Archive for public relations
And the contest winner is…Paula Hubbs Cohen!
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Congratulations to Paula Hubbs Cohen of Peoria, AZ, who won the contest for worst press release opening. She wins a free copy of Press Releases Are Not a PR Strategy and a Starbucks gift card for this marvelous entry:
“The members of the Board of Directors are collectively proud and thrilled to announce that it’s executive director, who already owns a yards long list of awards (LOL), recently one 3rd Place Honorable Mention for her outstanding ode regarding the new palate of colors that have been used and will be used in all the foundations’s press releases from now on, giving all recipients a huge selection to choose from.”
She earned extra points with her punctuation and spelling errors. (Can you spot them?)
Her inspiration for this noteworthy entry was “a woman I used to work for who INSISTED that her name and title be prominently mentioned in the first paragraph of every single press release I wrote for her – no matter how awkward-sounding the phrasing. I would get into major-league trouble if I did not do this, and hence, used to dream about writing the most obnoxious, superlative-filled quotes for her – the problem being, she loved them. In addition, I was required to issue press releases about the most fluff stuff simply to appease her massive ego, so thanks for the opportunity to actually put pen to proverbial paper and vent some of the verbiage I apparently had stored-up for a number of years.”
Glad to provide you such catharsis, Paula, and thanks to everyone who entered! Happy writing.
Are press releases for reporters or customers?
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When you sit down to create a press release, should you write it for the media or for your customers?
The public relations purists would say you should write it for the media, in order to keep the copy at a higher intellectual level and avoid Barnum & Bailey Circus promotional ad copy. The social media advocates might say you should write it for a broader audience to include your customers, because the press release is disseminated on the Internet.
The answer is really a hybrid of both. PR thoughtleaders like Brian Solis and Deirdre Breckenridge write in their book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” that social media is reinventing the “aging” business of PR, and that yesterday’s PR techniques don’t work anymore. But, as they point out, social media gives you an unprecedented opportunity to make PR succeed more powerfully than ever before. Read More→
Does anyone really know what PR is?
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With apologies to one of my favorite 70s bands, Chicago, does anyone really know what PR is? Stop whatever you’re doing right now and jot down your best one-line definition. But don’t tell me what it is, because chances are, you’re wrong. If you’re a good friend of mine, I’ll be especially crestfallen that you don’t get it.
One of the noted textbooks on public relations by Cutlip, Center and Broom defines PR as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.” Read More→
When and why to conduct a PR audit
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Whether your product is a book, a software application, or an association, there comes a time when you realize that you can’t improve what you can’t measure. That is where a PR audit comes in.
I’m grateful to Cindy Kim for asking me to contribute to her blog, The Marketing Journalist, on the subject of PR audits. Here’s a snapshot of just a few of the Q&A, and check out her post for a wonderful analysis of audits, including reference to my friend Katie Paine, the “Queen of Measurement.”
Is PR auditing right for every organization? Why is PR auditing important to an organization when you can simply measure impressions from a monitoring tool?
The problem with a monitoring tool is that you can’t always dig down into the whys and wherefores of a particular impression. To supplement automated tools, it’s useful to have conversations in real time with the various audience segments to better understand how they are thinking, as well as to probe for Read More→
7 social media tips for new public relations graduates
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Thanks very much to Kagem Tibaijuka for posting these 7 social media tips from me at her site for new PR graduates, vox-popPRcareers.
How to get your press release into Google News
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Google News is an automated news aggregator, and many companies view it as a benefit to have their press release included on the site.
Writing a press release that gets into Google News is not as straightforward as it seems, however, as I learned from a recent post on Business Wire. Google has a list of 18 rejection reasons, but Business Wire feels there are only a few that occur repeatedly, and based on the number of releases that they send out daily on behalf of clients, they ought to know:
- If your release contains fewer than 125 words, Google News may reject it
- Any page larger than 256 KB may be deemed too large, and rejected
- If the title is too short or too long, it will be flagged so it’s best to keep headlines brief – between 2-22 words
- If your press release contains only a one-sentence paragraph or a large number of bulleted items, Google News may view this as “fragmented” and reject it
As if we didn’t have enough to remember already when it comes to writing press releases! Key words, search engine optimization, Google News optimization…
Are PR professionals afraid of the “New Rules”?
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If you haven’t read “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerman Scott, you’re missing out on a top guide on how public relations has changed and “how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing” to reach your buyers directly. You can find the book at his website www.webinknow.com or from Amazon and other online bookstores.
I re-read the book this past weekend (the revised 2010 edition), and there’s one section that I didn’t feel represented PR professionals properly – or, at least, not the PR professionals I know, most of whom are in Arizona. In chapter 7, “The New Rules of News Releases,” he writes that “many PR professionals have a fear of the unknown. They don’t understand how to communicate directly with consumers and want to live in the past, when there was no choice but to use the media as a mouthpiece….I also think there’s a widely held view about the purity of the press release as a tool for the press. PR professionals don’t want to know that hundreds of millions of people have the power to read their releases directly. It’s easier to imagine a closed audience of a dozen reporters.”
The book is brilliant and has helped completely change the way we look at public relations. I don’t think he has quite captured the issue here, however. Granted, he travels a lot more than I do and talks to way Read More→
The benefits of a digital age on press releases
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I was contacted by www.prmoment.com, which analyzes UK coverage of the world’s leading brands, to offer my perspective on the effects and impact of the digital age on press releases.
I believe that its impact has been mostly positive. Press releases in particular are now shorter, full of interesting multimedia components, and much easier to disseminate to segmented audiences. My prediction is that press releases will evolve in the next five years and will be called something else, and the traditional format we love to hate will finally dissolve. The combined brevity and complexity of such social media tools as twitter will continue to force PR professionals to craft more highly condensed pieces of information in an ever-widening array of formats to please individual audiences.
You can read the full article here, and find out what other highly regarded pundits are predicting.
Use Twitter to help break a story
Posted by: | CommentsDon’t forget that social media tools such as Twitter are helpful for reaching the circles of influence on your target demographic. Search Engine Marketing Specialist Anthony Kirlew has the guest post today about his experience helping a friend see the journalistic benefit of Twitter:
Anthony Kirlew
Recently, I was speaking with a friend who is looking to launch a new website for his business. He is extremely sharp when it comes to business but he is not fully dialed into the Web or social media. His new business is an RV Park, so he immediately told me that he did not think that his audience would be on Twitter, due to the demographics. I assured him that having a presence on Twitter may be more valuable to him than he might initially expect.
First, I told him that I could do some searches for him to find out if (and what) people were tweeting about RVs and RV Parks in the area he is looking to launch, and if so, what they were saying. I also mentioned that lots of journalists are on Twitter and Read More→
Where do you stand on accuracy in PR 2.0?
Posted by: | CommentsAs more and more “citizen journalists” go online via Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media, there is greater likelihood of typos and misspellings. In the online world as opposed to traditional media, there are no formal editors to proofread work. Where do you stand on accuracy in PR 2.0?
Peter Faur
My friend Peter Faur of Phoenix-based “Right Point Communications” and I are of like mind. In his blog, RightPoint, he writes about communications and includes a helpful grammar tip at the end of every post. I asked him to provide his input on grammar and spelling, and he shared with me this guest post:
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“The Miami Herald’s ombudsman, or reader’s advocate, recently asked a veteran teacher to review the Jan. 18 edition of the newspaper for grammatical errors. He was shocked that Elaine Kenzel found 133 errors. Read More→
