Three things you need to know before sending
your next press release:

By Ashley Wirthlin  author and editor of Public Relations Blogger

While sending out press releases is an important part of or PR, there is an appropriate time and place to do so. Bear in mind that news publications and bloggers are often in need of your press releases as they make up a large portion of their stories.

The Internet has made it possible for PR professionals to reach their customers directly; this means that your target audience is much, much larger than it was when your press releases were being sent to media contacts only. Now, you’ve got to consider all of the readers your press release will reach, and those that you hope your press release reaches.

If you ever doubt the need for your press release, go through the points below before sending it out. Here are 3 important things to consider when writing a press release and if it is time to, well, release it:

- Your story’s “newsworthiness”. This can involve a few things:

• Relevance
• Effects/ Consequences or Repercussions (on customers, the community, the general public, etc.)
• Effects/ Benefits (for your company and brand or the company and brand that you represent)
• Importance (which can relate to relevance)
• Timeliness (which can also relate to relevance)

- Its optimization for the Internet. This involves a few things as well:

• Keyword optimization. SEO (search engine optimization) is an important part of anything you publish on the Internet. Ensuring that your press release will show up in the search results of the millions of Internet users who search with Google, Yahoo!, or Bing can greatly increase your audience reach and site traffic. You can find some tips for SEO from Brad Shorr here and some of my own here.
• The release’s title. This involves some SEO skill as well, but it more importantly involves creating a title that is captivating, interesting, and explanatory of the release’s information and affects on the reader. Make sure it is succinct, to the point, and creative.
• Image titles. More about this can be read in Brad’s guest post, but to summarize, your images ought to be optimized with keywords as well. When uploading an image to a blog post or even to a press release make its name optimized with similar keywords you’ve used throughout the entire copy; this can help with search engine results.

- The style, form, and make-up of the release. Things that should be found in a press release can and should include:

• Release date. This can be a future date, or the day you send the press release out. If you are sending the release to press contacts, ensure that you indicate if the press release needs to be released on a specific date,
• Answers to these questions: who, what, when, where, and why. This should cover the above characteristics of being newsworthy: what is happening, who does it affect, why is this news “news”, when it happened, and where.
• Your most relevant information ought to be at the top of the news release or accompanying pitch; this will help readers and those you pitch to get the gist of your release and story and to understand why it is important news.
• The boilerplate. This is where you can briefly describe your company, what you do, and who you are. This is also the place to describe any company that you are working with that you cover in the release. For example, if you are a technology company taking on a new client, explain your company and their company as well. They will appreciate it, and most likely post your press release to their news/ media room to share with their customers and visitors.
• Links and suggestions for action. Your press release is a great place to get people to act. Don’t use the press release as an advertising tool, but rather a tool to offer value to your customers and potential customers; offer a free eBook, White Paper, whatever, just get them clicking and visiting your site.
• Lastly, the tone of your press release will need to change depending on who you pitch the press release to, if you are simply adding it to your website and a few other press release distribution sites, and if what kind of publication you are pitching. People who know a lot about your industry will want different information than someone who knows enough about your product or industry on a consumer level.

The key to having success with press releases is to continue releasing them with a steady flow of news. Though a release sent out once may keep traffic and media coverage going for a little while, there will undoubtedly be more news coming from other companies that will bump your story out of the limelight. Keep the news coming. For some tips on making newsworthy news, check out another post here. Just remember, there is always need for more good stories.

What are some tips you have about releasing and writing press releases?

Ashley is a marketing and management graduate of the University of Portland, a Marketing Associate of the H Media Group, and creator of the Public Relations Specialist Certification Program (PRS) sponsored and provided by BusinessTraining.com. She plans to launch the PRS program early 2010.
She also just released an 80+ page eBook that can be downloaded for free at http://publicrelationsblogger.com andhttp://publicrelationsbook.com.

© 2010 www.media-training.info

How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

Plan in advance what you will wear when you are interviewed on camera. Learn what looks good on camera and what to avoid.

Whether it’s a live interview on the six o’clock news, an employee training video or a on camera speech you’ll want to come across as someone reputable and reliable. So, how should you dress for TV? What should you wear when you are going to be on television? What colors look best on TV?

Some clothing will look good to the camera and some will distract. The worst on camera offender- light color clothes like white, pink and yellow. Light colors get washed out in the lighting. The detail is gone. The reason? A camera doesn’t see light the way your eye does Too much bright to dark contrast and something’s got to give. So either the bright or dark color loses detail. In other words, just because it looks good to your eye does not mean it will look good to the camera. The contrast ratio problem also applies to dark clothing. Pure black and navy blue clothing will loose all detail and appear like a solid dark blob. Same problems for pink and yellow colored clothes- stay away.

Best color clothing for television medium to medium-dark blues. Look at television sets and professionals on television, you’ll find blue as the color of choice.

Something else to avoid- clothing with fine patterns. They will cause a moiré (a distracting wavy effect) pattern when seen on TV. Examples of some clothing that my cause this are, Herringbone patterns on a jacket or small check patterns.

If in doubt bring several sets of clothing to the video shoot and consult with the director. The best types of clothes to wear are solid colors and pastels.

What To Wear On Television Checklist:

 -No white or dark clothing  -Several set of clothes so the director has a choice –  No beeping watches          -Pager and cell phone turned off   -Take a comb, makeup, and mirror   -Eyeglasses, if must wear get glare free type or frames with no lenses   -Don’t forget to get a good night sleep before the shoot

Remember when dressing for TV, the camera “sees” things differently than the human eye. Keep it simple, solid colors, pastels, no fine patterns or distracting jewelry.

If you have any questions about what will look good for your TV interview call the director or your contact person before the day of the video shoot. They will appreciate it and together you can look your best.

© 2010 www.media-training.info

How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

Have the CEO and any others that may need to talk with the press media trained. Be ready before the media calls. Don’t try to “wing it.” Media training will show your spokespeople how to get their message delivered to the media.

Media Training is learning how to tell your story in the most compelling and interesting way. It’s how to take control of an interview and transform contentious questions into positive “on message” answers.

Think of it as grabbing the steering wheel- you take control. Staying on message is simply a matter of “grabbing the wheel” of an interview and steering it across the bridge. You “bridge” the interview from the question you don’t want to answer to the answer you want to give.

While you can’t tell a report what to ask, you can control your answers. Politicians do it each day. They bridge tough, unwelcome questions with phrases that begin with. “I can’t tell you that, but what I can tell you is… “Let’s put your question into perspective….” “The real issue here is…. There are many roads that help you navigate your way from hostile question to an on-target message…and you can deliver it with a smile without being evasive or combative. “Message masters” perfect this, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall….practice, practice, practice.

Don’t talk with any reporter until you talk with one of our media trainers. Be prepared, get your message delivered, get trained on how to deal with the media.

Comments and questions welcome.

©2010 www.media-training.info

How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

Have b-roll video available for the press. This is video that you hand out to the press that is covering your event. Produced by you- you control what is shown.

Having b-roll to hand out to the press is a great way to be media friendly, get press coverage and control the message.

Definition: But first, what is b-roll and why is it important. B-roll is the video that TV news uses to illustrate an on air story. For an example let’s imagine a news story about the President going to China for trade talks. When you hear the reporter’s voice saying “the president left the White House this morning full of hope for his trade mission”, you might see video of the president walking to the helicopter on the White House lawn. The video of the president walking would be the b-roll.

Importance: Why is b-roll important? The Television press can’t do a story without video to show what they are talking about. No video, no story or a shorter story done with the on camera news anchor reading it. Make it easy for the television media to do a story on you. Give them the video to do it.

Control: Where b-roll becomes even more important to you is, if you have the video created for you by a professional video production camera crew you control what is shown and how it is shown. For example let’s say your company has five locations and four of them are old and need upgrades. But, you have one brand new modern up to date facility. You would have the video created of the new location. That way when you give out the video to the press you are controlling which of your locations they show and what they show.

Advantages: The two advantages of you having b-roll to hand out again are:

- It makes it easy for the press to cover your business. Thus more coverage

- You are able to control what the press can show to the public.

Hand out b-roll another tool you can use to be more media friendly and advance your media relations. Questions or comments please let us know.

©2010 www.media-training.info

How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

The details: Step two Build A Media Room

Build a media room. A room designed to make it easy for you and the press to conduct an interview at your offices.

The media room is a quit place where interviews can be conducted with members of the media. For a room ready for television/video interviews this is what we would recommend:

Windows- The room should have no windows. Television cameras are not like the human eye and do not take well to mixed types of light. (Need more info the technical aspects of this? Just email us and we can go into the details with you.)

Room Lights- While we are on the subject of lights what should you do for lighting in your new media room? Most importantly make sure the overhead lights in the room can be switched totally off and on from a switch in the room. If there are several sets of lights in the room then each set should be individually controllable and even better if they could also be dimmed.

Media Lights- Should you install media lights? That will be up to you. If you do enough media interviews or do video recording in the room for internal purposes then you may want to. If you decide not to then each television crew will bring in their own lights. If you decide to install media lighting ask a local videographer that you have worked with for their suggestions on what lights to get. (Note the lights used by camera crews are different then normal room lights in the type of light they make. If you put lights in your media room make sure they are the correct type.)

Access- Being handicapped accessible is critical so the video crew can roll in their cart of gear with ease. No steps. If the crew has to carry heavy equipment up steps they will quickly cut back on the gear they bring into the interview. The potential result- your spokesperson may not get the crews best lighting work. Thus may not look as good on video as they could have.

Walls- As we said above no windows on the walls. What we recommend would be for one or two walls to have a blue curtain on an overhead track so it could be moved back if desired. Other walls could be carpeted with a blue/gray color material. And it would be great if there were a bookcase in the room also. The various material described above will give the videographer several looks to choose from. Also several people could be interviewed in the same room and still have it look as if they were in different locations.

Chairs- The room should have straight back chairs that do not swivel. This will keep the person being interviewed from nervously swings side to side during the interview. The room should contain not much more then four chairs and an end table or two. No big table taking up half the room. Put a table in the room and it’s no longer a media room it’s a conference room. Keep it simple don’t crowd the room the crew needs space to work.

And lastly something your media interview room should not be- a storage room. Resist the urge to store everything you are not using in the media room.  Keep your room as a ready to go resource.

Any questions please ask. Comments welcome.

© 2010 www.media-training.info

How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

The details: Step One Working With Reporter Deadlines

  Know that when a reporter calls they are under a time deadline. No you can’t call them back next Wednesday. Chances are if they are calling now they need it now.

  Reporter deadlines are not like many of the deadlines in the corporate world. With the internet and 24-hour broadcast news there really could be a deadline every minute. Also with cut backs in staffing fewer reporters are doing more stories and they are being given less time to work on them.

  Work with reporters, understand there deadline needs and you become a resource that they go to over and over again to get a quote or information. Help them out once and they’ll be back because they’ll know are reliable and can be counted on.

  Remember media coverage equals free publicity. Think of it call commercial time that you don’t have to buy.

  One quick word about what to do when that reporter calls. Yes, they are on deadline and you want to help them out so you get the coverage. But, don’t rush into making a mistake in what you say. Instead when they call tell them something like “I just walked in can I call you back in five minutes.” That will give you time to think and that short wait for the five-minute call back will still meet their need for quick action.

  Also remember a session with a good media trainer will prepare you for these quick reporter encounters. Get a media coach before you get those reporter calls.

  Bottom line:

 Reporter deadlines are a fact of life in dealing with the media. Work with them, become a valuable resource and get free publicity for years to come. Get media training and be your best at dealing with the media.

© 2010 www.media-training.info

How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

 Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

 √ Know that when a reporter calls they are under a time deadline. No you can’t call them back next Wednesday. Chances are if they are calling now they need it now.

 √ Build a media room. A room designed to make it easy for you and the press to conduct an interview at your offices.

 √ Have b-roll hand out video available for the press. This is video that you hand out to the press that is covering your event. Produced by you- you control what is shown.

 √ Have the CEO and any others that may need to talk with the press media trained. Be ready before the media calls. Don’t try to “wing it.” Media training will show your spokespeople how to get their message delivered to the media.

 √ Plan in advance what you will wear when you are interviewed on camera. Learn what looks good on camera and what to avoid.

 √ When the video “crew” comes to record you for an on camera television interview treat them well. Be nice to the technical folks and they’ll be nice to you. A happy cameraperson will make sure you are looking your best when you are on camera.

 Next week we go into detail on the six steps above and tell you all you need to know about each step.

 (C) 2010 www.Media-Training.info  Maryland and Virginia

Media Training Washington, DC;

Comments welcome.

Public Relations and Crisis Management

By Ashley Wirthlin  author and editor of Public Relations Blogger

The end of year holidays can be a great time to grab some free publicity. I found a post on Susan Young’s “Get In Front Blogging”, site that tells us exactly how to grab some of that free air-time. It’s a great primer in dealing with the media. Reprinted below with her permission is that helpful post.

Huge PR Window for You to Get Publicity

by SUSAN R YOUNG on NOVEMBER 19, 2009

There are certain times of the year that news comes to a screeching halt. One of these times is staring us straight in the face: the long Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. State legislative sessions are typically on break, school is out, people are traveling, shopping and stressing.  This is an ideal time to develop and pitch stories.

Even though business and government may be slower than usual, newspapers are still being printed and TV and radio stations still have on-air programming spots to fill.

You can help.

After spending 10 years in a busy radio newsroom, I covered the same holiday stories that the media covers today–gas prices, airline travel, food, relatives, stress, shopping, house guests and football games. Sound familiar?

Consider this. Many stories that may seem weak or tough to pitch during a busy news cycle can easily grab the attention of a reporter during the slower holiday season. Thanksgiving is here and Christmas and New Year’s are right around the corner. It’s time to be proactive.

Here are 3 quick and easy tips for getting coverage on long weekends. By the way, #3 can be used for your blogs or e-zines too.

1. Remember that Thanksgiving Day is on a Thursday. Many people take off the entire week, through Sunday, November 29.  If you send out your press release or pitch on Monday or Tuesday (11/23 or 11/24) , the reporters can use it anytime over the course of the next seven or eight days.  The media is open 24/7. Your sleeper story on a busy news day could be a big headline over the extended holiday.

2. Keep it undated. If you have an “evergreen story” with no real date attached to it, that’s ideal for coverage over a long weekend and slow news cycle. You may send the release out as a Thanksgiving story and be pleasantly surprised to see it was picked up by reporters a few weeks later.

3. Get creative!  Stay away from the typical seasonal stories that reporters cover. Hard news and business stories are ideal for these time periods. Cause-related marketing with nonprofits are newsworthy too. For example, most groups hustle for holiday food drives in November and December yet there are plenty of hungry people in July. Does your company or family volunteer year-round? If so, pitch the story. Organize an off-season beach cleanup with your co-workers. Announce a new program or partnership on mentoring with a school or community group.

Take advantage of this window of opportunity by planning ahead and developing new ideas and energy.  The reporters will appreciate your efforts and you can build critical relationships with them for future pitching and coverage.

Tagged as: Business, holiday, media, media training, News, news coverage, nonprofits, PR, publicity, reporters, Thanksgiving, Christmas, business, media relations

Link to the original article:

http://www.getinfrontblogging.com/business/huge-pr-window-for-you-to-get-publicity/

You can follow Susan on Twitter @sueyoungmedia and please check out her blog at www.getinfrontblogging.com.

(C) 2009 www.media-training.info

The blog post below is from “Harry’s Place” ( http://www.hurryupharry.org/ ) political bog and is reposted here with permission. We have added comments before the original post regarding the media training lessons that can be taken from the story.

Please read the story below and think about what we can learn from their mistake(s). In this example an Obama Administration official agrees to an interview on her subject of expertise at he White House. For our purposes it doesn’t matter who she is or what the topic is. What matters to us is that the interview goes in a bad direction for her and by reflection her boss (The President).

As you will see when you read the story the interview guest says she was mislead about the topic and was used to give an air of credibility to a subject that she must likely disagreed with. Think about how if she had taken ten minutes to do some research into the show, there would have been no controversy; the interview would never have been done. If she did not have the ten minutes to check on the shows credentials herself then how about a staff person or how about he press office. It’s that an important part of what they do?

Anyway read on and you will see what I am getting at- Know who is interviewing you and any hidden agenda they might have.

She should have hung up

Gene, October 24th 2009, 3:56 pm

One of the first things we tell our media training clients is that they should eliminate the TLAs (three letter acronyms)- pun intended. Cut out the TLAs, techno speak and jargon and you are well on your way to getting your message delivered. 

To the point of communicating clearly, I saw a blog post, reprinted below, telling emergency workers the importance of clear communications and thought that we could all take a lesson from it in how we communicate with and deal the media.

I think this sentence from their post says it all:

“While your target audience may understand specialized language, acronyms, and regional slang it is important to remember that they will not be the only ones looking at what you create. Not communicating using common terms will limit the ability for your message to be understood by a broader audience.”

The entire post is reprinted below with permission.

Communicate In Plain English

Posted by Dave at 12 October, 2009, 6:00 am

Josh Hanagrane wrote an interesting post at CopyBlogger titled Blogging Is A Dialect: Do You Speak It? While the post is deeply involved with discussion about dialects, language, and that successful blogging = relationships, there is a simple and important point that needs to be understood and more importantly practiced.

Communicate in Social Media using “plain english”.

One of the major directives in the Incident Command System (ICS) is that responders and providers use common terminology or “plain english” in communicating with one another. This practice is meant to avoid misunderstanding while operating with providers from other agencies and possibly other geographical areas areas.

The same can be said about Social Media. While your target audience may understand specialized language, acronyms, and regional slang it is important to remember that they will not be the only ones looking at what you create. Not communicating using common terms will limit the ability for your message to be understood by a broader audience.

Try to keep your Social Media simple and uncomplicated.

 http://piosocialmediatraining.com/2009/10/communicate-in-plain-english/

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Through the power of Social Media individuals, groups, and large corporations all have an equal opportunity to be heard. The mission of the content here at PIOSocialMediaTraining.com is to empower Agencies to effectively engage in the creation of Social Media to achieve their own unique goals.

(C) 2009 www.media-training.info