NEGATIVE PUBLICITY

Advertising - How To Improve Your Company PR

Public relations or PR is an invaluable tool for publicity, building brand awareness and communicating your key messages. However, if your PR is not good enough, you won’t get any positive coverage and ultimately no return on your investment. This is why most businesses employ a PR company, but not every business has this luxury. Therefore, the following is some useful advice on what NOT to do if you are looking to get some good PR.

1. Presenting a Non-Story

To achieve valuable media coverage, you need to give journalists a great hook. Don’t start with “We are delighted to announce…” or say that your story is newsworthy, the media will decide for themselves.

2. Lack of Research

Target journalists directly. Don’t send your information to the wrong department. It’s better to be strategic and send ten well targeted emails than a hundred generic messages to every editor in the country.

3. Poorly Written Releases

Your story will be instantly rejected if it is poorly written. Releases should be written using correct grammar, short impactful sentences and conveying who, what, where, how and why in the first couple of paragraphs.

4. Jargon

Clarity is essential. Using technical language may seem okay, but communications and press releases need to be in plain English for journalists and consumers.

5. Lack of Online Content

Don’t ignore online posts. Using SEO keywords and links to your website all make your content more search-friendly.

6. Poor Timing

Media lead times are critical. Christmas for instance will need to be sorted at least four months prior to the event to allow for festive coverage. Weekly magazines may have deadlines a few weeks prior to publication. Make sure you don’t leave it until the last minute and always be aware of media deadlines.

7. Unreliability

Don’t let the media down. If a slot has been allocated in a publication and the journalist is on a deadline, the last thing you should do is compromise a good relationship by failing to deliver.

8. Expectations

Don’t expect to build a reputation overnight. To gain brand awareness you need to drip feed your articles to the media to develop a steady relationship with new potential customers.

9. Editorial is Not Advertising

If your press release relays how wonderful your product or service is, it won’t get printed. This is what advertising is for. Also press releases will not get printed verbatim. Journalists will put their own angle on the story, which may mean your news may not be as positive as you think when it appears.

10. Always Think

Anything you say may end up in print, therefore be careful what you include in your release and also think about answers to any question’s journalists may have. If you don’t know the answer, say so.

By following this advice, you can ensure that any PR you generate for your company will get positive coverage which will hopefully translate into new customers and sales. (For more information on Copy Mistakes click here)

 
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