Tag Archive for 'press release'

SA News Distribution Service Brings The Power Of Publicity To More Companies

Published
by
Scott
on December 7, 2009
in Public Relations
. 0 Comments

A news distribution service has recently launched in South Africa, which now provides the most cost-effective way to send press releases directly to targeted journalists and editors, helping companies gain valuable media exposure. Media Alerts News Distribution will help journalists access relevant news, while helping companies easily distribute their news to all the right media contacts.
Media Alerts News Distribution uses the Encyclomedia media database, South Africa’s largest database of over 6 500 journalists, including all print, broadcast and online media, plus influential freelancers and bloggers.

Useful reporting: The service includes a report with the number of emails sent, plus a list of the media titles the release was sent to - useful for internal or client reporting and tracking of media exposure.

Benefits:

  • Publicity results are boosted by expanding the reach of the press release, with access to the largest database of contacts.
  • No need to spend hours researching to find the right media contacts, this has already been done by the industry specialist.
  • Press releases are personalised with the journalists’ names, making it stand out from the hundreds of general emails they receive.
  • The targeted approach means that the press release is sent to the right media contacts who are in the best position to use the information.
  • Press releases are formatted in the journalists’ preferred layout, helping them quickly find the information, key contacts and images.

Price:

  • R1 750 per release (includes one category of your choice)
  • R150 per additional category (over 30 targeted categories to choose from)

This is the most affordable way to individually contact every news outlet in South Africa.

If this is something that could help expand your media coverage, we’d be happy to give you more information. Find out more on our website: www.MediaAlerts.co.za/News-Distribution

Popularity: 25% [?]


Talk About A Bad Subject Line

Published
by
Robynn
on October 28, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 0 Comments

I’m sure you know how important it is to make your email subject lines stand out, especially considering that some journalists receive up to 800 emails a day - yes, 800! But the following subject line is not a good way to attract attention:

*********************************************[Company competition winner] Found! SHE’s one in a million!******************************************************

The journalist who forwarded this to me simply said “talk about a bad headline”. Yes, indeed, let’s talk about it.

Firstly, putting your name in stars doesn’t automatically deserve royal treatment from the media.

Secondly, who cares? I know that sounds awfully harsh and cold. It’s not that no-one cares about the winner, it’s that no-one knows the winner (except those people that do, of course). Journalists are looking for stories that can add value to their readers and give them something of interest or something newsworthy. Yet another competition winner is simply not newsworthy.

There are other angles that this company could’ve taken though. Considering that this press release was sent to a marketing journalist, they could’ve looked at the successful elements in the promotion of the competition. What created the biggest response, what made the competition stand out, why is this important to other marketers?

There are always various angles to any story. The trick is to match a relevant angle to the right audience. If you can get that right, the journalist will be happy to look at your content, with no stars and funny formatting needed.

Popularity: 25% [?]


Beware The Bold Button And Bad Formatting

Published
by
Robynn
on October 3, 2008
in Communication skills
. 0 Comments

Formatting your email with bullets, bold, italics and caps can be functional and useful when used (very, very sparingly) at the right times. But, if you don’t have anything really gripping to say, then putting every second phrase in bold is certainly not going to help your cause.

This was exactly the type of press release a marketing journalist received recently. About 50% of the text was in bold. And just to add a little extra emphasis, the headline and footer were in red. I felt a little like a deer staring into blinding headlights, I wasn’t sure where to start or what I was supposed to do…except to close the email. Phew, it was far too much effort to try and read. See for yourself, here’s a sample of the press release:

[Name], Managing Director, [company name] and [company name], will bring his expertise in the independent sector to [event name]. [Name] serves as the elected Vice President of WIN (Worldwide Independent Network), Chairman of the Board for AIR (Australian Independent Record labels association) and is also a current board member of MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival), PPCA (Phonographic Performance Company of Australia) and ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association).

This reminds me of the comments that Dorin Bambus, previously the editor of Blunt, said in some Encyclomedia research a while back on PR best practices. Commenting on email formatting, he said:

Press releases should make the reader think something is cool and interesting and newsworthy, not alert the reader to the fact that the writer thinks this to be the case. I can read, I don’t need every IMPORTANT piece of info “signposted” for me. It’s very annoying.

Popularity: 20% [?]


Must-Have PR Book - A Perfect Press Release

Published
by
Robynn
on June 19, 2008
in Public Relations
. 4 Comments

Almost every PR person comes across this problem at some stage or another: their client wants every major national media to cover their little ribbon-cutting ceremony; or they insist on adding their own flowery adjectives and industry jargon to your neatly-crafted news releases. This book will help.

A Perfect Press Release... Or Not?A Perfect Press Release…Or Not? by Jennigay Coetzer is a highly practical book, which jumps straight into useful advice right from the first paragraph. Although it’s mostly a “how-to” type of guide, it also offers some strategic advice to senior PR practitioners. Importantly, it is written so that any CEO or business person can understand what a press release should be, what it should never be and why.

I highly recommend that PR consultants and agency owners give a copy of this book to each of their clients as part of some essential media training. It will go a long way to streamline the press release approval process and possibly prevent a lot of frustration (and no, I’m not being paid a cent for saying this).  :)

This book should also be prescribed reading for all PR interns and junior staff as a quick way to cover all the basics and best-practices, along with Encyclomedia’s free Media Pitching Tips Revealed email series.

Popularity: 14% [?]


Marketingweb’s Tips To Get Your Press Release Published

Published
by
Robynn
on June 10, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 2 Comments

The editorial staff at Marketingweb receive over a thousand press releases each week. In order to make sure that your media release stands out, they’ve very kindly published their top nine guidelines on how to get your story published.

These simple guidelines and tips can be applied to any journalist you plan to contact, although certain journalists will have their own pitching tips and preferences regarding email attachments and follow-up calls. Nonetheless, it’s a very good summary of some of the best practices in pitching your PR stories.

Also have a look at Encyclomedia’s Media Pitching Tips Revealed series. It’s a free email series with tips and advice straight from South African journalists on what works best and what PR tactics to avoid.

Popularity: 9% [?]


Email Subject Line Tip - Get Noticed

Published
by
Robynn
on April 25, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 0 Comments

My resident media expert at Encyclomedia, Chantal, was speaking to a radio producer yesterday about his contact preferences and pitching tips and he gave a great tip that I’d like to share with you. It’s simple, perhaps it’s even really obvious, but I can guarantee you that very few PR practitioners practice this.

After pitching your idea to a journalist over the phone, when you then email your media release, write the following in your subject line: [Journalist’s name], we’ve just spoken - [concise headline].

For example: Thabo, we’ve just spoken - Purple pumpkin discovered in Potgietersrus.

According to this Kaya FM producer, he receives so many emails that even though you have discussed the idea with him, he may still miss your email. But by using his suggestion above, while scanning through the subject lines, he’ll be able to spot your email and media release straight away.

Popularity: 8% [?]


The Back and Forth Journey of a Newspaper Story

Published
by
Robynn
on March 17, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 1 Comment

You write a great media release and the newspaper journalist you’re pitching the story to decides to use it. You celebrate and feel very chuffed with yourself, excitedly tell your colleagues and possibly even call up your client. The next morning you rush out to the shop and get your copy of the newspaper and enthusiastically page through to find your article. You reach the end and realise that you must’ve missed it in your haste, so you page through again…and again…

Suddenly the shattering realisation hits that your wonderful article simply wasn’t printed.

For those of you nodding and remembering the excitement and disappointment of your early PR days, you know that there are various factors that affect the longevity of your media release - irrespective of whether the journalist liked it or not. But for the benefit of those who still climb the emotional roller-coaster with every daily newspaper, here are just a few things to keep in mind.

  • The news editor controls what stories the journalists work on. It’s fine to pitch your idea to a journalist directly (news editors are in any case pretty busy people), but just understand that it needs to get the nod from the news editor too before the journalist invests any more time in the article.
  • In the case of Die Burger’s newsroom, your story needs to survive six daily meetings where the placement of each and every article gets discussed.
  • Once the article leaves the journalist’s desktop, it will pass through about nine other people before finally going to print. If any one of these people find fault with something in your article, it will quickly get edited or simply get cut altogether.
  • Important breaking news or hard news will always replace the softer news stories. If you’ve pitched your newly-formulated-fool-proof-muffin-mix minutes before the onset of a national crisis, hard luck. Of course, if you’ve pitched your idea after the journalists start scrambling to cover the big news, then perhaps you should consider a more appropriate career.

Don’t ask me why the odd press release (in its exact original form) finds its way through to the printed paper from time to time. Count yourself lucky when this happens, very, very lucky.

Popularity: 6% [?]


The Do’s and Don’ts of PR Follow-Up Calls

Published
by
Robynn
on March 13, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 3 Comments

Follow-up calls can either build relationships or build frustration. The majority of journalists surveyed by Encyclomedia on this topic have experienced the latter, far too often than they’d like. So let’s take a quick look at some of the mistakes that PR practitioners make when following up on the media releases they’ve sent.

Don’t expect journalists to have a memory like an elephant
An editor shared her frustration with me yesterday. She had just received a call from a PR person who was following up on a press release sent in August last year. No jokes. “I wish I had the kind of memory that could recall detail from that far back,” the editor said. “I get a lot of phone calls asking me if I used a press release, and often it is months after the release was sent.”

Don’t expect journalists to be clairvoyant
A phone call that starts with “Hi, did you get my email?” can only ever receive a frustrated response. Here’s an example of a conversation I received from another journalist recently:

PRO: Hi, I’m phoning to see if you got my email I sent on Friday?
Journalist: Well, let’s start with who you are and what was the email about…

Journalists receive hundreds of emails every day. De Waal Steyn told me earlier this week that he receives between 500 and 800 emails a day, across eight different mailboxes. He’s not alone in this.

So if you need to follow up on a specific email, start by stating the day and time it was sent, the subject line and the overall topic of the media release. The more specific you can be, the easier it is to enter into a productive conversation with the journalist.

Don’t ask questions when you can find the answer yourself
If you sent a media release to an online journalist, there is absolutely no need for you to call and ask if the journalist ever used the release. Simply search their website using your keywords and you’ll have your answer in seconds.

Don’t hound a journalist
Some PR companies have apparently developed the habit of calling to ask if they can send a media release, calling to ask if the journalist received it, calling to say that they are sending more pics, calling to ask if the journalist will use it, and so on.

A quick, clear and direct call to follow-up on an email is fine, but the “are you going to use it?” type of call every few days is not helping you to build a relationship, instead, you’ve become a nag. If your media release was well researched, targeted and relevant for the target audience, the journalist will contact you for more details.

Popularity: 10% [?]


Good PR Case Study - Vuka in Die Burger

Published
by
Robynn
on March 12, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 0 Comments

A feature article appeared yesterday in the Buite supplement of Die Burger, where a group of people (including Die Burger journalists) took a trip into Die Hel in the Gamkaskloof on their bright and eager Vuka Scutas. To Hell and back on a scooter!

It was a great PR idea - something fun, a little different and a great fit for Buite. But more importantly, according to De Waal Steyn, multimedia editor of Die Burger, Vuka’s PR people made the most of the good idea and maximised their coverage across the print and online platforms.

This is, in fact, exactly what an online or multimedia editor needs to do. He needs to link the content in the print newspaper to the online content and vice versa, without duplicating content and needing to continually add more value. Not an easy task.

De Waal explained that when it comes to hard news, the breaking news stories appear on the website as it happens, covering the 5 W’s and H. They then refer the online readers to tomorrow’s newspaper to read more about the story. The newspaper then refers readers back to the website to find more photos, videos and blog comments.

In order to leverage a soft news story or feature, the newspaper needs to direct their readers to the website to find further insights into the story, along with a photo gallery, video content and links for further information.

What Vuka did right is that they didn’t stop at simply discussing the idea with the editor of the Buite supplement, they made contact with De Waal too. They found out what type of multimedia content and other stories around the theme he would need to make it work. Which he did. You can read the story here.

This isn’t a groundbreaking or particularly remarkable case study, but rather one that simply illustrates that if you take the time to find out what a journalist needs and then work to give him what he needs, you will be building far better relationships and ultimately gain more coverage.

Popularity: 8% [?]


You want to send a fax?

Published
by
Robynn
on March 11, 2008
in Media Relations Tips
. 1 Comment

I met with De Waal Steyn, the multimedia editor of Die Burger, earlier today and I was completely shocked when he told me that he still receives media releases via fax. What? I almost fell over my chair - well, actually I was standing at the time, going through a tour of the beautiful, but busy Media24 offices (plasma screens everywhere you look). But I was seriously surprised that someone would consider a fax (a useless piece of uneditable text) useful to a journalist, let alone a multimedia editor.

When I asked De Waal if he had any examples of these endangered items (partly because of my disbelief and partly to help these poor PR people realise what century the rest of the world has moved into),  he promptly replied that he deletes the faxes the moment they arrive. Naturally, they are “fax to email” and of course, they serve no purpose so they do not even warrant a further look.

For those of you savvy enough to find this blog, you certainly don’t fall into the group that still faxes their media releases. But I thought that this would bring you some comic relief, because although we can all make mistakes in the way we get our messages across, it could always get worse.

Popularity: 6% [?]