Tag: public relations

Five ridiculous myths about PR

Leave a comment

So I was having a chat recently with some friends about working in PR and it was interesting to hear what they thought PR was. What was funny was how many myths associated with the profession popped up during the convo, and I had fun trying to dispel them.  Here are my top five ridiculous myths about PR.

 

  1. PR is all about the Ab fab lifestyle – yep that old chestnut, the BBC comedy ‘Absolutely fabulous’ showed Jennifer Saunders working in the world of fashion PR. While it was hilarious to watch it is far from the truth. In reality we don’t all spend our time drinking, getting high and buttering up journalists. I recall my early days working in fashion and beauty PR to be, long hours and lots of hard work liaising with clients, pitching to journalists, distributing samples etc.

 

  1. All publicity is good publicity – I have heard this so many times and each time I have heard this and I wanted to shout erm NO! All media coverage is not good coverage, having worked on crisis situations in the past I know this to be entirely false. Think about it, if you’re a restaurant owner and you received negative media coverage about rodent infestation or if you’re CEO of an airline and you receive negative coverage about your planes being faulty and not up to scratch, do you think that would be good for business? Nope not at all.

 

  1. PR means press releases – People often get confused about what PR practitioners do, and think it’s just about churning out press releases for every and anything. PR is not just about pushing out press releases and media relations although it is an important element PR. PR is vital for informing, engaging and building relationships with your target audience, be it customers, suppliers, other businesses with an interest in yours. PR is also very important to your brand messaging which you want to be positive, and is the service you would turn to for help with a media crisis or negative media mentions.

 

  1. Anyone can do it – this is unfortunately a common misconception. Business owners often think that they can manage PR themselves to save money as all it takes is a press release and then the media gates flood open right?… Sorry to burst your bubble but it’s not that simple. PR is about reputation management, it is about communicating, clearly, concisely, effectively and strategising to build relationships with key stakeholders including the media.

 

  1. PR will make me or my company famous by tomorrow

To build brand awareness takes time, as consumers we don’t walk into a store or read an article and jump on the bandwagon immediately.  PR is an effective strategy to use for your business but you must remember that it can take time. PR is not based on luck it’s based on good PR planning. So remember when you start your PR campaign you may not necessarily see media coverage anywhere from a few weeks to three months into the campaign due to lead times for publications etc. But as long as the campaign continues you will see PR increase significantly over time.

Feel free to leave a comment and add any ridic myths that you know of!

Five of the most common press release mistakes to avoid

1 Comment

Press releases are a key tool in the PR artillery, but in today’s fast paced society where journalists, editors and bloggers are super busy it’s even more important that they are concise and carefully targeted.   If not they’ll end up unopened or in the bin.

To help you steer clear of this happening, see my top five common mistakes to avoid.

  1. Targeting the wrong media – one size doesn’t fit all so sending a press release about a restaurant opening to a Pet publication is a waste of time. Do your research and look for relevant publications and journalists with an interest in your area of work.
  2. Spelling mistakes – we’ve all experienced this, be it that we’ve hit send too quickly or we’ve received a badly written email. We’re human and can make mistakes but be careful to double check your release or pass it on to a colleague for fresh eyes to review.
  3. No new news – sending a release just for the sake of it is a big no no. There is no point in sending information if it isn’t newsworthy. Journalists want news worthy information, if you have nothing new to say don’t bother sending it – it will end up in the bin.
  4. Jargon and long convoluted headlines and info – The idea of writing a press release is to highlight the key news items and convey it in a clear and concise way – so to include jargon defies the purpose. Remember to make it clear and make sense. Don’t forget to spell out acronyms as those working in the field maybe aware but no one else is.
  5. No follow up – In an ideal world you can hit send and wait for all the journalists to come to you, but realistically they’re busy people so giving them a call is still valuable. Timing is key here however you don’t want to call when they’re going to press so check with them that it’s a good time to talk and keep it brief and to the point.

Hope it helps!

Content marketing – five top tips

Leave a comment

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again content is king, no doubt this is not the first time you’ve heard this saying. I do believe it is true. Content marketing is not about the hard sell, lets face it who likes the hard sell? Not me that’s for sure.

Content marketing is more about the brand story and engaging with your target audience. You may want to sell a product but someone talking about their experience of the product can be more compelling. We are living in a digital age, where we can seek out the content of interest to us and ignore the rest, with that in mind you want to peak interest.

Here are my top five tips for content marketing:

Plan ahead

The saying, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail springs to mind. To be effective and really reap results you need to plan your content and be consistent with it. It may be unrealistic for you to produce thought-provoking content on a daily basis, but if you plan to produce weekly or bi-weekly content for your business make sure that you issue it via social media channels and email consistently. If you issue your content on a Tuesday at 10am each week stick to it.

Focus

With everyone going on about the need for content, it can be easy to lose focus in the rush to just get stuff out. But before you do this you should be thinking about the reason you are producing the content, and remember who you are writing it for. Putting yourself in the shoes of the audience you want to connect with is always helpful.

Visual benefits

Now when you scroll through your twitter timeline what catches your eyes or sparks interest? Images and videos are usually the top answer and they go a long way in helping to tell a story. Marketers use video, images and info-graphics to help tell stories about brands regularly. The main reason for this is because over 90 percent of content with visuals images get more views than ones without….so get busy incorporating visuals into your content!

Recycle your content

Don’t be afraid to reuse your content.  It does take time to produce quality content so you should find ways to re use it. An example of this is, if you have recently written a blog about a new product or service, you could tweet out  key points from said blog over the course of a week.

Share you content more than once

Be sure to use all the social media platforms at your disposal and share it more than once. I do this myself, it’s helpful in building web traffic and helpful to those in different time zones across the world. I often make small changes to the text so I’m not repeating myself and to appeal to different audiences. I also like to use hash tags (click here to see my blog on social media and use of hash tags).

Feel free to comment below and share any tips you have!

 

Video content is king: 5 reasons you should use video content for your business

Leave a comment

Go to any seminar on business or marketing these days and you’ll hear a speaker say content is king, and how important content marketing is for you business and they are right.

Well a great way to communicate your content and business messages is via video. Video is a method I often recommend to clients as it is taking content marketing by storm.

Did you know that viral video marketing campaigns can increase click through rates up to 750% according to marketingexperiment.com. With big numbers like this it’s no wonder why businesses are becoming more and more interested in video content.

Video content is the way forward, by 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to Cisco.

Cisco also predicted a good few years ago that video content will account for almost 90% of all internet traffic, so if you were or are on the fence about dipping your toe in, I’d suggest you jump right in.

Here are five reasons why you should produce video content for your business,

  1. Videos are shared more than links and text posts combined on social media platforms like Facebook and twitter.

 

  1. It’s not just a young thing; the kids are always at the forefront of technology and embrace it but over 65% of people who watch online videos are between the age of 35-64yrs old.

 

  1. Videos are a great method as they can be easily digested and shared as many people are put of streams of written information.

 

  1. Videos offer potentially huge reach with avenues like YouTube receiving more than one billion unique visitors every month, which is more than any other channel, apart from Facebook.

 

 

  1. One in three Britons view at least one online video a week – that’s a weekly audience of more than 20 million people in the UK alone.

 

I often work with clients to produce creative video content be it a corporate video, animation or hard hitting drama, we can help you achieve your goal and reach your target audience. To find out more please do get in touch.