Welcome to Reriani Commumication Blog. Here I will give my oponion on a field that I am very passionate about! Your comments are always welcome.
The content and opinions expressed on this blog are not endorsed by nor reflect the views of any company or organisation I work with.
Public Relations is the art of creating interest in you, your company, and your product/service by convincing others to report about who you are, what you do, and why it’s important to the world at large. Public Relations can therefore be defined as the art and science of interfacing organizational roles, objectives and procedures with public expectations.
To help your media message succeed, it should include one of the following. Facts and statistics, opinion, controversy, relevance, information difference or timing.
Effective public relations is a process and its essential first step is research. Nowadays, research is widely accepted by public relations professionals as an integral part of the planning, program development, and evaluation process. Before a public relations program is undertaken, information must be gathered, data collected, and interpretation done. Only after the first step is performed, can organizations begin to make policy decisions and map out strategies for effective communication programs.
The second step in the public relations process, is program planning. Prior to the implementation of a public relations activity, it is essential that considerable thought must be given to what should be done and in what sequence to accomplish an organization’s objectives.
A good public relations program should be an effective tool to support an organization’s business, marketing, and communications objectives. In other words, public relations planning should be strategic.
A press release is more than words it’s a visual document that will first be assessed by how it looks.
I’m referring to more than font size or letterhead. I’m talking about the actual layout of the words. Whether received by mail, fax or e-mail, a journalist — often unconsciously — will make decisions about whether to read the release based on how the release is laid out. Big blocks of text and long paragraphs are daunting and uninviting. Short paragraphs and sentences make for a much more visually inviting look.
When writing a non-hard news release, I often use a simple formula — the lead paragraph should be one or two sentences at most. The next paragraph should be very, very short.
A features or lifestyle editor is a very different creature from a city desk editor. If you’re promoting the opening of a new winery, the food and wine editor may be interested in all the details about what kind of aging process and wine press you’re using. The city desk editor just wants to know when the grand opening is and what’s going to happen there.
You want to know my acid test? If it’s newsworthy and if it’s useful to the reader. It’s that simple.
There are many factors to weigh when considering the need to send out a press release. As a publicist I have sent thousands of releases over the years and while there are no hard and fast rules, the most important factor is that you’ve got to make sure it’s newsworthy and useful to the reader. Any thing else and it’s just a waste of time for the members of the media.
A good press release can accomplish a lot of things too. It can be used to announce information to the public, your investors, the media, your customers and even your competitors about you and your activities.
Special thanks to
By Scott Lorenz
President of Westwind Communications
Email: scottlorenz@westwindcos.com
Website: www.westwindcos.com
1. Announce a new service.
2. Announce a new product.
3. Tie in with a national holiday, a birthday or anniversary.
4. Report a new study of your own and your analysis or forecast.
5. Tie in with a controversy by commenting on it.
6. Co-op an event with the media.
7. Utilize a national survey or study to your benefit.
8. Announce your exhibit at a trade show or convention.
9. Commission a survey and report the results.
10. Write a white paper and announce its availability at your web site.
11. Create and promote a special event.
12. Use a current news event to frame your release.
13. Host a seminar and announce the information discussed.
14. Announce an upcoming speaking engagement.
15. Schedule a speaking engagement at the local library… for free.
16. Make reprints of speeches available at your website.
17. Create a contest and offer a prize that’s newsworthy.
18. Pricing and policy changes.
19. Patents and trademarks.
20. Litigation won.
21. Announce the results of a new study.
22. The number of hours your employees donate volunteering in your community.
23. Involvement in various community events and activities.
24. Innovative use for your products.
25. First person stories about people using your product or services.
26. New clients you’ve obtained.
27. New testimonials.
28. Celebrities that use your product or service.
29. Financial projections and forecasts.
30. Announce a public appearance.
31. Appointments by government officials to offices.
32. Retirement of well respected and revered employees.
33. Recognition of long-time employees with 25 years of service or more.
34. Internal promotion of key staff members.
35. Send a letter to the editor and CC the media and your audience, “in case they miss it.”
36. New members of important committees.
37. Results of an election.
38. The passage of an important resolution.
39. Anniversary of the founding date of the organization or company.
40. Charitable donations by your organization.
41. ISO 9001certification of your company.
42. New awards won.
43. Association membership.
44. Publicly release a letter from a soldier or someone with poignant thoughts.
45. Report on a public project and offer insight to the problem.
46. Protest an activity or issue.
47. The sponsorship of a community event.
48. How to apply for internships in your company.
49. How to apply for scholarships offered by your company.
50. Open house where people can tour your plant, office etc.
51. Create an award to honor individuals in the community.
52. The appearance in front of a public entity, i.e., testimony before the US Senate.
53. Host a public debate.
54. Announce a fact finding trip and then report your findings.
55. Host a celebrity event and tie in your company.
Put up a web site with great content and appealing offers, and you still have to work hard at getting visitors to come have a look.
If you have an archive of articles, though, you can quickly and easily solve this dilemma. Convert those articles into newsworthy press releases and distribute these media magnets online, then enjoy increased web site traffic, both directly and indirectly.
The direct impact of distributing press releases online comes from readers who view them on various newsfeeds and then click through to your site from the links in the release. Among those readers are often journalists, who then can give you a big boost in credibility and visibility when they write about you in their publications.
Because online news sites are considered high-quality sources of information, distributing press releases online also produces the indirect effect of raising the rank of your web site pages in search engines due to the links in the press releases.
A mass explosion of free publicity is the best reward to launching a successful
PR campaign. The ultimate goal of a PR campaign is to receive loads of free publicity about your book, product, service, or cause.
This type of free publicity most often leads to more sales, brand awareness, strategic alliances, and so on. Making headlines is the greatest and fastest way to make people want to do business with you.
Achieving free publicity success often involves research and doing your homework. However, the rewards are well worth all the time and effort you
put in. Imagine receiving a feature story about your book, product, service, or cause in a newspaper or magazine for free? Advertising is expensive and most likely would cost a pretty penny to publish a full feature article in a newspaper
or magazine. Learning how to successfully pitch stories to the media could bring in tons of free publicity.
Your PR team should actively seek to build relationships with industry analysts who cover your product areas. Reporters and your customers seek out analysts for their opinion on important industry announcements, trends and vendor suitability. Well-briefed and enthusiastic analysts are indispensable advocates for your company.
Many analysts also publish newsletters and reports, which are often well-read within corporate computing sites. The downside to analyst relations is that their services are often retained by your competitors. Remember that when you communicate with the analyst community, you’re also communicating with your competitors.
Special thanks to CR Cataunya Ransom
Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Mosnar Communications, Inc
Website www.megapowerhouse.com
1. Release
The first step is to prepare a media or press release about an announcement. It is important to consider that your release should be telling a newsworthy story. New additions, breakthroughs, mergers, acquisitions, research findings, etc. A media or press release will tell the story that you are trying to pitch.2. Research
Make sure to find media publications that are related to your story pitch. Look for chemistry by matching publications that focus on your industry, topics, reviews, etc. This is the single most important step to receive the most free publicity exposure. A great release and story that is pitched to the wrong media source will never get picked up.3. Pitch
When pitching your story remember you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. Be ready to pitch your story in 30 seconds or less. Identify why your story pitch is significant to the media source and how readers can benefit from your story pitch.4. Promote
Allow media publications to find you by promoting your release. Try using press release wire services to help promote your release. There are a number of free press release wire services like http://www.prlog.org/ or http://www.i-newswire.com/.5. Build
Start building relationships with the media and become a lead source for media publications. Give them what they want: a great story!
Media publications run on news and supplying news is what will get you free publicity. Mastering how to strategize to receive the best media publicity involves knowing how to match your story pitch to the right publications. Keep researching, keep pitching!
Writing a press release for the purposes of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and driving Web traffic is very different than writing one to get the attention of editors in traditional media.
The main difference between writing a traditional press release and an online press release is that the online press release is keyword-optimized. That means that the content of the press release should include relevant keywords that relate to the business or product being promoted.
Your customers are your secret weapon in PR. An application story is a story that the media writes about your customers, and a case study is a story that the PR team writes about your customer.
The terms are interchangeable. Either way, the PR team will work to locate customers with interesting or unique applications of your products. Once the PR team locates the user, the PR team will interview them and make a determination as to whether or not the story is compelling and the customer is articulate.
The PR team will also work with the subject to secure approval for their participation. Once the interview is complete, the PR team can write up a case study. Case studies can make powerful marketing collateral on your web site and act as jump points for staff-written editorial coverage in the trades. The only downside to case studies is that they tend to be time consuming to produce.
An alternative to writing a full-blown case study is to encourage the media to cover the story on their own. This is usually accomplished by the PR team pitching the story directly to an appropriate reporter, often as an exclusive, so that the reporters can write their own story. Application stories make wonderful reprints, and carry greater credibility that a company-written case study. The only disadvantage of an application story is that your PR team cannot exercise final control over what the writer writes, whereas with a case study, you exercise total control.
Special thanks to Bill Stoller
Bill’s exclusive new site:
http://www.PublicityInsider.com
1. Thou Shalt Be Professional. No goofy fonts, rainbow paper or silly gimmicks. Even lighthearted press releases represent a communication between one professional and another.
2. Thou Shalt Not Be Promotional. If you can’t get enough objective distance from your company to write a press release that’s not filled with hype and puffery, hire someone to write it for you.
3. Thou Shalt Not Be Boring. Even the driest subject matter allows for some sparks of creativity. Journalists like knowing that there’s a human being communicating with them, not some corporate robot.
4. Thou Shalt Be Brief. Learn to cut out extraneous words. Keep your sentences short. Include only the points necessary to sell the story. The well-crafted one page press release is a thing of beauty.
5. Thou Shalt Know Thy Recipient. A features or lifestyle editor is a very different creature from a city desk editor. If you’re promoting the opening of a new winery, the food and wine editor may be interested in all the details about what kind of aging process and wine press you’re using. The city desk editor just wants to know when the grand opening is and what’s going to happen there.
6. Thou Shalt Use The Proper Tense. When writing a hard news release — a contract signing, a stock split, a major announcement, etc.) use the past tense (Acme Industries has changed its name to AcmeCo, the company announced today…) When writing a soft news release — a trend story, a personal profile,
etc. — use the present tense (Jane Smith is one of the best marathon runners over 40. She’s also blind. Thanks to new technology from AcmeCo, Jane is able to…).
7. Thou Shalt Think Visually. A press release is more than words — it’s a visual document that will first be assessed by how it looks.
I’m referring to more than font size or letterhead. I’m talking about the actual layout of the words. Whether received by mail, fax or e-mail, a journalist — often unconsciously — will make decisions about whether to read the release based on how the release is laid out. Big blocks of text and long paragraphs are daunting and uninviting. Short paragraphs and sentences make for a much more visually inviting look.
When writing a non-hard news release, I often use a simple formula — the lead paragraph should be one or two sentences at most. The next paragraph should be very, very short.
Like this.
8. Thou Shalt Tell A Story. How to arrange the facts of a hard news release is pretty much cut and dried. The old “who, what, when, where and how” lead and “inverted pyramid” concepts still hold. (Rather than engage you in a course in basic newswriting, I’ll direct you to a really good discussion of what the inverted
pyramid is.
Check out:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=38693
So let’s focus on a soft news release. The trend story, the feel-good company story, the “gee-whiz, I didn’t know anyone was doing that!” release. The difference between these releases and the hard news release is simply a mirror of the difference between a feature story in, say, the entertainment section of your newspaper and the breaking news report on page one. The hard news
story is about cold, hard facts (A mudslide closed portions of Interstate 70 last night, causing massive delays). A feature article about the guy who spends all day looking at seismograph readouts trying to predict where the next mudslide will occur will be very different. It’s likely to be in present tense, it won’t load all the facts upfront and it will be designed to draw the reader deep into the text. It is, in short, all about storytelling.
It’s difficult to evaluate success if an objective is posed in general terms. There are many criteria for determining leadership status, as there are for “increasing awareness.” “Generating coverage in top-tier media outlets” is a more specific, but sorely lacking. What kinds of media coverage are we talking about? What about quality and quantity of coverage? What results must be achieved?
About a year ago, numerous blogs were discussing the ostensible “death” of traditional PR. The dialogue centered on the idea that the competition and pressure of online media technology, like blogs, pod casts and RSS feeds, was slowly rendering this kind of PR obsolete.
In the wake of online media technology and advertising, the demand for traditional PR and the ability to handle, control, and drive a message effectively is more important than ever.
The core of traditional PR is both the delivery and the creation of the message. This means developing different story angles for different publications, matching the message to the medium, and shaping the pitch to sell the story to newspapers, trade publications, business magazines, syndicated columns, online publications, radio, television, and more.
While it’s certainly appealing to “establish company X as an industry leader,” it’s superficial and impractical at best. Is it necessarily reasonable for a particular company to be an industry leader? No! How can more than one company in a particular industry legitimately claim to be the leader? They can’t! Such lofty objectives like “establishing company X as an industry leader” risks exposing public relations professionals as wordsmiths without a true understanding for business, which executives want if they’re going to invite us in, much less listen.
Whether writing a movie, a sitcom, an opera, a book or a news article, a good story must have certain elements such as a theme, a hero, and a beginning, middle and end, to make it compelling. Journalists recognize a strong story within seconds, so learn how to tell yours quickly and succinctly. That’s good storytelling.
Many publications offer a variety of awards for innovative new products, or the best products in a review. In instances where the editors (as opposed to the readers) make the nominations, PR can play a big role in having your products considered. If the awards are determined based on a reader ballot, then be sure your PR team contacts the publication far enough in advance so that your company or your products can be listed on the ballot.
Many people do not realize that practices that maximize profitability during good economic times are the very same practices that help maximize profits or minimize losses during downturns. A strategic public relations campaign can strengthen a company’s position and competitive edge during a weak economy and support sales initiatives during a strong economy.
In an economic downturn, people still conduct business; there is just less of it. Positioning a company as a market leader and measurably increasing media visibility is what successful PR is all about. And businesses that survive will be those with the shrewdest PR strategies, the most creative approach to customers, the highest perceived value, the greatest service during and after the sale, and the fiercest sales force.
It has been calculated that the average American is subjected to some 3,000 advertising messages every day. If you add in everything from the badges on cars to slogans on sweatshirts, the ads in newspapers, on taxis, in subways and even playing on TVs in lifts, then some people could be exposed to more than that number just getting to the office. No wonder many consumers seem to be developing the knack of tuning-out adverts.
So what is the way forward? Public Relations reader, public relations.
Public Relations (PR) includes activities intended to promote understanding of your company or product and to promote goodwill towards you, your company and its products. Through PR activities you may assess and influence public opinion by delivering messages without incurring direct media costs. Advertising and PR are sometimes thought to be different names for the same thing. While they are both methods of promoting your business, there are many differences. Advertising is subjective hard-sell, Public Relation (PR) is objective soft-sell. You pay for advertising, you earn PR.
Due to their lack of information or knowledge on public relations, many businesses typically over-estimate or over-budget the cost of a prospective public relations/publicity campaign. What you get for your money and how effective the campaign will be is the real question? But getting the most publicity/PR exposure doesn’t mean you have to get the most expensive PR agency or specialist.
A good rule of thumb is to align yourself with a PR business that best reflects your business size. Most times their rates will be in line with your prospective PR budget. If you are a small business owner with two employees, you need not hire a high-dollar PR agency with dozens of employees. Find a PR business whose capabilities closely resemble your business.
Reriani Communications
