We’ve all experienced that frustration; you’ve got a fantastic story to tell, but no media wants to cover it.
If you’ve been scratching your head and wondering “why isn’t my PR working”, chances are you’re making few simple mistakes.
The good news is, if you can identify the issues and fix them, you’ll soon start getting cut-through and getting noticed.
Here are five of the most common reasons you’re PR isn’t working:
I know of a lot of businesses that spend more time writing press releases than they do pitching them to journalists.
This is because writing a press release isn’t something most small businesses do very often. As a result they can spends weeks and months going backwards and forwards over what to write, how to write it, getting it proofed, changing things and making a pretty PDF.
They then email it to a handful of generic mailboxes at a handful of media outlets, dust off their hands and think their work is done.
This is a huge mistake.
No matter how experienced you are at presenting to an audience, everyone gets nerves. Those butterflies in your stomach are a good thing, they keep you sharp, alert and ready. But controlling and harnessing those emotions takes a little work.
With the following tips, even the most reluctant performer can keep anxiety at bay and deliver a brilliant presentation.
Every journalist wants to be the first to cover a great story.
Securing an ‘exclusive’ is the best way to spike sales or views, so media organisations put a premium on this content. They can get very competitive to land one, and when then do, it gets more prominence and column inches than other stories.
So if you’ve got an ‘exclusive’, you’re sitting on valuable content. Make the most of this rare opportunity!
There’s a bewildering variety of jargon used in the media industry. For anyone new to this world, it’s very easy to confuse your aston with your elbow.
If you’re not careful a simple mistake or misunderstanding can cost you an amazing opportunity to profile yourself or your products to the world.
Thankfully, I’ve translated some of the most common terms so you can blend in and sound like an expert and avoid any blunders. But if you’re ever in doubt about a term, always ask.
If you’re not incorporating Facebook Lives into your marketing plan, you’re missing massive opportunity to connect with your audience and grow your business.
Live streams get three times more engagement than typical non-live videos and five times more views than images, according to AdWeek.
But if you don’t bring energy to your presentation, it’s likely to be big turn off. So here are three things you can do right now to give you Lives a boost of energy.
There is no point in creating content if it isn’t going to convert into sales or awareness or your business. You want people to change their behaviour and do something different.
It’s really hard to get people to change their behaviour. But you can do it and you can do it effectively and subtlety in every piece of content you produce.
We spring clean our homes – why not our businesses?
I’m a huge advocate of this approach and I believe that every business should be reviewing its goals and strategy every three months as well as annually.
A big part of this should be reviewing your PR strategy and what is and isn’t working. Your PR strategy is a bit part of driving sales in to your business.
Serial. Dirty John. Stuff You Should Know. My Favourite Murder.
Chances are, you’ll already be an avid fan of some podcast or another. And if you’re not, you’re likely to be in the minority, as podcasts continue to be one of the fastest growing media formats in the world.
It’s not hard to see why. Podcasts have essentially done to radio what Netflix did to TV - showed it up to be an outdated mode for consumption. Because podcasts are, essentially, radio shows, packaged up for listening on your own terms, whether that’s binge-listening the latest true crime series in one go or turning your morning drive into an lesson on astrophysics.
Most journalists will tell you they HATE getting press releases.
This is because most of them are a waste of everyone’s time. When I was a reporter I used to be inundated with them and they clogged up my email. It took precious time out of my day to scan and delete them.
But news outlets are crying out for stories and content, right? Right.
You finally land the media opportunity you have been working towards. You have been asked to put someone up from your business to join Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on the Good Morning Britain sofa tomorrow morning. That’s hundreds of thousands of eyes on your brand.
But who do you send?
This can be a really difficult decision and will often involve having frank conversations with your colleagues.
Here are my top tips for deciding who the best person to send is:
Getting people’s attention is harder than ever with double and even triple screening and every brand out there vying for your likes and shares.
So it’s more important than ever that your social media posts, press statements and blog posts are written in a simple and short format to give your audience the best chance of understanding what you are trying to say.
Here are my top tips for you to remember when creating content to give you the best chance of being heard AND understood.
We have all seen car crash interviews where someone has refused to answer the question.
If you want a reminder of some of the best ones (worst ones?) then click here, grab your popcorn and wait until you start hiding behind it.
