads “Welcome to XYZ Corporation”, or “Untitled Page”. I’m sure you experienced this and clicked several bookmarks before finding the site you were looking for. And if you are like me, you can’t find it quickly, and decide to do another search.

So think about making your site more pleasing to visitors. It is good publicity for you and your company.

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