You know the deal: you were invited into the cool boardroom, and impressed by the array of senior talent on show, only to later find yourself imperceptibly moved to a different team, one with significantly less experience, glamour and firepower than was originally on show. Sure, they might sit in for meetings and client calls, but suddenly it dawns: your ‘disruptive technology’ is no longer front and centre in the PR firm’s star focus, and you’re paying top dollar from your hard won investors’ funds for a junior executive to do all the leg work on your precious story – writing the press release, choosing the channels, pitching the story. Sure they work hard and do their best, but the truth
For the most part, press releases, if overused, simply bring diminishing returns, and corresponding diminishing credibility, from the media. The more, the less. On both counts. With PR, you should always consider your ‘audience’ before clicking ‘Send’, which in this case is your media contact list. Put yourself in the place of a busy journalist - will seeing the sixth press release from the same source in 2/3 months make you rush to your Inbox? Or will you come to regard communications from that source as little better than spam? For printed media like local or national newspapers, consider: will editors print your ‘news’ in say, their tech section, each week? For a whole month? Or ev
Before you ever write a press release, you should first consider where and to whom you will be sending it. This – surprisingly often overlooked - activity is the key to the success of any press release and of any pr programme, and will repay any effort you put into it. It’s also a process of research, and compiling your press list in advance will go a good way to shaping your releases, and framing your message and content. This is a valuable exercise. A press list should always be very well tailored to suit your subject matter. A focussed list will always yield the best return for your effort; after all, it should be made up of writers who will be reasonably interested to receive your ‘n
