Talking press relations

With the rapid growth of electronic media in recent years, email distribution has become common. But is it the right thing to do? The answer, as with many things, is: it depends. It can certainly be appropriate under some circumstances, but there are others where snail mail is not only acceptable but preferred.

Obviously enough, for on-line publications email is the best (usually the only) approach. But what about printed publications? What’s best for them? This can depend on what you’re sending, and to whom. Generally speaking, there’s no harm in emailing, if you have relevant addresses (which you may not). However, not all journalists prefer e-copy, and many publications still have administrative systems which are geared to hard copy. And there’s also the practical issue of pictures. Yes, emailing images eliminates the cost of physical prints, but a mass email of text plus image to a large list can be expensive on system bandwidth. Not everyone has an electronic infrastructure which can easily cope.

It comes down to the simple, if not especially helpful, rule that there is no rule. Ideally, you should organise your list into these whom you know prefer email or hardcopy. If you can’t do this, or you’re in doubt, our advice is to stick with the traditional mail until a contact requests otherwise. This is still perfectly acceptable for most publications, and you can always supply an electronic version on request.

It’s also sensible to consider posting your PR to the recognised websites and bulletin boards, accessed by journalists in your sector. Additionally, it can be a good idea (though it’s not always appropriate) to put your PR on the “wire” - but you need to subscribe to a service for this. If you do this, you may also want to think about “optimising” your press release text for web use - this increases the chances of your story being picked up by the news engines.

This is the stock-in-trade PR term for a list of journalists used repeatedly. They can be a bit of headache to manage, because it’s a dynamic industry - journalists change jobs; publications merge, acquire others, go bust, appear from nowhere. This is especially true with e-publications To help you keep on top of this, and to make list formation and manipulation easy, you’d do well to consider one of the commercially available, PC-based PR database products. They vary in quality, and none are perfect (or cheap), but they can be worth the investment.

At this point, it may be worth making some passing remarks about lists. First, make no mistake, they are important. A badly profiled list means you’ll be sending your info rmation to an inappropriate category of publications. This, it hardly needs saying, is not good news. On the other hand, no matter how accurate your profile, or comprehensive you list, there will always be someone, somewhere, who could have made use of the info , if only you had known of their existence. But you didn’t. Of course, once you do know, fine, add them to your list. But don’t lose sleep over the fact that your list will always, in some sense, be inaccurate or incomplete.

It is a mistake to put your standing press at the centre of your PR universe. This is because, in any PR campaign worth the name, the press release, while important, is - or should be - one of the least significant activities you do. “Doing PR”, should mean a lot more than issuing Press Releases. PRs should be a mechanical process, done on autopilot. They should form a backcloth; an ambient activity; a mechanical process designed to produce general press awareness. They should not be relied upon to deliver what you should be looking for - quality press coverage.

To summarise, then: a poorly profiled list is a fundamental mistake, which you should go to great pains to avoid. An incomplete or very slightly incorrect list is, in practical terms, unavoidable, and you might as well accept the fact.

So you’ve issued your press release. Now what? Well, here’s an idea: why not phone all the journalists on the list and ask them (a) have they received it, and (b) are they going to print it?

Why not? After all, you’ve got nothing better to do, and - surely! - they’d be only too pleased to take a telephone call asking, effectively, (a) is the post office doing its job, and (b) are they doing theirs?

This is one of the no-nos of PR. Don’t do it. If you do, you will become - and with some justification - an enemy of the people very quickly. It’s one of those things calculated to stimulate the ire of jo urnalists everywhere. In general, they hate it. And you can see why, if you put yourself in their position for a moment. And, from your perspective, it’s equally daft. After all, the point of sending out a PR is to make the process of news distribution time-efficient. If you start calling people after every PR, you’ve lost the plot a bit.

Which isn’t to say you can never phone a journalist about a press release. You can. The above remarks apply only to a routine activity. There are occasions when a call is justified - if a special feature is coming up, for example, and you (genuinely) expect your PR to stimulate further interest. If you use your imagination, and you know how to approach journalists, you can get away with a certain amount of PR telephone follow up. But use the technique very sparingly, and always - always - have a reason, beyond Have You Got It? and Will You Use It?

So that’s the Press Release. If it’s well written, and you’re sending it to the right people, you should be able to post it and forget it. On (rare) occasions, you can follow it up. End, as they say, of story.

But, however well-written, and however accurately targeted, a single press release- or even a sustained programme of press releases - is unlikely to produce the kind of editorial coverage you’re probably hoping for.

However, generally speaking, you can divide the press into three categories (from your perspective).

• Core titles (those whom you see as highly focused on your market)
• Secondary press (those which, though not focused exclusively on your market, report on it from time to time)
• Peripheral press/the rest (titles which only rarely have cause to cover your market)

This makes the whole relationship thing a lot more practical, because it’s only the first category - your core titles - which you need to get to know particularly well. Of course, this is not to say you can ignore the others (the secondary press, anyway). On the contrary, you should do what you can to know what this category is planning, and how to be a part of these plans. With secondary titles, you can confine your activities to action at a distance; but not with your core titles. This time it’s personal! Get to know the editors and staff writers.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. To develop a close relationship with the press you need to be in contact with them. And for this, you need a reason. And - incidentally - an invite to some lavish corp ent, unsupported by any kind of news story, isn’t enough. It may have been, once. But those days are long gone. Today, your best bait, if you want to hook a jo urnalist, is something interesting. But, as we’ve said before, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be announcing the invention of tartan paint.

In the next issue: How to stimulate interest without Headline News.