You can see more about my company at www.osamcquillan.ie or if you want to talk to an accountant make an appointment to see me you can phone +353 1 283 4123.
Your aim is to get a story published about you and your business, without putting your hand in your pocket. Your piece will have to be interesting and relevant to the publications you have targetted.
For most people this is unpaid advertising. But of course you have to have a newsworthy item to get in to the press in the first place. So you are helping the newspaper or website fill their pages. Right?
There are websites that will manage a press release for you to selected or all news outlets. All you have to do is write the press release, and pay their charges which usually aren’t very high, or that don’t charge at all.
You will probably want to follow up some of the press releases yourself to make sure that they got to the intended contact in the publication, and for publications or websites that appeal best to your customers age profile, geographic location or industry sector.
If you do decide to write a press release bear in mind these few rules:
1. Write in sentences of 30 to 40 words.
2. Use 2 sentences per paragraph.
3. Avoid using words with more than 2 syllables.
4. Avoid any technical language or jargon altogether.
5. If you have a photo to go with your story, you stand a much better chance of getting in to print.
6. Think of the journalist that gets your press release. What is in your story for them that helps them write their piece for the newspaper or website? If it is a business magazine, then there should be a business angle. If it is a furniture website there should be a furniture angle to your story.
You can see more about my company at www.OSAMCQuilla.ie or if you want to make an appointment to see me you can phone +353 1 283 4123.
Bear in mind that newspapers don’t employ many journalists, so effectively you are handing them some work already done which they effectively have to repackage to be able to use in their job.
Whole books are devoted to this topic, but as a businessperson you are looking for results quickly so this is a very brief guide to how to write a press release.
If your business or you never do anything of interest to potential customers then you can’t issue press releases. If you want to do good press releases then you need to something of interest to readers of the papers and magazines you are trying to reach.
Remember that the readers of a trade magazine like Plumbers Weekly ( if there is such a publication ) may well be interested that you have the agency for the left handed hooselbinder ( if there is such a thing ), and Plumbers weekly may well carry a picture of you and the aforesaid hooselbinder and how it works. Such an article would need to be tweaked to get it into a Sunday newspaper, but what is an article in either of the aforementioned publications worth to you? Now is it worth your while to spend the time to do an article for the newspapers?
Under the heading of Public Relations, personally I include the topic of trade associations. Customers do sit up and pay attention to the fact that you are the chairman of the such and such trade panel. Furthermore you thoughts and actions will be relayed to many people as something worthy of coverage and attention for them.
If you are in the security industry for example, many eyes will be looking at your picture should you be appointed as chairman of the national association of the security industry. Your customers may be in that group of people, and potential suppliers may also be in there.
You may be able to drive a harder bargain with your suppliers. Potential employees will see that you are progressive and working hard to raise the profile of your business, and if they are salespeople then they may recognise that if they come to work for you they will be working for a leader in their field.
You can see more about my company at www.osamcquillan.ie or if you want to make an appointment to see me you can phone +353 1 283 4123.
