Monthly Archives: April 2014

Just the Facts? 8 Tips for Creating Press Releases

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reporterThe power of the press for reaching out to your larger community is a given, and a well conceived press strategy should be part of every company’s plan – but this is especially true if you represent a non-profit organization. I’m guessing that many of you send the occasional press release to local newspapers, and you may also post your news on your own website.

If you are working with limited time and resources and don’t have a dedicated PR professional on your staff, then you especially need those efforts to pay off in positive, upbeat stories about your work.

Are there basic rules to sending out a media alert or press release that will have a better chance of bearing fruit?  I’ve outlined my top 7 tips here:

1) Develop a template for these that will save you time when you are developing them. Make sure you already have a page blank handy that is set up with your contact information, organization name and logo,  It should have a place for:

  • The title of the release – it can be creative, but please make sure it says what the topic is. Don’t make the reporter or editor receiving it have to search to know what it’s about.
  • The date, and city/state where you (or your news) are located.
  • The press contact: Always include the name, title, telephone # and email address of the person that should be contacted for an interview or for more information.
  • At the end of the release, include a brief “about us” paragraph or two about your organziation; and include your website URL. This should ideally be the same paragraph every time, for consistency, make it a “boilerplate” part of your template. You can always add a line or two that describes the specific department or program that the release is about, to tailor it.

2) It’s not the great American Novel. When you write the release, remember that you are writing for news outlets. It’s OK to include background about the human interest side of your story. But remember that you are writing the release so that it can be useful to reporters and editors – who will want to use the information in their own work, with their own voice. Give them great material to work with, but don’t fall in love with your own words. Be succinct.

3) Edit yourself with a checklist – does it have all the facts they will need? What happened, when, where, to whom, and why is it news? If you are covering one of your own programs or events, did you remember to say that you were the sponsoring organization?

4) Can I quote you? If a reporter or editor really wants to do in-depth work on your topic, they will call you and others for interviews, and will use their own quotes.  But a really good quote or two is gold for a time-pressed editor; so make it a consistent part of your style to include these. They are also your opportunity to provide perspective beyond the facts.

5) Get ready to lose control. Once the press release has left your desk and been sent to news publications, it is in their hands. They have no obligation to use everything you sent, verbatim. They will more than likely take the pieces from the release that work for them within their story. An ethical reporter will not mis-communicate the facts of the story. But your perspective and point of view may not end up in the final cut.

6) Know your reporters.  Particularly if local news outlets are important to you; but for national outlets as well. If you are doing this right, you won’t simply be peppering the landscape with your alerts and releases, hoping something sticks.  That isn’t worth your valuable time or theirs. Make sure your release topic is relevant to the new outlet, and especially to the reporter, that receives it. Less is more; develop a short list of reporters and editors that you will place your release with; and get to know what their preferred beat is.  What topics and issues do they typically cover, and how? Don’t add them to your send list if you know nothing about them. (Google works great when you want to check out past articles from a new publication or reporter/editor.)

I ran across an interesting blog post on the NonProfit Communicator blog. Lisa Bertagnoli does a good job of explaining what to do – and what not to do – to get her attention with a release.

http://communitymediaworkshop.org/npcommunicator/people-to-pitch-lisa-bertagnoli-freelance-writer/

7) Don’t forget the web.  You may be accustomed to sending all of your press releases to local newspapers; but is it really national news? Does it have regional implications?  Apart from your own website (where you should be posting every release you create), there are some good and inexpensive news services like PRNewswire.com that will post your article on their site and distribution it to news outlets with a wider scope than you probably have. You may gather greater attention to your work by strategically posting selected, very important stories on such a service.  And with well-planned key words, the release may get more attention from even your local reporters; when they receive in their Google alerts.

8) Have a plan.  You can easily inundate your local press outlets with way too many stories that don’t interest them, in which case, they’ll turn you off.  On the other hand, if this isn’t in your comfort zone, or you are a busy person wearing multiple hats, then you may not remember to make strategic use of media exposure. Don’t wait until you are reacting to a negative story; create a calendar and a plan for sending selected news items on a recurring basis that feature the positive, relevant work that you do.

Celebrate the troops

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You have a great grasp of your customers and stakeholders, influencers and decision-makers; and you think you fully understand your target audiences.

Think again.

Are you remembering your own staff?

Your staff could be the single biggest messaging asset you have. If you are looking for champions in your tribe, who could be a more enthusiastic cheerleader about the work that you do than those folks that are doing the work themselves?

If they get it.

Your brand, your mission and your philosophy is hopefully something that your staff remembers to incorporate into their work every day. But too many companies and agencies, in hot pursuit of their customers or funders, do not take the time to tell the story at home.

It may be that your departments are siloed, and don’t really understand or hear about eachother’s work.  They may hear about what’s happening across the board, but not understand how it all hangs together to advance your mission.  If your mission is written in jargon or fails to tell the story of what you really believe, then perhaps they just don’t it at all.

Consider the small amount of time it takes to find just one story each week about something your staff has done – something extraordinary, or just something spot on – to support your mission. Do a shout out to all of your staff members. Give congratulations, and kudos – you can do this via email, interoffice memo, posting it on a wall or at a meeting – pick a method that isn’t time consuming. Do this every week, drawing attention back to how each of these acts supports and strengthens your real mission – and soon these little stories will build into a loyal internal fan base that knows your story and knows how to tell it.  More importantly, they’ll know how to live it.

Why is a tag line important?

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Seems a bit silly to spend time sitting around trying to capture everything you are in 3 or 4 words. Your mission, values, and key benefits are much bigger than that – aren’t they?

Of course they are.

But the work that it takes to capture your essence in a sound byte is not at all silly; in fact, it’s an essential exercise in discipline. It can capture who your customers, members, and fans are; and it serves a very useful purpose in quickly uniting you with your tribe over your shared values.

  • Just do it (Nike)
  • Think different (Apple)
  • Because you’re worth it (L’Oreal)
  • You’re in good hands (Allstate)
  • Quality is job one (Ford)
  • It’s not just for breakfast anymore (Florida Orange Growers’ Association)
  • That was easy (Staples)
  • A mind is a terrible thing to waste (United Negro college fund)
  • Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ (Timex)
  • For a living planet (WWF)

Your mission, your promise and your brand

They are indeed complex, but place yourself in the mind of your customer and ask yourself “so what?” Then ask it again, and again. What can you come up with to answer it in 5 words or less?

Taglines are about making decisions.

Timex could talk about the visual beauty and simplicity of their watch design, the fact that their watches are an inexpensive, yet good value. So what? What do you really want in a watch, anyway? Timex watches are for people who don’t want a Rolex. Don’t want the bother, don’t want the expense, and don’t want to worry about damaging it. Just want it to tell time, reliably.

If you have done any strategic planning for your agency or business, you’ll likely have a mission statement, and core values – particularly if you are a non-profit. If you haven’t looked at those lately, take them off of the shelf and review them again. Non-profits spend a great deal of time arriving at a mission statement that is meaningful for them; and they are often excellent statements of purpose and approach. They are also (usually) somewhat wordy for the average stakeholder-on-the-street, and may not be at all memorable.

Try it. You’ll like it.

What can you give?

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promiseWhat’s the promise, and can I keep it?

Your mission as an organization is about your aspirations, your passion, your beliefs. It tells your audiences what you wish to accomplish and promises to pursue that to the best of your ability, with all that is in you. You will work to improve how you deliver on your mission, and how you deliver may evolve over time.

Your brand is a promise. It can also aspire, but never forget that the promise offered by your brand carries with it an expectation of delivery and consistency.

We will do certain things in a certain way.  We hold to these truths and values. You can rely on us for this.  Be careful about what you choose to promise with your  brand. When you select what is most important for your brand to convey to your audiences, your work will be scrutinized against that standard.

Your brand offers a clear message about what it is that makes you unique – which means making choices about what you want your brand to convey. What is it about your work and your approach to it that distinguishes you from others?

What’s in it for me?

Your brand is also about your relationship with your customers. Unless you are opening your doors for the first time, your loyal fans already trust you for something very specific, that benefits them or that they also believe. Is your brand message going to be consistent with that perceived promise?  Before you go all in to make a statement about your brand, find out if it matches your customers’ and fans’ experience of you.  If it’s not, figure out why not. You may be making an aspirational promise that you have neither the experience nor the will to deliver on.

Do you know how to do what you are saying you’ll do? And is it something your customers value, or a complete departure from how they currently see you?

If you don’t know, ask.

Mom always told us that, and she was right. Understanding how your customers perceive you is an important element of moving forward to a stronger brand. Do they have a sense of what you believe, and can they articulate why they would choose you? There are a lot of ways to ask, and really, they are not scientific. You are looking for qualitative, not quantitative feedback. But I would always recommend contacting at least 5-10 of your top customers or partners, and having a conversation. You might want to ask:

  • What made you choose us to work with instead of the alternatives?
  • What do you think we stand for? Is it something you also believe in?
  • What three words would you use to describe us as an organization? Are these things important to you?

What’s in it for them?

I’ve worked with companies that have done research up, down and sideways to identify what specific attributes their customers thought they had. But in many of those studies, I’ve observed one critical omission that made them miss the point. Once you know what attributes or beliefs your customers think you offer, please ask them how important those are to them.

At the end of the day, if you are a service provider, or a non-profit agency, you need the things that are unique to your brand to be an important benefit for someone.  You need fans. So connecting the dots to your customers and stakeholders is an integral part of understanding your brand.

 

A picture is worth a thousand words

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buildingYour brand promise is a lot more than a logo, tagline, home page, or picture.   But if you have not pursued some consistency in how you visually represent your brand; if there is dissonance between what you are trying to say and how you are saying it, then your underlying message about your commitment and your work will not be clear or convincing.

If you haven’t recently done an audit of your public facing messages and images for consistency with your branding message, it’s probably long overdue. Remember, though, that a visual audit proceeds from a strong brand statement.

Go back to your mission

Make sure that you’ve clearly identified your customers, influencers, and most importantly – who the people are that benefit from your work. Your visual messages should convey the heart of the work – what you hope to accomplish for those beneficiaries that your organization is passionate about.

Is your work about a building? Or is it meant to make lives better for people? If you are a nonprofit agency with a people-focused mission and your websites, brochures and media messages focus on your building; then you may be communicating pride of place. But you are not showing the heart of your work to your audiences.

Agencies that focus on educating kids and are not using visuals that keep the kids at the forefront are not only missing an opportunity to convey an important message about their mission. They are also taking a risk that the public will perceive their heart and their commitment to be in the wrong place. Materials, web pages, and commercials created to further ASPCA work don’t focus on the people. They focus on the animals. AARP does not show you lots of images of small children, but rather vibrant, aging retirees.

And unless you are Habitat for Humanity, consider keeping pictures of a building in the background, not the forefront, of your message.

A note about locating images for your work

If you lack the available resources to take your own photos of your work, you can start with stock images. Both istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com offer fairly inexpensive images for download and use. If you can find one or more images there that do a good job of showing off your work and your audience, it can start you off. Searching these sites may also help you to identify what you want to ideally convey that you can’t find in stock photos; and will need to pursue on your own. The downside: you may not be the only one using a stock image. The upside: commercially available photographs have all their ducks in a row as far as model/subject releases are concerned. If you take your own photos and people are the subjects, you should always get permission from the subject to use the image (or their parent/guardian, if they are a minor).