Women in businessYour PR and image toolkit
Menzies Carlton Hotel
19 May 2010
Your PR Toolkit
• Meet Julie Ratcliffe
Your PR Toolkit
• The Value of PR
• Media and Digital PR
• Hints and Tips for Stories that Travel
• Press Releases – Mini Master Class
The Value of PR
• PR defined
• Reputation and image
• The place of PR in your marketing strategy
• Does it work?
•How can you put price on it?
• Isn’t it very expensive?
Reputation and Image
Media and Digital PR
• The challenge to the press
• New opportunities in print
• The digital age of PR
• Online news
• Your website! Plus; Blogs,Facebook, Twitter – do or die?
• Broadcast media
• Video – the next thing
Hints & Tips for Stories that Travel
• Get to know your target
• People love people
•Every picture tells a story
•KISS
•Ditch that Jargon
•Keep to format
•Think outside the box
Press releases
Mini Master Class
Have a go
• Your business has just won an award for being environmentally friendly.
• Write to let the local media know about it
• 15 minutes
Let’s read the paper
• Headline / front-page news
• Page leads
• NIBs
• Letters Page
• Feature pages
• Special Supplements
• Other bits
The basics of a press release
• Headline
• That first all-important first paragraph
• Quote Me!
•Contacts and other details
•After ‘The End’
If I only had a NIB
•News in Brief and that first paragraph
•Who, What, Why, When, Where
•OR
•Play Cluedo for simple stories!
NIBs
• PR consultant Julie Ratcliffe is giving a free talk on PR for the small business on Wednesday 19 May at the Carlton Hotel, Bournemouth, starting at 10.15am. Contact Business Link on 0845 0707 747
•Your first paragraph – Have another go!
Other formalities
• Your contacts for further information – They MUST be available!
• Pictures
• Is there a picture opportunity?• Do you have a picture?
• Notes to editors – what’s that all about?
• Headlines –
• a word of caution ...
Ooops!
Where & when to send a press release
• Target publications and sources
•Don’t forget Deadlines
•Work backwards when planning PR
• Contacts-use specific where known
Ready to go!
• Email is the way today
• Don’t put ‘Press Release’ in subject line!
• Be brief
•Attach the file AND copy it into the body text
•Attach a photo
•Hit SEND!
Will it or won’t it?
• Deadlines – did you keep to this?
• Is it newsworthy?
•Is it the kind of story this publication uses (Golf mags will only take knitting patterns if it’s a gold club cosy!)
•If it’s not time-limiting, it can appear weeks later.
•Luck of the draw – who got there first?
If at first you don’t succeed ...
• Don’t Panic!
• Follow up if you’ve made a contact
• Keep sending stories
• Good luck!
Any questions?