Media Relations For Beginners
My favorite definition of public relations is “Do good things. Tell people about it.”
John Jantsch author of Duct Tape Marketing defines Public Relations this way, “Public Relations activity for small business consists primarily of gaining positive mention of you company or your products in newspapers, magazines, news shows, newsletters, web sites and journals read by some portion of your target market.”
Let’s start with the simple directive “Do good things. Tell people about it.” First, before anything else, you have to do something good. That may be assisting a business in becoming more profitable, it may be allowing nonprofits to use your training facilities, it may be receiving an award – but you get the point. Do good things.
Do your homework, before you reach out to a writer, blogger, editor – research what they write about. When you read their stuff, think about ‘What is the hook here? What makes this story interesting?’ Twitter, Facebook, Google Alerts and Google searches are you best friends in doing this research. Also think about “Who are they writing for?” Just like you, they have a target audience; get a feel for who that audience is.
Be prepared to defend the impact of your news succinctly. Write it down and play the “So what?” game with your story before you call the writer – that’s where you look at your message and ask “So what?” and then respond to yourself. (So what if you sold Sage MIP Fund Accounting to XYZ nonprofit? So, because they are more efficient, they are now poised to increase their outreach to unassisted seniors by 30 percent.)
Make it easy for the reporter or writer. “I have a story about a nonprofit helping even more seniors and I think that it would be of interest to your readers because…”
Do what’s necessary to respond as quickly as possible to reporter’s calls or requests for information. If they are working under tight deadlines, and usually they are, if they don’t hear from you, they’ve got to move on to the next source.
Do refer them to someone who would be a better source than you. If you can answer their questions and/or provide a quote – that’s great. If they ask you something that is outside of your comfort zone, but you know someone who is qualified to answer, make the referral.
Do remember that this could be the first of many interviews. You are developing this relationship for the long term so nurture that relationship. Continue to reach out to the writer when you have new items of interest.
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