Getting Media Coverage The Easy Way
There are basically two ways to use PR to get a story in the media: pitch an idea to a journalist and have them do a story, or respond to a journalist seeking information for a story. The latter, of course, is somewhat easier and infinitely less stressful. Within the category of responding to queries, [...]
Email Pitching Mistakes to Avoid
Planning to send an email pitch to generate coverage? Here are some things to avoid: The #1 thing journalists hate is being misled or lied to. so make your pitches honest — we have this spokesperson available, we are the leader in this field, etc. The more puffy and unbelievable your pitch is, the less time [...]
Newsvetter Helps You Figure Out How to Make News
The biggest disconnect in the media-PR relationship is the definition of “news.” News people have a keen sense for the kind of information they want to present as “news” to their audience, while PR people unfortunately find themselves pitching all sorts of information to journalists that either isn’t news at all or isn’t the kind [...]
Paulson Makes Himself Available and Controls the Debate
Say what you will about the current financial mess on Wall Street, you have to credit Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for making himself fully available to the media despite the crushing responsibilities and obligations he must have. He was on four Sunday talk shows yesterday and did countless other media appearances and press conferences over [...]
Do You Spend Enough Time Crafting Your Email Subject Line?
It should be obvious that your subject line is the single most important element of an email. Do you take the time to think about what it says, or do you just dash off the first thing that comes to your mind? Here are some tips for writing better subject lines: Keep it short: people [...]
Journalist Offers Bite-Sized PR Tips
If reading PR tips in blog items like this takes too long, you should check out Rafe Needleman’s ProPRTips. He offers PR tips in bite-sized chunks that look like they came from Twitter. The reason they look like “tweets” is that, in fact, they are tweets. Needleman started offering his PR tips on Twitter and [...]
Who’s Media Training These Guys?
Another day, another “negative repeat” from a Presidential candidate. Today it’s John McCain on “The View”: Joy Behar brought up two of his recent ads against Mr. Obama… “We know those two ads are untrue, they’re lies,” she said, and yet at the end of each, Mr. McCain’s voice says he approves of those messages. [...]
Round One of the PR Battle Goes to McCain
There’s no doubt that since John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, the Republican ticket has generated an incredible amount of buzz and positive momentum. And there is also no doubt that McCain has been winning the PR battle: getting his messages out, getting Obama off message and responding to McCain’s charges, [...]
How to Spam Check Your Press Releases
Here’s a tool you need to add to your PR toolkit ASAP: a free automatic content-checker that you can use to test your outgoing email before you send it to see if it is likely to get caught in a spam filter. This tool is essential if you are sending out a lot of email [...]