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Press releases: how to

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Last week I led the two-day ‘communicating with the media’ course for the umpteenth time. In this course I often explain that journalists have to be treated like clients. You might think this sounds all well and good, but what does it actually mean? The people following the course and I drew up a list of issues that need to be taken into account when making press releases in a client-friendly way. Here is the list of 50 tips.
 
1. Do your homework

  • know who has written what about your company in the past (Google News is not watertight for this, but it is free)
  • regularly read the publications you are targeting
  • follow the journalists that your organisation is interested in on social media
  • send each press release to a different selection of journalists, depending on the subject
  • send press releases to people, not organisations (make sure you have a detailed list of addressees)

2. Provide news

  • what is the impact of the news? (No impact means there is no need for a press release)
  • simply announcing intentions doesn’t usually work
  • don’t hide news in the middle of the text; get straight to the point at the very beginning
  • don’t just provide the impact; state the benefits too

3. A press release should be sent my email

  • write the press release in the body of the email
  • the subject line of an email is no place for a double title
  • don’t send any attachments; it’s much better to provide download links

4. Special treatment

  • you can choose to provide extra information selectively to some journalists
  • you can choose to provide a background interview selectively to some journalists
  • many journalists are interested in extra regional information
  • with particularly important news, you can pre-warn some journalists beforehand (but don’t announce the news yet)

5. Different languages

  • don’t have translations done, but instead ensure you have well-written versions that get to the essence of the matter (adapting the text to the local audience if necessary)

6. Provide more than just a press release

  • where can you download high resolution photos?
  • it’s fine to provide other images and illustrations too
  • relevant statistical material is always useful, preferably as a very simple spreadsheet
  • where can people view or download background information?
  • write additional versions of the press release if required (a more technical version, local versions or a simplified version, e.g. a step-by-step plan)
  • provide your contact details and make sure you are available
  • have an expert available by telephone to provide extra information to people who ask for it

7. Don’t irritate journalists

  • calling to check if it’s been received is a really bad idea
  • quotes that always start with “we are pleased that…” can be annoying
  • a constant stream of press releases sent at regular intervals (such as every third Thursday of the month) will go straight in the recycle bin
  • sending a press release out again after a couple weeks because it didn’t work the first time is communication suicide
  • avoid plays-on-words and puns; they are mostly untranslatable and rarely funny
  • sending out all press releases with an embargo could result in you having your own publication embargo to deal with

8. Press releases should be ‘copy-paste’ material

  • deliver texts that can be copied, with regard to both structure and style
  • pdf files sent as attachments to emails are not easy to edit
  • you don’t really need to include your logo or the rest of your house style; they won’t be used anyway

9. Press releases should be ‘copy-paste’ material, so make sure you use good language

  • don’t use jargon, ever
  • don’t write impersonal texts
  • don’t use broken language because it needs to be legally correct (press releases and contracts are two different things)
  • use simple language that sounds like spoken language
  • use affirmative language that is powerful without being boastful
  • spelling and grammar mistakes are unforgivable
  • always use active language (avoid passive forms wherever possible)

10. Press releases should be ‘copy-paste’ material, so keep them brief

  • short title
  • short sentences
  • short paragraphs
  • short quotes, or non at all
  • short words, even
  • keep the whole text as short as possible

11. Press releases should be ‘copy-paste’ material, so make sure they are well structured

  • don’t write texts in chronological order (the historical approach); the essence of the news is today and the impact is in the future
  • try to include all the how, who, what, where, when and why information straight away in the first paragraph
  • so provide the essence first, and more background information later
  • also make sure you clarify the news; don’t leave it open to journalist interpretation

Google’s Biggest Competitor is… Google

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Larry Page made a good point at a conference earlier this month when he explained who Google’s biggest competitor was. Well, we should probably say it was a good answer he had prepared earlier, because you don’t simply come up with an improvised response like that on the spot. And what can you possibly say when someone asks you who your biggest competitor is? (One of Apple’s main competitors is Twix, by the way, but you’ll have to keep reading to find out why.)

I would recommend giving an unexpected and possibly evasive answer. Let other people discover who your competitors are. It’s not up to you to give them any clues. Who knows, otherwise you might name a company that people had taken their eyes off, and then they might contact them behind your back to hear what they have to say, or listen to their offer.
So make it as unexpected as you like, but also make sure you give an intelligent and credible answer. “We haven’t got any competitors!” definitely isn’t the right response, unless you work in a planned economy or are the very last company in a sector that hasn’t yet completely vanished. There are a few other possibilities:

Go elsewhere

Give it a try. A competitor for the Apple iPod? That’s Mars confectionery – such as Twix, Mars and Milky Way chocolate bars – or Haribo sweets. Teenagers spend a lot of their pocket money on confectionery, so if they have to save for an iPod themselves, it often goes wrong when they spend too much on sweets. If you don’t really think Mars is a credible competitor for Apple, consider this: the Mars group is half as big as Apple and doesn’t do too badly, with a turnover of 30 billion dollars.

Go elusive

You know the thing, when you reply by being evasive, instead of giving a real answer. For example: “Define competitor”, or explain that you are active in four different market sectors, and that you’re always competing with different companies. Or that you work internationally and have to compete against various companies in other countries. Or that you are the only company in your industry that invests more than 10% of your turnover in research and development, so you are happy to be lonely at the top. And so on.

Go higher up

If you’re extremely ambitious, you can exaggerate. NetApp had only just grown out of nappies when it started to name EMC as its biggest competitor. And they continued to do so until everyone believed them, and NetApp’s market share sometimes even surpassed EMC’s in some sectors. This is also the standard approach that Geoffrey Moore describes in his books. So, a final tip: don’t just read blogs; read a good book sometimes too.

Getting Started with Social Media in Five Easy Steps

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Maybe you were at our Social Media for B2B event (see video above), or perhaps you read our tips and tricks and watched our video in our previous blog? Whatever. After some consideration, you might’ve come to the conclusion: “OK, let’s get started with social media!” Good! Now let the fun begin… What are the first steps you need to take if you want to use social media to communicate about your company effectively and efficiently?

Step 1: Make a plan

“Doing something” with social media isn’t enough. First you have to know exactly what you want to achieve, and be consistent with your choices. As you might have learned at our event, a company like RealDolmen mainly uses social media activities for recruitment, whereas SAP places more emphasis on sales. You need to make a choice for your company: how can social media help you most? Write down your objectives as clearly as possible. You need to do your homework, because have a look at Step 2 ..

Step 2: Talk to your boss

It’s essential that you company’s managers join in, or at least approve, your social media plan before you can get started properly. Only then will social media be fully accepted positively, allowing it to become part of your company’s culture. Just like with other media, it’s important that clear agreements are made with the company’s management about how, who and what. Demonstrate how and why social media can benefit your company. Explain how you see the integration of social media fitting in with the existing communication plan, preferably in as concrete a way as possible. Make it clear that social media is not free: it will take time to develop the network, create content and respond to other people’s relevant discussions. Be honest about this.

Step 3: Talk to your colleagues

Communicating via social media – as the name suggests – is not something that you can do on your own. Without your colleagues’ cooperation, your efforts will die a quick and silent death. You need to at least keep them informed of what you are blogging about, and what is happening on your Facebook page, Twitter feed or LinkedIn discussion forum. They will then feel more involved, and so will be more likely to publicise your activities via their own channels. Don’t forget that most of your colleagues are already using social media for their own purposes, and perhaps know some of the services better than you. They are the leading ambassadors for your company – they help take care of word-of-mouth advertising.
Some of your colleagues might even want to share their specialist experience and expertise on discussion forums, and so provide all sorts of useful tips. Draw up a list of colleagues who can help you, and what their roles could be.

Step 4: Start to listen

As well as getting the green light from your management team and some enthusiastic colleagues, you also need to have a good idea where you already stand. It’s not just your company’s existing presence on social media sites that needs researching; you also need to check out your competitors, possible business partners, your most important products or services, and the name of your CEO. So you need to focus not just on the number of updates, but also the context and so-called sentiment of these updates. Which discussions do you appear in most? What tone do people use to speak about your company? The results of this evaluation will also help you in the next step. Free and commercial monitoring services are available to help you gather this information. Free tools can give you a first impression of how a tool works, but it’s best to use a professional service for collecting exact details. You could, for example, use an evaluation service such as Auxipress, or monitoring specialists such as Radian6, Alterian or Engagor.

Step 5: Choose a channel

You can use the previous steps to help you decide what social media is most suitable for your company. Make this choice depending on your objectives, colleagues’ suggestions, results from your monitoring research and often also the sector that your company is active in. In many cases there is not just one, but several channels that can be useful for your company. As we’ve already written elsewhere on this blog: it probably won’t work if you only use Twitter. But please note: don’t be too quick to use all the channels that might seem relevant. In other words: make sure it all stays manageable.

Communication Advice

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Fast and affordable communication advice

In order to have a thorough look on your existing communication quickly and efficiently, we use a method which shows you very clearly where you stand, immediately exposes your greatest difficulties and provides you with advice for concrete measures you can take to improve your communication campaigns.

Quick Marketing Audit

Use this ‘Quick Marketing Audit’ to look at one of the four following communication tools and methods:

  • your external communication plan
  • your website
  • your social media programme
  • your media relations

Less than a day’s work

It’s essential to be able to actually implement an assessment as quickly as possible. It will take around a week for us to prepare our communication advice. For your part, you will only need to spend one day on this, or less. The next steps in our ‘Quick Marketing Audit’ provide you with practical advice which you can use to significantly improve your communication:

  • initially, you complete a short questionnaire online
  • in a personal discussion we then test your external communication plan, website, social media programme or press communication against seven criteria
  • immediately after this discussion, you give yourself a series of scores, using a special form
  • we consider our discussion for a couple of days and then provide our own evaluation scores using the same form
  • there is a further consultation if the scores differ greatly
  • in a subsequent meeting, you will receive a summarised report with concrete recommendations, your score for the seven basic criteria and a practical explanation
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