Most businesses and organisations will need some form of PR services from time to time.
You might think you can do it yourself. And yes, you can, but it’s a lot of legwork when you’re also trying to run a business.
In my 20 years as a journalist, many stories did not see the light of day simply because the PR submission was rubbish, with not enough detail, poor quality or no pictures and a poor response time when I asked the contributor for more.
I just didn’t have the time to waste chasing it, although the story itself was worthy enough – most local and regional journalists these days simply cannot spend a lot of time on one story.
Contrary to popular opinion, journalists are not all seeing and all-knowing, and most of the time they get their information from the same place as everyone else.
If someone doesn’t tell them about it, they won’t know about it.
I know that’s stating the obvious. But if you don’t tell them about your wonderful new business or venture and why it is newsworthy, there’s a good chance it will get zero publicity.
I lost count of the amount of times I chose not to pursue a story simply because of the amount of time and effort needed, when a dozen other things also needed my attention.
This is usually down to more and more staffing cut backs, with accountants convinced one person can run the editorial side of a newspaper.
So it has to be made as quick and easy as possible for them. If you phone the office and say you have a great new business and a newsworthy story, there is every chance you will be asked to send something in.
It’s not that they think your news is rubbish, but they can’t take two or three hours out of their day to come and see you. And then there needs to be pictures as well.
This is where I come in, or someone like me. I can do all that legwork with you, get the details, get what pictures or video are needed and then send the whole lot pre-packaged to the media.
I can write high quality news copy that if need be they can simply paste into their system – most will spend a bit more time on it, but it has been made as easy as it possibly can be for them.
EVERY story needs pictures. It’s no good saying ‘we haven’t got any’, because your story just won’t be used.
I can get you those pictures, or take them myself, and send to the media at a proper resolution, with full caption details, credit requirements, etc etc.
If you can do all that and have the time to do all that, crack on. If not, give me a shout.