All you need to do is download the press release template that fits the story you want to tell about your business and fill in the square brackets.

To make it super easy, and effective, each press release template tells you what you MUST include in each paragraph of the press release – and in what order.

With each template, we suggest the strongest news angle, the media to target and the best image to send with your press release, including an example.

If you follow these instructions you will get the media coverage you want for your business, according to your PR plan.

What we will cover today:

• The 17 press release templates for every story and occasion
• How to write a press release in detail
• How to pitch your press release to the media

Let’s get into it:

17 Press Release Templates for Your Business

1. Award Nomination Press Release Template
2. Award Win Press Release Template
3. Book Press Template
4. Charity Event Press Release Template
5. Crisis Statement Press Release
6. Event Press Template
7. Grand Opening Press Release Template
8. Music Press Release Template
9. New Employee Press Release Template
10. New Location Press Release Template
11. New Product Template
12. New Service Template
13. Product Update Press Release Template
14. Rebranding Press Release Template
15. Record Sales Press Release Template
16. Resignation Press Release Template
17. Takeover Press Release Template

1.Award Nomination Press Release Template

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News angle: Being in the running for an award is by itself newsworthy, as it shows you have done something exceptional – this is what the media loves.

Potential target media: Depending on the size of your business this will usually be a story of interest to your trade sector media or your local/regional press.

Image to go with your press release: A high-resolution photograph of your key team member(s) looking excited with their fingers crossed. Something like this:

2. Award Win Press Release Template

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News angle: Winning an award is naturally a news story so this template should write itself! The key here is to target the appropriate media with this press release. This is public relations 101.

Potential target media: Depending on the size of your business this will usually be a story of interest to your trade sector media or your local/regional press. Every town loves to see their local businesses doing well.

Image to go with your press release: A high-resolution photograph of your team with their winning award trophy. Something like this:

3. Book Press Template

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News angle: Releasing a new book will be of interest to literary critics who review new book releases each week, so that is your target here. This is not really a news story unless perhaps it is autobiographical and includes some particularly salacious revelations! 

Potential target media: The book reviewers of national media outlets or perhaps specialist interest titles if they are relevant to your book.

Image to go with your press release: A high-resolution photograph of the front cover of the book and maybe one of the author. Something like this:

4. Charity Event Press Release Template

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News angle: Make sure your charity event has something exceptional about it, a particularly brave or ambitious challenge and that it raises a large amount of money! 

Potential target media: Usually this type of press release is most suitable for the local/regional press.

Image to go with your press release: You have two options here. Either a traditional image of someone from your company presenting the charity with a large check/cheque (a bit boring) or a member of the fundraising team competing their challenge, i.e. crossing the finishing line at a marathon wearing the charity’s t-shirt. Something like this:

5. Crisis Statement Press Release Template

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News angle: This is strictly speaking not really a press release, this is a media statement in response to a crisis communication scenario so you want to keep this factual, sober and draw as little attention to your brand as possible.

Potential target media: This depends on the size of your business and the nature of the crisis. You could well be issuing this to major national media outlets.

Image to go with your press release: This does not require an image.

6. Event Release Template

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News angle: To get media coverage for your event it needs a strong news hook. Think of inviting a high-profile celebrity as a guest speaker or hold the event in an unusual location. There is more here on how to write a press release for an event.

Potential target media: Depending on the size of your business this can be the mainstream national media, major influencers or your local newspaper.

Image to go with your press release: If the event is for a product launch, have your CEO pictured on stage with the product you are launching, so people can see what will happen. Something like:

7. Grand Opening Press Release Template

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News angle: To make your grand opening newsworthy, think images – so much news coverage is picture-led. Think about some sort of PR stunt that would give your opening the real ‘wow’ factor. 

Potential target media: Local/regional and trade sector media for most sizes of business. Always keep it relevant to your target audience.

Image to go with your press release: Your image needs to convey that your new business is open, welcoming and ready for business. Sure you can include images of ribbon cuttings (yawn) but we prefer something a little more sophisticated. Something like this:

8. Music Press Release Template

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News angle: Releasing a new single/album will be of interest to music critics who review new music releases each week, so that is your target here. This is not really a news story, unless you are a global megastar – ‘hello Beyonce’, if you’re reading this.

Potential target media: Depending on the level of fame of the artist/band you should target music critics from the national mainstream media down to niche music genre blogs and websites.

Image to go with your press release: Include a copy of your album artwork and then also a decent high-resolution image of the band/artist. Something like this:

9. New Employee Press Release Template

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News angle: Only issue one of these press releases when you are appointing a senior member of your team. This will always be of interest to your sector trade media. 

Potential target media: Trade press.

Image to go with your press release: A standard profile picture of the person you are hiring. Something like this:

10. New Location Release Template

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News angle: Try and focus this press release on the fact that, yes you are moving to a new location, but the benefit you will be bringing to that location – the jobs you will be creating.

Potential target media: Local/regional media and possibly trade press.

Image to go with your press release: Include a high-resolution image of your new premises, ideally with team members outside. The media like people more than buildings. Something like this: 

11. New Product Template

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News angle: You must focus on what makes your new product particularly innovative and ‘game-changing’. What does it do that nothing else can do, what makes it a first? This is key in media relations.

Potential target media: Your trade sector media and influencers who are interested in your product/brand. 

Image to go with your press release: Include a high-resolution image of your new product, whatever that is. No example is needed here as you know what your product is! 

12. New Service Template

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News angle: You must focus on what makes your new service particularly innovative and ‘game-changing’. What do you do that no one else can do, what makes your service a ‘first’? Give it an attention grabbing headline.

Potential target media: Your trade sector media and influencers who are interested in your service/brand. 

Image to go with your press release: If your service is tech-based then include an image of your app. If it is an offline service then include a high-resolution image of people using your service. So, for example, if you run a restaurant you could go for something like this:

13. Product Update Press Release Template

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News angle: Focus on what has changed for your best-selling product, what makes this upgrade new, innovative and disruptive. The media loves stories of disruption – it’s a great way to get free PR.

Potential target media: Your trade media and those influencers who are fans of your product.

Image to go with your press release: Include a high-resolution image of your new product update, whatever that is. No example is needed here as you know what your product is! 

14. Rebranding PR Template

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News angle: The media don’t so much care about a new logo but they do care about the fact that your business is having a complete refresh and perhaps a change of direction. Focus on what the rebrand is FOR. What do you hope to achieve from this? 

Potential target media: Trade sector media and influencers who are followers of your business.

Image to go with your press release: Include high-resolution copies of your newly branded artwork – logo etc and also your products with the new branding included. You will need these for your entire public relations campaign.

15. Record Sales Press Release Template

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News angle: The key to this press release being of interest to the media is because you have broken a record, the business has done something for the very first time. The higher and more exceptional that figure is, for your sector, the more likely the journalist is to care.

Potential target media: Trade media only.

Image to go with your press release: Include a high-resolution image of your team toasting their success. If you want to get really creative you could have them smashing a target with a hammer, or some similar act of creative destruction! Here are loads more public relations examples. Or keep it more celebratory, like this:

16. Resignation Press Release Template

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News angle: You would only issue a resignation press release when a senior member of your company leaves – it also depends under what circumstances they leave too. If it is a celebration of their contribution then focus on thanks and appreciation.

Potential target media: Trade sector media only.

Image to go with your press release: An image of the outgoing employee. A simple profile headshot will do for this story. No example needed here.

17. Takeover Press Release Template

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News angle: The fact that one business is being taken over by another is usually always a story for the media, particularly the trade media that covers your sector. If you are in a particularly big business, the national business press may also cover the story. Focus on the monetary value of the deal in your news angle and what the deal encompasses. 

Potential target media: Trade sector media and business press.

Image to go with your press release: An image of the two CEOs shaking hands on the deal. Something like this: 

How To Write A Press Release – Quick Tips

Now you’ve seen the 17 press release templates for your business here’s a quick refresher on how to write a press release.

Getting the flow of a press release right is critical if you want a journalist to read it and think that you have a story worth telling.

This is our full guide on how to write a press release but the main elements are below:

Section 1 – Sounds obvious, but write ‘Press Release’ at the top. You’d be surprised how many people forget to do this.

Section 2 – Always date your press release. It ensures that the journalist knows that this is a new story and it also tells them WHEN you want the story to run.

Section 3 – The headline. Keep the headline to under 10 words – this discipline will force you to focus on your news angle.

Section 4: The Intro Paragraph. You’ve got 25 words or less to get across your entire story. Get to the point immediately and include at least five key news points.

Section 5: In the second and third paragraphs develop your story and include more key facts so the journalist can develop their story.

The quotes for your press release

Section 6: The quotes section delivers the ‘why’ behind the story. Include two or three paragraphs from your spokesperson and use their full name and job title.

Section 7: Main body copy. This is where you include your key messages, such as how much your product/service costs and where people can get hold of it.

Section 8: The closing quote. Your closing quote can be from your main spokesperson or you can introduce a third party spokesperson whose endorsement gives your product/service more credibility.

Section 9: ENDS. Always finish your press release with the word ‘ends’ so a journalist knows it is the, er, end.

Section 10: Contact details. Include full contact information for the person handling all press and media enquiries.

Section 11: Notes to Editors – also known as the boilerplate. It includes additional background information which could be of use to the journalist but is not critical to the story.

How to Pitch Your Press Release Template to The Media

This is our complete guide on how to write a media pitch.

If you don’t have time for the deep-dive, these are the essentials to ensure your press release gets noticed by a journalist. 

1. Email pitch subject line – The subject line of your email pitch must contain your news hook – the one thing that makes your story stand out and demand a journalist’s attention. 

2. The journalist’s name – For gawd’s sake make sure you spell it correctly! 

3. Your first sentence – Get straight to point with what makes your press release newsworthy. This is all the media cares about.

4. Show you care – Reference something else the journalist has written recently, show you like their work and know your story is relevant to them.

5. Don’t be a copycat – Do NOT, under any circumstances, include a line in your pitch which basically says “I saw you wrote a story about ‘X’ last week. My business does the same thing, will you write about us?”.

6. How to include your press release – Attach it to the email as a word document and also copy and paste the text into your email, below your pitch.

7. Images – Never embed images in the press release, this is useless for serious media. Attach them as high-resolution files, greater than 1mb.

8. Close your email pitch – Invite the journalist to contact you if they need any more information.

9. Triple check – Before you hit send make sure your email pitch is typo-free and as strong as it can be. You get one chance to impress upon the reporter that yours is a story worth telling.

So there you have it.

Download the template that is right for you – or get the entire bundle so you’re always prepared.

Good luck! 

Jump to quiz

What press release examples do you need?

The post Press Release Template: 17 Expert Press Release Templates appeared first on Class:PR.

After all, that’s their job; to convince you to work with them by dazzling you with science.

But we’ve got good news. Digital PR is almost exactly the same as traditional public relations. It’s just that Digital PR focuses more on building your business’ presence online.

It uses tools like social media, blogs, backlinks, and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to improve your online visibility. It doesn’t use print media, and rarely connects with TV or radio channels.

Some people say that in a digital media landscape that there isn’t any difference between traditional PR and digital PR. Every media platform is online and the same rules apply.

But if you’re used to working solely with print or broadcast media, and find digital PR a little scary, then this ultimate guide is for you.

Here’s what we will cover:

• What is digital PR?
• Are online marketing and digital PR the same thing?
• What are the benefits of digital PR?
• Are there specific techniques in Digital PR?
• The five most common types of Digital PR strategy
• Key elements of any digital PR campaign
• Measuring Your Digital PR Strategy

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR and traditional PR both share similar goals.

Both types of public relations want to improve your company’s reputation and strengthen your brand’s position in the market. Each one wants to communicate with your target audience and drive engagement and sales.

Digital PR typically incorporates more digital tools and internet-based strategies. For example,  search engine optimisation instead of focusing of how to get a story on the local news.

There’s also emphasis on social media, content marketing and influencer marketing. All aiming to improve your brand’s online presence so that you can speak directly to your target market 24/7.

Digital PR takes advantage of the full range of marketing ideas for small business offered by the growth of the internet. Plus the connectivity of social media.

As with any good PR plan, you can define your brand, differentiate yourself from your competitors, and start a conversation with all the people you want to reach.

Are online marketing and Digital PR the same thing?

Although there can be a crossover between online marketing and digital PR, they’re usually focused on two very different areas.

Digital PR concentrates on building awareness of your brand through storytelling and linking with media sites.

As with all media relations, your digital PR campaign will secure media coverage on on-line news sites.

Through being featured in this media, the audience will trust your brand more and will visit your site and engage with your content.

An online marketing communications strategy is typically more focused on sales.

It directly promotes the product or service so the audience will take an action. This action will establish a connection which can eventually be converted into a sale.

It is worth noting that, marketing (and selling) is a lot easier once digital PR has built up brand awareness and established a strong reputation.

What are the benefits of Digital PR?

Improves search engine rankings

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is essential because it makes your website more visible. When your website is more visible, it receives more traffic. The more traffic you receive, the better your chances of converting visitors into customers.

There are several components to a successful SEO strategy, including researching and using keywords that have the highest search rates.

You also need to create content that is informative, engaging, and establishes your business as an expert in the field.

Off-page SEO is also important.  It involves building backlinks to your site from an external site. Back linking tells search engines that your website has been recognised as high-quality by another respected provider.

The more backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank on the search engine results page.

Builds your brand

Thanks to the growth of the internet, and the many different avenues it offers, the opportunities to promote your business online are virtually limitless.

Digital PR is a great way to build your brand and introduce your product or service to a new audience.

By using a variety of strategies including publishing online content and knowing how to write a press release you can secure the exposure you need.

Also try organising online reviews and interviews or perhaps marking awareness days.

Use your social media management tools to connect with influencers who can promote your company to their followers via their social media accounts. It’s a great way to quickly grow your online presence and build consumer trust in your brand.

Increases website traffic

When your brand is mentioned more frequently online, more prospective customers will start to visit your website.

The more visitors you have, the more chance you have of converting them into customers.

Establishes your expertise

One of the best ways to set yourself apart from your competition is to publish content that shows how knowledgeable you are.

When your target audience sees you’re producing high-quality articles that establish you as an authority in your field, they’ll realise you’re a credible source of information and a brand that can be trusted.

Once you’re confident in your online profile its time to do wider media outreach. Create an online media list and target journalists. Work out how to find someone’s email address so you can send your email or press release directly to them, rather than using a press release distribution service.

Creates trust in your brand

As your target audience reads, and hears, more and more positive things about your company, their confidence in your product or service will increase.

They’ll also be much more likely to recommend you to their friends and colleagues.

Generates leads and sales

As your brand receives more online mentions, and your website receives more visitors, you’ll begin to reach a much larger audience.

In turn, you’ll generate more leads which will inevitably result in increased sales.

Are there specific techniques in Digital PR?

There are many ways Digital PR can enhance your brand. In SEO-speak, these techniques are often known as ‘white hat’, ‘grey hat’, and ‘black hat’.

White Hat SEO techniques

‘White Hat’ are strategies that are widely followed, and Google approved. This means they’re considered ethical ‘best practice’ ways to boost your search engine rankings.

Guest blogging

As the name suggests, this is when you write a blog for somebody else’s website, and link back to your own site in the author bio or within your blog copy.

It’s a handy way to spread your ideas and reach an audience who might not otherwise have heard of you, and because the internet is so information-hungry, people are always looking for new content to publish on their websites.

Link baiting

Don’t worry; this isn’t as sinister as the name suggests. Link baiting is when you create some amazing content that a lot of people find valuable.

As a result, they’ll link back to it and cite you as a source so that more people will realise you’re a reliable place to find information and visit your site.

Site optimisation

This is the foundation for everything. When you build and add to your website, make sure that your site content, wording, and site structure are as SEO-friendly as possible.

That means using the most effective keywords in your titles and throughout your text. Add title tags that are relevant to the content found on the page. Sharpen your meta descriptions to spark your visitors’ curiosity and inspire them to read more.

Site optimisation can also include using push notifications, Messenger, or email (or a combination of all three) to interact with engaged users and implementing cart abandonment and remarketing campaigns.

Grey Hat SEO techniques

‘Grey Hat’ are strategies that might not strictly be following SEO etiquette, but you can usually get away with them if you use them sparingly.

Overindulge, though, and Google will almost certainly penalise you for it.

Adding length to your pre-existing content

Where SEO and generating traffic is concerned, size definitely matters. That’s why posts of 2,000 words or more get far more search engine attention.

But what if you’ve already published articles you’re happy with, but their average length is 1,500 words or less?

There’s no rule that says you can’t add more words to your pre-existing posts. It can be a terrific way to polish or repackage articles you’ve already written.

It’s important here to understand the difference between a news story and a feature so you can interchange between the two. For example, news stories can be repurposed into feature stories examples.

However, never be tempted to ‘article spin’. This is when you plagiarise somebody else’s work. Search engines won’t only block you; you could also be legally liable to the original author.

Build a Microsite

When you build a microsite or blog, you can generate backlinks to your main website without falling foul of the rules.

However, the content on your microsite should be totally original and pertinent to the website you’re linking to.

This is a useful way to improve your rankings while remaining in complete control of wherever your backlinks are coming from.

Use keywords naturally

When you stuff your content with too many keywords, you’re damaging your search engine ranking. You’re also damaging the readability of your site, which might mean visitors will find your content too difficult to follow and never come back.

Keywords are vital to SEO, but only if you use them naturally. Just like you needed to learn how to write a media pitch, you’ll need to master SEO writing and keyword usage.

If you can find the right balance between keywords and readability, search engines will push you up their rankings.

Black Hat SEO techniques

We’ve saved the most frowned-upon until last. It’s important to know what these are, so you never do them.

‘Black Hat’ are aggressive strategies that break all the search engine rules.  You may get away with them for a while, but when Google eventually rumbles you the penalties can be severe, not to mention damage to your reputation or the possibility of litigation.

Keyword stuffing

Remember what we just said about using keywords naturally? Keyword stuffing – i.e. repeating the same keyword (or combination of keywords) over-and-over in a post, article, or small piece of text – is precisely the opposite.

Your users won’t thank you for it, and Google will penalise you for doing it.

Using automated content

Generating automated content and publishing it on our site is no use to anybody, including you. Like an impactful public relations campaign your digital PR should be bespoke and authentic.

Your visitor will receive a horrible user experience because the content will almost certainly have no relevance to what they’re looking for (and, even worse, will probably be nonsensical).

Search engines will eventually blacklist you because your automated content is worthless.

Clickbait

We’ve all fallen for the cleverly written headline that’s enticed us to click on it and then taken us to a place we didn’t want to go.

Clickbait is usually a deceptive way to generate income. It is also a guaranteed way to annoy your visitors and, eventually, catastrophically damage your search engine rankings.

Link mismanagement

Link mismanagement and manipulation can get your website into all kinds of hot water. That includes:

• Web Rings: improving search engine rankings by creating a circular network of multiple sites that receive traffic from related sites.
• GuestPost Spam: offering to write a guest blog for a site, but the guest blog is an irrelevant article concealing an outbound link to an unrelated site.
• LinkBait and Switch: when you rewrite an article or post that has already gained legitimate search engine links and turn it into something commercial that has no connection with the previous version and is purely designed to lure traffic.
• Link Exchange: Exchanging links with another website so that you can reciprocally market each other’s business.

Content Scraping

Content Scraping is theft. It usually involves using a script or automated bot to steal content from somebody else’s website, without the website owner’s knowledge or permission.

Content Scraping is often used to boost the amount of content on a website, even though it may not provide any added value to users. It’s usually a violation of copyright and illegal in many countries.

This is only a small selection of the Black Hat techniques that could get you into a lot of trouble. If anyone is managing your Digital PR for you, make sure they don’t use these tricks on your behalf.

 The five most common types of Digital PR strategy

If you’re not sure where to start then here are the five most common types of strategies for digital PR.

1. Contributing a guest post – Writing a guest article for publication on somebody else’s website.
2. Publishing press releases – Creating newsworthy content to secure press attention.
3. Unlinked mentions – When your company name is mentioned in a piece of content, but doesn’t include a link back to your website.
4. Influencer marketing – Reaching out to Influencers to gain mentions on their social media platforms.
5. Networking – Nurturing relationships with journalists and editors to establish backlinks to your website. You won’t need specific media training to do this, as you won’t be on camera, but don’t forget to follow the standard rules of the game to get yourself some free PR.

Key elements of any Digital PR Campaign

Content creation

Content marketing is essential to any Digital PR campaign. The more content you create, and the more it is searched for and shared, the faster your reputation will grow.

Continually creating content can be difficult and time-consuming, but like any habit, it will get easier over time if you discipline yourself to write new content regularly. Here are some tips to consider:

Know your audience

What does your target audience want to read? What are their needs and their pain points?

Stay up-to-date

Know your industry inside-out. Stay on top of the latest trends, developments, opportunities, and concerns.

Whether you’re writing about how to implement crisis communications or which podcast hosting platform people should use to launch their latest show, you need to demonstrate you have the latest knowledge. Attend conferences, subscribe to news feeds, or follow other thought leaders on Twitter.

Read what other people are writing

You can’t create in a vacuum. Be interested in what other content creators are saying and study the topics their readers are engaging with.

Find your own voice

Too much online content – even useful, knowledgeable content – reads like it was written by a machine.

A great way to set yourself apart from the crowd is to let your own unique personality shine through. Remember, successful content creation is all about communicating your ideas in the most effective way possible. The best way to do that is by writing as naturally as you can.

Don’t get too hung up on grammatically correct sentence structure, because exacting grammar can sometimes be a chore to read.

Also, don’t over-use keywords. Concentrate on making your content easy to read, understandable, relatable, and (if possible) entertaining.

That’s how you’ll find an audience that will come back to read what you’re writing time and time again.

Show empathy

You’re not writing this content for you, you’re writing it for your audience.

That means you should always focus on addressing their needs and challenges instead of talking about yourself and how great your company is.

Be consistent… and patient

The more you write, the better your content will be. It might take you a while to find your voice, and it may take longer to find your audience.

Creating content your readers will find valuable is key. As you publish more and more content online, the easier it will be for your target audience to find you.

Content repurposing

Another useful way to create content is by repurposing content you’ve already produced and publishing it in a different format on another platform.

For example, you could transform a blog you’ve previously written for your website into:

• An infographic
• A guest blog post
• An article for an industry publication
• A YouTube video
• A podcast

It’s even better if you can add new information or change the angle slightly to suit the medium you’re presenting to.

If you’re reworking your article for an industry publication, you might want a technical focus. If you interview a respected source you can back up your opinion with their point of view and underline your expertise.

Remember, you should never simply rework your old content so that you have new content to publish. You should ensure that the new content adds value and reinforces you as a thought-leader.

Not sure what is thought leadership? Read this quick guide get the low down.

The importance of Social Media

Social media is an incredibly powerful digital PR tool, but it’s important to use it wisely.

For example, when you write and publish new content, your social media channels are a perfect way to promote it and encourage other people to share it.

However, the kind of content your Facebook followers might want to see won’t necessarily be the kind of content your LinkedIn audience will want to interact with.

Make sure that the content you’re offering has value to the people you’re sharing it with. Also, don’t be afraid to encourage feedback and use social media as an opportunity to discuss what you’ve published with others.

It’s the immediate accessibility of social media, and the opportunity it gives you to influence and quietly persuade your audience, that makes it so crucial in a digital PR campaign.

Oh, and always make sure you have a compelling LinkedIn headline – one that really connects with your audience.

This is an easy win, as is knowing how to post an article on LinkedIn. 

Measuring Your Digital PR Strategy

It isn’t enough to continuously put new content out there, implement the correct SEO, make connections, and hope everything works out.

You must be able to measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing so you can make adjustments accordingly. A Digital PR campaign is usually a considerable investment in time as well as money, so it is important to get it right.

SEO and digital PR don’t generally provide instant feedback. It can sometimes take several months and even years to find out if your strategy is yielding results.

However, there are plenty of tools you can use to monitor key metrics and ensure your campaign stays on target.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics measures traffic to your website, including referral traffic and organic search traffic. It also analyses conversions for leads and sales.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console measures clicks, impressions, and increases in brand name searches to assess whether a campaign is working.

Social media shares

How many followers have you gained since the campaign began? Are they sharing your posts, finding value in your content, and engaging with your brand?

Domain Rating

Are the backlinks to your website proving effective? Using an SEO Domain Rating tool will show the strength of your backlink profile and identify unlinked mentions.

Reverse image search

Reverse image search is useful for identifying where your infographics and images have been used in other places online.

Leads and Sales

This is the litmus test of any Digital PR campaign. How many leads have you made through your website?  Of those leads how many have converted into a sale?

So that’s it! We hope this ultimate guide has given you a useful overview of Digital PR and provided inspiration for how you can use Digital PR in your business.

It is more than possible to create and deliver your own successful Digital PR campaign without engaging the expensive services of a Digital PR agency.

All you need is time, patience, a lot of hard work and careful planning. Good luck!

The post Digital PR: Everything You Need To Know [2022] appeared first on Class:PR.

Whether you’re a startup or a large corporate, an effective crisis communication plan should always be at the heart of your wider public relations strategy.

Why?

Because in 2021 your reputation has never been more linked to your bottom line, to the success of your business.

A crisis communication plan will ensure you protect your reputation, and the trust people have in your business if disaster strikes.

As a crisis communications expert of more than 20 years, heading up the healthcare team at Arc Seven Communications, I’ve dealt with multiple serious crisis situations.

I know what works, and what doesn’t.

I can explain why your first instinct in a crisis might not necessarily be the right one.

And why a detailed crisis communication plan will help you navigate even the toughest of scenarios.

In this guide, I’ll give you the full overview of what you need to know to create your own crisis communication plan, crisis communication examples, and a 9-step crisis communication checklist you can use in your business right away.

Let’s get to it.

What is Crisis Communication?

All businesses rely on trust to function successfully.

But every business, if it’s around long enough, will face challenges, threats and even major disasters.

However, it’s rarely the crisis itself that destroys the reputation of a business – it’s the way that issue is handled.

There’s a very natural human tendency in a crisis to panic and want to hide, to protect oneself.

But when we react like this in business the results can be very damaging.

A crisis is one thing, the whiff of cover-up if you avoid scrutiny is quite another.

If something goes wrong in your business your customers and stakeholders want to hear MORE from you, not less.

When events take an unexpected turn, saying nothing will simply leave a communications vacuum into which people will pour their own facts and truths.

You will lose control of the story and it will then become exponentially more difficult to recover your reputation.

As the US Investor Warren Buffet says:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Don’t wait for a crisis

Waiting for disaster to strike is not the moment at which you should be asking yourself:

• What should we say?
  
• Who should say it?
  
• How often should we communicate?
  
• What channels should we use to communicate?
  
• Should we reply to all social media comments?
  
• How transparent should we be?
  
• What are the legal implications of apologising?
  
• Have we had media training?
  
• Who’s got the login details for Twitter?!
  

These are just a few of the questions you want to be reflecting on and answering when things are calm before any potential crisis hits.

By figuring this out, and documenting it in a detailed crisis communication strategy (as part of your wider PR plan), you will be ready for whatever comes, and miles ahead of your competition.

As an aside, something which I have noticed often down the years is that the businesses that prepare for the worst rarely have to deal with it.

Those that don’t prepare…well, you can imagine the rest.

Crisis Communication Examples

There are potentially an infinite number of crises that can affect a business, it really does depend on what you do, make or sell.

Here are a few examples of crises that would make the headlines:

• If you work in healthcare it could look like a patient dying unexpectedly
  
• A restaurant might have an outbreak of food poisoning
  
• A toy manufacturer could have a product which injuries a child
  
• A clothing manufacturer could be on the receiving end of a campaign which reveals their products are made with forced labour
  
• A large business could be in serious financial distress or accused of fraud
  
• Your CEO could be convicted of a crime
  
• The company could have polluted the local environment in some way
  
• Your tech platform could have been hacked and your customers’ data compromised or sold online
  

Sadly, the list is endless, but what unifies all of these scenarios is that each has the potential to seriously damage, if not finish, your business.

Particularly if the crisis is not handled appropriately from a communication standpoint.

Your stakeholders will forgive you a surprising amount – but they won’t tolerate deliberate deceit after the initial crisis. 

So you need a plan…

Crisis Communication Channels 

Your crisis communication plan needs to take into account how you will communicate across multiple channels.

Your plan needs to incorporate messaging and tactics for social media, mainstream media, face-to-face customer communication, internal communication, community communication and perhaps even investor communications.

We’ll examine the core principles of your overarching strategy in a moment, but while the tone and the contents of your message may vary depending on the channel you are using, there should be broad consistency regarding all communications in a crisis.

For instance, you don’t want to be apologising on Twitter, but then denying the core facts of the crisis to the mainstream press.

Don’t lie…or look like you’re lying

This type of contradiction is fuel for journalists and social media campaigners, mixed messages will only keep the crisis alive for longer.

Remember, the whole purpose of a crisis communications plan is to take the momentum out of the story so you can regain control.

Having a clear view of your different channels will not only ensure you don’t exclude anyone in your response, but it will also ensure that you prioritise them in the right order.

For example, it’s a pretty bad look if your customers or employees are the last to find out about your response in a crisis.

But perhaps that journalist from the Daily Mail who is after an attention-grabbing headline can wait just a little longer.

Action Point: Draw up a list of all of your communications channels, from mainstream media (local and national) including journalists contact details, to the login details for all of your social media accounts.

Crisis Communication Team Structure

Next up you want to agree, who in your business, needs to be part of the crisis communication team, including who will act as the spokesperson.

A crisis, by its very nature, is something that is potentially very serious in terms of the impact on your business, so you want the key decision-makers to be on this team.

DON’T delegate this work to a junior press officer – no offence guys.

My recommendation is that the team consists of:

• CEO/founder
  
• Communications Director
  
• HR Director
  
• Legal advisor (if you have one)
  
• Operations Director
  
• Possibly IT Director
  

Crises, by their very nature, move exceedingly fast, so you want the people on this team who can make important decisions very quickly.

A collegiate approach is good, but too many voices can slow you down.

Also, the wrong voices, those who have little experience of crisis communication, can also be an issue. 

It’s so important that you make the right decisions and sometimes overly cautious input can be more of a hindrance than a help.

Once you have agreed who will sit on your crisis team you need to ensure that ALL of them have had media training and that everyone is completely up to speed with the crisis communication plan.

That shouldn’t really be an issue as all of these people would have had a role in creating this document. 

Create a decision tree for this group, which will cover the all-important first hour of a crisis.

That way you all have a clear understanding of what each person must do, and when, if the balloon goes up.

Action Point: Draw up the list of the people you want on your crisis communication team and create the decision tree

Your 9-Part Crisis Communication Plan

Okay, now we get to the real substance of your crisis communication plan.

Take each of these points in turn and think about how they apply in YOUR business.

Don’t skirt over this, take the time to get it right. 

You’ll use many of these answers to complete your own crisis communication plan when you’ve read the lot.

1. Pre-crisis phase 

This is when everything is sweetness and light in your business.

And THIS is the moment of maximum preparedness for a crisis response.

What does that look like?

Building a strong and lasting reputation with your customers, employees and stakeholders.

These are very much the people who you are going to rely on in a crisis to defend you and your account of events, so you need them to trust you NOW, not when the s*** hits the fan.

This may seem obvious, but be open and transparent in your day to day communications right now.

Use social media to show the positive impact your product or service has on your target audience.

Have an ongoing public relations campaign which ensures you are frequently mentioned in your target media.

Make journalists your allies

Contact and connect with the journalists that you want to feature your business.

When things go wrong you may very well be speaking with the same reporters and they’ll be much more willing to hear your side of the story if you have a good relationship with them.

Build a strong rapport with bloggers, podcasters and influencers that matter to you.

All of this work is not only key to your marketing communications success but it also the foundational work of your crisis communication plan.

These people will be your advocates when the critics come for you in a crisis.

Their endorsement and defence of your business can often be far more powerful, and believable, than any comment you may issue yourself. 

Action Point: Draw up a media list of your target journalists and influencers

2. Media training 

More often than not in a crisis you will not need/want to go on camera to give your side of the story, a written statement may be best.

However, you must always be ready – particularly if the crisis is extremely serious in nature.

Putting a human face to your response can help rebuild trust. 

But you need to ensure that it is the right human.

They must have received media training within the last six months (check out our quick media training guide here).

In a crisis the journalist’s questions are likely to be pretty direct/aggressive so you must practice answering this style of interview.

If you’ve never undergone a media grilling before it can be a little daunting. 

If you’re not prepared you could inadvertently say something which could worsen the situation, not improve it.

When you undertake your media training make sure your trainer makes it as realistic as possible. You don’t want them to be polite.

If you don’t practice for that boxing match, the first punch could put you on your back. 

Action point: Get media training now! 

3. Risk register

The guys at Project Manager have a great risk register template that you can download for free.

In this context the risk register is used so you can identify in advance those areas of the business that are most likely to cause issues from an operational or financial perspective.

But when you think about it these are precisely the sort of issues that could cause you a problem from a reputational perspective too.

Types of issues you might want to consider for your own risk register include:

• Times of the year when you may be inspected by regulators
  
• Any online campaigners or critics who are against your business
  
• Financial pressures, such as risk of redundancies
  
• What would happen if your product failed
  
• Impact of severe weather on your business
  
• Risks of a customer being hurt by your product or service
  
• Impact of a pandemic (who had that on their register before 2020?!)
  

These risks will be very specific to your business, but a good tip here is to plan for the worst, no matter how unlikely you think it may be.

Once you know what risks you could possibly face as a business you can then move on to the next stage of your crisis communication plan.

Action Point: Complete Your Risk Register 

4. Get the message right

Agreeing your key message, and sticking to it, is critical in any crisis response.

To do this you need to agree these messages in advance.

These messages will, of course, need to be tailored to the specific situation when the crisis hits, but there are some overarching messages that you can have in place.

Again, these are not business-specific, but some example messages could be:

We would sincerely like to apologise that our customers have been impacted by the failure of our service. That was never our intention and we are working tirelessly to put this right.

The safety and wellbeing of our customers is our highest priority and we have now launched an immediate investigation to discover what went wrong.

As a family business we are committed to our local community and we will strive to put this right.

Our business is built on a culture of openness and transparency and we will continue to update you in the coming days as we work to overcome this problem.

On this occasion we failed to meet our own high standards but we are committed to improving and we will learn from this.

We can confirm that we are cooperating with the police to help them in their investigation and as such we are unable to make any further comment at this time.

These types of message, or a variation on this theme, should always be at the heart of your crisis communication response.

Action point: Start to consider what key message YOU would use in a crisis situation

5. Empathy is everything in a crisis response

This is absolutely critical when it comes to responding in a crisis situation.

Whether you’re dealing with journalists, influencers, customers or employees you must take a humble tone in a crisis.

Even if behind the scenes your business is not really a fault, you want to demonstrate to your most important stakeholders that you care and that you are listening.

Do not stonewall, do not dismiss criticism and do not attack your critics (apart from in exceptional circumstances).

An empathetic and humbled tone will buy you space to respond to the actual crisis which your business faces. 

Don’t start a war on two fronts by attacking your accusers.

See the messages above for what empathy can look like. 

Your messages must not be tone-deaf to the seriousness of the situation. If this crisis is a big deal for your customers it MUST be a big deal for you too.

6. Accuracy in crisis communication

This is another must-have, and for two key reasons.

If something goes wrong in your business you very quickly need to conduct a rapid assessment of the situation to get an overview of the key facts. 

What happened when and who knew what is a good start.

No one will expect you to know everything – how could they – but you must have a grasp on the basics of the crisis.

This is where your crisis communication team comes in. 

They all need to be fully briefed on the most up to date information regarding the issue at hand.

Having a good grasp of the main facts will ensure that whatever public statements you issue cannot be contradicted at a later date.

Secondly, if there is a subsequent legal investigation into this crisis then you do not want any conflict between your communications and crucial evidence. 

Action point: Use a crisis communications reporting form to record a timeline of a crisis

7. Transparency as a tool of crisis communication

If your business is affected by some kind of crisis then it’s trust that you’re trying to salvage.

The more open and transparent you can be in your response then the more likely you are to minimise the damage.

Of course, there is always a tension between the need to be transparent and the requirement to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

And in the case of some businesses, particularly healthcare, this can be a tricky balance to strike.

In addition, if your crisis is the subject of a live police investigation then you are very much restricted in terms of what you can say publicly.

Judging how transparent, or not, you can be is often a legal question – to a degree – that’s why I recommend having a legal expert on your core crisis communication team. 

Outside of these restrictions you really must try to be as open and transparent as possible in your crisis communications.

Why?

Well, think of any situation in life. 

The more open people are with you the more likely you are to trust them.

Exactly the same psychology applies to your business.

Action point: If you don’t have an in-house lawyer source a legal expert you could call in a crisis

8. Speed in crisis communication

The speed of your response – in the digital world – is critical.

But note that I have listed this several points after ‘accuracy’ in terms of what you must get right. 

That’s deliberate.

There’s no point being the first to tweet or to know how to write a press release in world record time, if what you’re saying isn’t accurate.

You could end up doing way more harm than good.

If inaccurate information finds its way online, issued by your business, it can be very hard to set the record straight.

So, get your facts right first in a crisis and then…

Be fast. 

Be very fast.

Social media has made crisis communication a real-time endeavour. 

Gone are the days of issuing a press statement and then sitting back to see how the media covers your story.

Your reputation is being discussed and criticised minute by minute during a crisis and you need to be leading that conversation.

I’m not saying you need to respond to every tweet, that could be impossible, but monitor the conversation and note the main themes that are emerging. 

Agree your position to them and respond accordingly.

If your business has multiple social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – then ensure your crisis communication statements are mirrored on each of these platforms.

Then monitor the conversation

Remember that journalists will be following these social media platforms too, and looking for your disgruntled customers, ones that they can quote or interview about your crisis.

You need to ensure that you get to them first with your version of events.

During the height of a major crisis media monitoring and managing social media can be a 24/7 task but it’s worth your effort to get this right.

Social media fuels mainstream media and vice versa in a crisis.

Make sure you’re on top of both by taking the right decisions at speed.

Action Point: Make sure you have the correct contact details (email and phone) for all of the most important journalists for your business

Action Point: Ensure you have admin access to all your social media channels

9. Recovery phase in crisis communication

Most crises, at least those that hit the mainstream media, will stay in the headlines for two, perhaps three days – unless they’re Enron-sized.

But that doesn’t mean you should stop communicating after day three.

Once you’re through those first few adrenaline-fuelled days there can be a temptation to think ‘thank golly that’s over, let’s just get back to normal now’.

But that is a mistake.

You now need to enter the recovery phase of your crisis communication plan.

Just because the mainstream media has got bored, and their news vans have driven off, doesn’t mean there’s not more work to do.

Now your attention should really shift from the immediate media relations crisis to rebuilding your reputation in the eyes of your customers, employees, investors, suppliers and even your local community.

These are the people who really matter the most to your business, and decide whether or not it will survive.

The impact of a high volume of negative media coverage will not only have rocked these people it will also have left a trail of destruction to your online profile.

Now when people google “Al’s Great Tech Business” they are greeted with a page of negative news stories.

And, the bad news is that these stories will be there for a while putting the skids on your reputation (thanks Google!)

It’s time to listen

This is not the time to panic, but to start listening to your most important stakeholders.

Spend the next few weeks speaking to these groups to find out what their views are on the crisis and how you handled it, then start to tell the story of your recovery.

Contact those very same journalists, bloggers and influencers who may have well criticised you and explain to them what you learnt from the crisis and how you fixed the problem. 

Invite them to your business to see for themselves what has changed.

Every crisis contains an opportunity

Let the story of the recovery be your new story and gradually, over time your reputation both online and offline will recover.

Don’t expect miracles, this will take time, but things will improve if you stick at it – and it can actually be the source of some positive free PR. 

Head in the sand is no strategy for recovery from a crisis – you must engage.

Which brings your crisis communication plan full circle, back to the pre-crisis stage.

This is why I always encourage clients to develop good relationships before there is ever any hint of a crisis. 

Because if a crisis does hit these very same people will be crucial to your business’ recovery. 

Action point: how would you go about listening to your critics? Are you willing to listen?

Now It’s Time to Create Your Crisis Communication Plan

As you can see there’s a lot to think about when creating a crisis communication plan.

My advice, bookmark this page and keep coming back to it as you develop your strategy.

Once you have your plan in place you can relax and get on with what you do best – running your business!

Try and revisit the plan at least once a quarter so you know that all the details are up to date and that all the right people have access to it.

Hopefully, you’ll never need to put your crisis communication plan into action – but now you’re ready should that day ever come.

Good luck! 

And if you’re ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

The post Crisis Communication in 2022: 9 Steps To Create Your Plan appeared first on Class:PR.

That’s one of the questions we often get asked by people doing their own public relations.

Large PR agencies pay thousands for platforms that contain the contact details of journalists all over the globe.

But that can be too expensive for those doing their own PR without a massive budget.

Fortunately, there are some easy tricks and tips to help you to find exactly what you need for free.

Read on to discover eight simple ways to track down the journalist you want to contact.

Remember, it’s no good learning how to write a press release or how to write a media pitch if you don’t send it to the right person.

And press release distribution services are expensive, so you need to take another approach.

In this blog, we’re going to show you exactly how to find someone’s email address for free by name.

Let’s get into it.

1. Use A Search Engine To Find Email Address

This suggestion may seem obvious but don’t skip over the Google/Bing/Yahoo step.

You’ll be amazed how many email addresses you can find if you enter a person’s name and the words ‘email address’ or ‘contact details’ into a search engine.

If the answer doesn’t appear automatically, don’t give up straight away.

It can take a few attempts to hit the jackpot. You never know what you might find in ten minutes with a bit of digging.

Here are a few search strings to try if you are looking for, say, Han Solo…

Han Solo email – [firstname] [lastname] email

HS contact- [firstname] [lastname] contact

Han Solo Gmail – [firstname] [lastname] Gmail

HS Millennium Falcon email – [firstname] [lastname] [company] email/contact

Han Solo email site:milleniumfalcon.com – [firstname] [lastname] email/contact site:[domain.com]

2. Check Their Company Website

So, you’ve got your story and you need to find the right person to send it to.

You’ll find that most media outlets have their own dedicated website.

The website might be just for the publication, programme or radio station itself. Or it could be a website for the larger media organisation itself (for example, the BBC or Hearst Magazines or News Corp).

You may also discover that these dedicated outlet websites contain the contact details of the journalists, broadcasters or editors who work for them.

So, it’s well worth taking a look.

Remember, providing them with a great story that will interest their readers is the best way to help a reporter out.

Many media outlets publish the contact details for their staff so that it’s easy to give them those stories.

Look for those details on the ‘About Us’, ‘Contact Us’ and ‘Meet the Team’ pages of the organisation’s website.

Take a look at any blogs written on the site because the author’s email address may be included as part of the piece.

Don’t be tempted to send stories in via the Contact Form on a media outlet’s website.

This approach has almost zero chance of success.

3. Search On Social Media To Find Email Address By Name

One of the ways that journalists and broadcasters find case studies, experts and information is by putting a shout out on social media.

You’ll find plenty of journalists on Twitter sending out requests for all kinds of things using the hashtag #journorequest.

They want to make it easy for people to come back to them, so you’ll often find they include their email address in the request.

Another good place to find a person’s email address is on their social media bio.

Once again, there are a lot of reporters and broadcasters that include their email addresses on their Twitter profile.

Head over to LinkedIn and you may find direct contact details for the people you want to reach.

Just take a look in their summary section of their profile, as well as in the info section as sometimes people include their email addresses there.

It’s also worth looking on the social media pages for the publications themselves.

They may publish details of the journalists working for them, so it’s a good idea to double-check.

Don’t send a press release or media relations pitch to a journalist directly through any social media platform.

It doesn’t look professional and, unless the story is unmissable, they probably won’t respond.

4. Use Some Clever Guesswork To Find Someone’s Email Address

This may sound like a crazy suggestion, but it’s very logical.

You’ll find that most organisations have a standard format for the email addresses in their company.

Media outlets are no different.

Even if you can’t find the exact email address for the journalist that you want to reach, you can take an educated guess.

The first thing you need to do is to discover the email format for that organisation.

This means finding any email address in the company and then applying the name of your reporter.

So, if you discover that the format for a company is firstname.lastname@company.com, you can apply it to the person you want to find.

When you’ve applied this formula, google the address that you’ve guessed. You may discover that it’ll come up and confirm your guess is right.

Be careful, though.

There are a few instances when this smart approach can fall apart. For example, if there’s more than one person at the company with the same first name and last name.

Another problem could be if the format for emails is firstname@company.com.

Some companies do this and then assign numbers or words to differentiate between the different people with the same name.

Hopefully, though, you’ll get lucky and track down the journalist you want to reach.

5. Call The Media Outlet To Find Someone’s Email Address For Free

Remember the old saying, ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’?

One technique to find someone’s email address by name for free is to phone the media outlet.

However, you don’t merely ring up ask them to hand out the journalist’s email address.

What you need to do is be ready with your best guess address and ask them to confirm if you’ve got it correct.

The exchange should go like this:

Media Outlet Representative: “Good Morning, the New York Times, how can I direct your call?

You: Good Morning, my name is XXX XXX, and I wondered if you could help me check an email address?

MOR: OK, what address do you have?

You: I want to connect with Natalie James on the Culture Desk. The address I have is natalie.james@nyt.com. Is that correct?

MOR: Let me check for you.

You: Thanks so much.

MOR: Yes, that’s the right address.

Or…

The best address to reach Natalie on is culture.editor@nyt.com

You: That’s great. Thanks for your help. I’ll email Natalie now.

It won’t always work, but it’s certainly worth a try.

Our top tip is to be as polite and pleasant as possible to give the person on the other end of your call every reason to want to help you.

Good public relations is all about excellent communication. Being courteous and having lovely manners are very helpful when you are working in this area.

6. Use This Gmail Hack To Find Someone’s Email 

There’s a useful trick you should know that can be found in Gmail.

If you have a Gmail account, you can often verify whether an address is correct by using this nifty trick.

Open up a new message box by hitting the ‘Compose’ button on the left-hand side of your screen.

In the ‘To’ field, type in the email address that you have guessed for the journalist you’d like to find.

If you hover over the address, often a picture and contact details will appear. Just like this.

So, anybody looking for advice on how to write a PR plan or guidance for their next public relations campaign would automatically know that they would be able to reach me, Gemma Clay, because Gmail has confirmed my details.

It’s well worth trying for the reporters you want to put your story in front of.

7. Look For Their Personal Website Or Blog Email Contact Details

Creating a personal brand is now a standard technique for journalists trying to make a name for themselves.

It’s not enough to just be affiliated with a media outlet – particularly when contracts can end abruptly.

You’ll find a lot of journalists also set up their own websites and blogs where they publish their work and create a personal portfolio of content.

This is excellent news for people who want to get press releases containing great stories in front of journalists.

When you find a journalist’s personal website, go straight to the contact details.

Hopefully, they will have published a personal email address where you can reach them.

If they haven’t, there may be a contact form on the website.

In this instance, it’s appropriate to send a message via the contact form as it’s likely that it will hit the journalist’s personal email address inbox.

Remember, every time you put a press release together to send to a media outlet or a specific reporter, you must have an attention-grabbing headline.

If you don’t, the story is going to be passed over before they’ve even opened your email.

8. Try Some Free Email Lookup Tools

The most important thing you need to know about lookup tools is that you are only going to get a certain number of chances to search before they make you pay for the platform.

So, it’s probably a good idea to have exhausted many other options before you use one.

That said, lookup tools can be incredibly useful if you are searching for a specific email address.

So, use them wisely and you may get the results you are looking for.

Here’s a look at a few different lookup tools that let you find an email address for free by name.

Hunter.io

Once you know the media outlet that the reporter you are trying to reach works at, Hunter becomes a powerful tool.

Simply enter the company domain into their search bar and Hunter will return with a list of every email address associated with that domain.

You can use it for free to do 100 searches every month. So, it’s a great option for professionals trying to do free PR for their companies.

If you’re doing a lot of these searches the paid-for tool offers great value.

Voila Norbet

The team at Voila Norbet insist they can find anyone’s corporate email – even those of the most influential people in the world.

That’s a bold claim, but you don’t have to pay to find out if Voila Norbet is right or not.

Create an account with them and you’ll get 50 searches for free.

Take care to read through the site and pay attention to some of the pitfalls they outline to get the best results.

Find That

Want 50 free searches a month on the ‘Yellow Pages of Email’? You need to head over to Find That.

Visit their site, and you’ll discover that Find That enables its users to find relevant press contacts or to do an email verifier to check the address you have.

You can use their search by typing in the name of your reporter and the company they work for in the ‘search now’ box.

These three platforms are just a selection to get you started.

There are tons of platforms out there offering a similar service.

With so many free searches on offer, it’s an excellent strategy for finding the email address you are trying to track down.

Now It’s Your Turn To Find Someone’s Email Address

You now have eight different ways that you can use to find someone’s email address for free by name.

Each one of our approaches is simple, free and an excellent strategy for getting that all-important contact detail.

Don’t forget to keep an email list of all the press contacts you manage to find. Hopefully, you’ll have lots of great stories to send out to reporters.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on.

And if you’re ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

The post How To Find Someone’s Email: 8 Ways That Work in 2022 appeared first on Class:PR.

Then it might be that your target audience research is missing the mark.

This complete guide for 2022 will help you identify the target audiences for all your public relations and marketing efforts.

We’ll teach you how to explore your existing customer base. Who are the people already connecting with your business and what messages resonate with them?

Then we’ll walk you through a smart but simple process to extend that reach with new data and by taking a look at how your competitor’s do it.

Learn from the best public relations examples and piggyback on their success.

A deep-dive into your audience demographics will ensure you target the best channels in your media relations so that you write a winning PR Plan.

Here’s what we’ll cover in 12 steps:

1. What is a target audience?
2. Why do you need a target audience?
3. Can you have more than one target audience?
4. Look at your own customers first
5. Who are your competitor’s customers?
6. Identify your audience’s pain points
7. Understand who influences them
8. Try Keyword Research
9. Ask Quora
10. Create a target audience persona statement
11. Evaluate your decision
12. Test, track and monitor your audience’s progress 

Let’s get to it.

What Is A Target Audience?

A target audience is the group of people who (you hope) are interested in your product, service, charity or campaign.

They are the people who will connect with your cause, buy-in to your brand and care about what you are selling, or how the service you provide can impact their lives.

Your audience has a set of characteristics or demographics that they share, they have similar behaviours and can be grouped by their personal preferences.

For example, if you’re a luxury fashion brand with a special resort wear line, your target will be affluent consumers, with a love of travelling and staying in exclusive locations.

If you’re selling mindfulness guides for families then your target audience is stressed out parents who are trying to cope with their toddler’s tantrums and manage a hectic work/life schedule.

Understanding your target audience is essential for business success.

The better you understand your target market, the more impact you will generate with any marketing or PR campaign that you launch.

Whether you are thinking about how to write a press release for an event, or you’re checking out the best marketing ideas for small business you need to know your target audience in detail.

Let’s talk about why it is so important to get your target audience right.

Why Do You Need A Target Audience?

In many ways targeting an audience is part of human nature, we do it right from an early age.

It’s all part of the exchange process that helps us form relationships and develop as humans.

Right from when we’re asking our parents for something, to when we start school and we look for groups of people who we can connect with and become friends. It’s in our human DNA.

If you want to increase sales and reach new customers then spending time making sure you are targeting the right audience is essential.

New statistics suggest that if you are targeted in your marketing communications then you can increase sales by 20%.

It’s a no brainer.

Once you are clear on your target audience you can tailor all your messaging, stories and adverts to increase buy-in.

If you want people to take an action then they need to relate to the tone and content of your stories.

This resonance will help build trust in your brand and lay the foundations of long-lasting customer loyalties.

This business-critical insight can influence all your paid-for advertising and free PR.

It means you can run the most relevant ad set, choose the most popular awareness days and make sure that the attention grabbing headline for your press release will actually stand out.

Can Companies Have More Than One Target Audience?

The short answer is yes.

Companies can have more than one target audience, products can appeal to multiple target audiences or different products can have different audiences.

However, be warned.

From a marketing and PR point of view, the more target audiences you have the more specialised your communications must be.

Each PR campaign or advertising set should target a certain audience – a general approach will not work here.

If you have different audiences then you’ll need to have specific content for each one otherwise you won’t see engagement and results.

If you’re just starting out with your brand then avoid multiple audiences.

Start simple and then develop multiple audience profiles as your company matures and your understanding of the market grows.

Look At Your Own Customers First

A great place to start when researching your target audience is your own marketing and PR efforts.

Wherever you have interacted with the public is an opportunity to learn more about who is connecting with your brand and what you offer.

Start with your website and social media channels. Analyse your website data.

Which pages are getting the most traffic and why? How long are customers staying on your site and what is their journey?

Look at your social media statistics. Who is your typical social media fan? Who is re-sharing your posts and watching your brand’s videos?

Look at their age, gender, profession, likes and dislikes, personality traits, behaviours and geographic location.

Everything you can think of to build up a profile of your typical customer.

Find out what is unique about them, what sets them apart from others but also unites them as a group.

Although they may seem different at surface level, often one customer will have something in common with another.

Uncover what that is and you’ll start to understand the wider connection between your customer base.

Who Are Your Competitor’s Customers?

One of the easiest places to garner information about potential customers is by looking at your competitors. Who are they targeting and what is the level of engagement like?

Have they run any particular marketing or PR campaign that has brought them strong results?

If so, look at the messaging, who was it aimed at, what are the group’s demographics?

Have a look at their social media feeds, especially if they are customer service focused.

What issues are their customers facing and what solution are they offering to help them?

Identify Your Audience’s Pain Points

Products or services sell best when they solve problems for consumers, making life easier and better.

Identifying customer pain points, the obstacles they encounter when trying to achieve their goals is one of the most important parts of your research.

You need to know what your audience is trying to achieve or the experience they want, and, crucially what prevents them from it.

Do they want to lose weight but can’t find the time to cook nutritious meals?

Do they want a high adrenalin, high octane experience but are caught up in the mundane day-to-day tasks?

Armed with this knowledge you can shape all your messaging and stories so they speak directly to those pain points and helps your audience connect with your brand.

All the time building trust and brand loyalty.

But, make sure you don’t just touch on the surface pain points that you uncover, go deeper and find the root cause of these problems.

If people are stuck in a rut, if they want to change their situation but struggle to do so, it’s normally down to emotional and psychological reasons.

Speak to these pain points too.

Perhaps you don’t want to be overly emotional and aspirational in your messaging, that’s fine, not every brand does.

But don’t overlook this information.

Understanding your audience’s psychological traits, their dominate emotions and feelings is an essential part of your research.

Understand Who Influences Your Target Audience

Once you’ve understood what your audience’s problem is, how they feel about it and what they are trying to do to solve it, you should have a clear understanding of their perspective.

You can empathise with them and understand what they find important.

Next, you need to find out who or what influences them.

Having influence is all about what makes people take an action or make a decision.

Using influence is one of the most effective ways to sell. This is why influencer marketing is one of the biggest marketing growth trends of the past few years.

So how do you find out what or who influences someone?

First, check out social media.

Find users who fit your target audience’s profile and see who they are following and what they are liking.

The influencers they follow and the content they engage with will reveal important information about how they think and feel.

Make sure you check out YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the platforms used by your audience.

If you’re a B2B brand, or your targets are professionals, spend time on LinkedIn and see what content they are self-publishing but also whose posts they are interacting with.

And make sure you know how to post an article on LinkedIn.

But, don’t be fooled by recent hype.

Influence is not just the domain of YouTubers and Millennials, it is not a new concept. Important social and cultural personalities have influence too – they’re just not called influencers.

Find out what politicians they follow, leading thinkers, entrepreneurs, life coaches – anybody who might guide a decision or help take an action is important here.

You can also discover this type of information in person. Set up focus groups, interview existing customers over the phone.

You can also follow discussions in Facebook groups, blog comments, forums and social media. Quora is one of the most popular discussion platforms and we’re going to cover that later in the blog.

Where do they get their information?

So you’ve checked social media and analysed how they interact with your brand’s website but now it’s time to look further.

Widen your search and look at the many different ways your target audience can consume information.

Not only will this tell you how they like to consume information but it will also tell you more about their motivation and what stories they are looking to connect to.

This information will ensure that all your PR is relevant to them. Not only will your messaging and storytelling resonate but you’ll share it via the most appropriate channel to reach them.

Go through every media platform you can think of and see whether your target audience is active on them, or use them to get their information.

Here’s a channel checklist for you:

Try Keyword Research

More than 87% of consumers conduct online product research before buying.

What and how they search reveals a great deal about what they are actually looking for.

If you can understand your audience’s search behaviour, their intent and what content they are looking for, you’ll be best placed to give them what they want, when they need it.

The easiest way to obtain this information is through keyword research.

You don’t need to be an SEO expert these days to do this.

There are some fantastic search tools out there to assist in your data gathering and they manage all the numbers and spreadsheets for you. SEMrush is by far the best and the only one we recommend.

You need to get to grips with understanding the way in which your target audience thinks and how they search.

What questions do they ask in that search bar? What phrases or keywords do they enter?

Don’t assume that you already know the answer to this – you’ll be surprised.

Think more in terms of what pressing issues your target audience have and what solutions they are looking for.

Consider what they don’t understand about your sector or product and what they want to know more about.

Focus on the high volume keywords and phrases for the greatest reach to your audience but don’t forget the more long-tail searches too.

Yes, these may be less frequent and more niche but they are also more targeted.

Users involved in these searches are usually more committed to buy and will be more engaged with your content.

Ask Quora About Your Target Audience

Quora is a Q&A forum that has 300 million monthly active users.

That’s a hell of a lot of people you can ask questions on any topic you want.

If you need to know something, understand how people think or feel about a topic then Quora is for you.

Quora is easy to use and is particularly useful for target audience research because it allows you to go ask questions and read answers in a relatively short period of time.

It’s great at suggesting ‘related questions’ that your target audience might also be interested in.

As with any type of content you will see lots of less useful posts, but a quick glance at the number of views and users will tell you whether it’s relevant/popular or not.

These ‘Question Stats’ help you avoid tangents and keep your research focused on your target audience.

Create A Target Audience Persona Statement

Now that you’ve been through a thorough research process you should have a clear understanding of the audience that you are targeting.

To make use of this vital business information you must produce one simple statement that clearly describes your audience.

This sentence articulates their persona.

For example here’s Class:PR’s target audience persona statement:

Our target audience consists of marketing professionals and entrepreneurs, of any age and gender, across the world, who have been tasked with promoting their brand and need to learn how to do PR.  Quickly.

Our step-by-step guides, template packs and online courses make learning public relations fun, easy and accessible for the busy working professional, who needs to see results, fast.

Class:PR has a very specific niche.

We don’t target everyone and we don’t teach everything.

We’re specifically for marketing professionals and entrepreneurs who are responsible for marketing their own brand.

Marketing generalists often don’t have public relations expertise but frequently find it part of their job description and feel under pressure to deliver results, fast.

So we only teach public relations, for example, we share knowledge and resources on media relations, how to write a press release and how to write a media pitch.

Our combination of step-by-step guides, template packs and online courses help marketing professionals study in a format that suits them and helps bring the best results for their company.

We are not limited to geography, we are a global company with students around the world.

Now it’s your turn…

Give it a go and write a target audience persona statement for your company.

Include the information that you think is most important for your brand.

Some examples are:

Our target audience is [gender] aged [age range], who live in [place or type of place], and like to [activity].

Or

Our target audience is [gender] aged [age range], who earn [income range], , and need [a solution to problem] and need it [within timeframe].

Evaluate Your Decision

If you’ve gone through each of the sections above and produced a clear target audience persona statement then you should be pretty confident in what you’ve decided.

The next step is to test your audience and to see if they respond well to your messages, buy-in to your service and complete your call to action.

If you want to triple check you’re on the right track before you put resources behind testing then here are five important questions you can ask:

1. Do I understand how my audience think and feel? Have I understood what influences them?
2. Will my product/service/campaign bring value to my audience? Am I solving a problem for them?
3. Do I understand what the intent of my audience is? Where are they in the buying process? Will I get enough engagement?
4. Do I understand where they consume their information? Can I reach them with my message?
5. Is my audience size large enough to hit my sales target? If your audience is too niche you may not get enough buy-in and you’ll need to cast your net wider.

Test, Track And Monitor Your Audience’s Progress

And last but not least, remember to continually test, track and monitor the progress of your target audience.

Ask yourself: how and to what level are you connecting with your target audience? Want content is resonating best and bringing what result?

Does engagement lead to an increase in website signups or sales? Is your target audience responding to your Call To Action?

Does your company’s current customer profile match the audience that you have targeted?

Be led by your data.

If your customer base is showing you that you were slightly off the mark with your predicted audience then don’t be afraid to make some changes.

This is a continuous process of trial and error, refinement and adjustment. Consumer behaviour wants and demands continually change and this should be reflected in your targeting.

Now It’s Your Turn…

Research and refine your target audience – you’ll be amazed by the impact it has on your sales.

And if you’re ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

The post Target Audience: Identify Yours To Improve PR and Marketing appeared first on Class:PR.

Our comprehensive guide to public relations jobs will provide a good overview of the options that are open to you. 

From the softer side of PR to hardcore crisis and reputation management there are countless roles on offer – both with PR agencies and in-house departments.

What’s certain is that in 2022 the importance of public relations, in almost all businesses, has never been greater.

And that means there are more opportunities for a career in PR than ever before.

But it also means that there has been a blurring of the boundaries between the disciplines of PR, marketing, SEO and even legal teams.

So whether you want to be a PR specialist or a generalist, this guide will give you a good overview of what’s on offer, the skills you need – and what you can expect to earn.

Let’s get into it.

What Is Public Relations?

Firstly let’s define what we mean by public relations in 2022.

Not too long ago PR was heavily focused on media relations.

This means working with businesses to secure editorial coverage in media outlets – print (newspapers and magazines), broadcast (TV and radio) and online.

But with the rise of digital everything has changed.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defines PR as:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

Bluntly, that means PR covers anything that affects the reputation of a business and how it is perceived by its customers and stakeholders. 

I like to think of public relations as fundamentally being about three principals: connecting, storytelling and influencing. Here are some great public relations examples.

Everything you will do in your PR career will be driven by one of these core themes.

In terms of day to day activities that means you will broadly be working in media relations, social media, thought leadership, SEO, crisis communication, event PR, community engagement and reputation management.

Not sure what is thought leadership? Read this quick guide to get the low down.

Let’s unpack these and look at what they mean in terms of public relations jobs.

Public Relations Jobs By Specialism

Media Relations

This is really the foundation of the modern discipline of PR.

It is the relationship that companies and organisations develop with journalists and their media outlets.

PRs source and develop stories that would be of interest to their client and the reporter’s audience – a mutually beneficial arrangement.

A good PR will cut down the amount of time the journalist needs to spend developing the story and so increase the chances of success.

PRs work on either news stories focusing on a current news angle or more in-depth features that look at trends and issues. They are always after an attention grabbing headline for their client.

Media relations activities will still often form the heart of many public relations campaigns.

What skills do you need?

The best media relations experts need to know what makes a great story for each target publication. They need to know what is newsworthy, have attention to detail and know how to write a press release. 

These PRs need to be able to build relationships with journalists and have a decent media list. They must also know how to write a media pitch.

It’s no surprise that some of the most successful media relations practitioners have previously worked as journalists.

Social Media

This is rarely a standalone element of a public relations campaign and is rather woven throughout all elements of your PR plan.

That said there are pure social media specialists out there working in agencies.

Even if this isn’t your preferred discipline, you need to be proficient on all the main platforms; Twitter, Facebook, Snap, Instagram and TikTok.

The purpose of social media PR is to amplify brand messaging across digital platforms whilst reaching your target audience.

The aim is to engage the audience, recruit brand ambassadors, who organically talk about your brand or product, and get free PR.

Brands with great social media tend to have built an audience through consistent and relevant content, often using hashtags, video, competitions and thought leadership to engage followers.

What skills do you need?

You need imagination and creativity to succeed in this role – producing bland content won’t cut it in a world of noise.

Social media PR is all about creating content that engages and intrigues the target audience. 

PRs need to be constantly scanning the news environment to spot quick wins and to identify influencers who are relevant for their brand.

You also need to have the ability to speak the language of your audience while keeping the tone professional. 

Thought Leadership

A proven way to build trust in your brand is to demonstrate the expertise you possess – this is thought leadership.

It often takes the form of comment pieces, blogs, vlogs, interviews and speeches.

As the PR you are unlikely to be the person whose name sits above these pieces of content but you will be the one creating them. 

So, for example, if a new piece of legislation comes out that affects your industry, and your customers, you should offer comment and insight to the media.

What skills do you need?

A forensic mind.

You need the ability to be able to distil often complex industry-specific issues into easy to understand content.

And you need to pay close attention to relevant changes in the industry you’re working in.

Make sure you build relationships with key journalists in your field who may turn to your client if they are reporting on a relevant story.

One of the best ways to spot thought leadership opportunities is through services such as Help A Reporter Out (HARO) or Response Source.

SEO

Don’t be surprised that I have included Search Engine Optimisation.

You may not have to be master of the more technical side of SEO but if you’re in the business of producing content you MUST have a good idea of the core principles of SEO.

If you don’t your great content will fail to reach its intended audience.

SEO comes under the umbrella of PR because your online profile directly impacts the reputation of your business, what your customers think and feel about you.

Experts such as Jonny Nastor at Hack The Entrepreneur have some great free SEO guides that can help PR pros make sense of the online world.

What skills do you need?

The desire to always be learning, because SEO is constantly evolving. Have good attention to detail – small changes to your content can make a big difference.

And patience! It takes a while to see the results of even the greatest and most SEO-ninja’d content.

Crisis Communications 

This is the heavy-duty end of PR, and where you’ll find the more senior positions.

Why? Because getting this right can save businesses – getting it wrong can cost millions.

If a business faces a serious reputational issue, they need a crisis communications expert to respond quickly to protect them against further damage.

A crisis comms expert will formulate and lead the strategic response to a major issue. They will deal with the media and work to repair the businesses’ reputation as quickly as possible.

Arguably any business is at risk of a crisis, but organisations working in sensitive areas like healthcare, are the most likely to invest in crisis comms.

Providing immediate responses to media enquiries, influencing a rapidly escalating social media narrative, media training and liaising with affected stakeholders are all part of this fast-paced PR discipline.  

What skills do you need?

Discretion and the ability to perform well under pressure. Good crisis communications professionals keep a calm head when an issue strikes. They maintain the ability to think strategically and act quickly.

Event PR

This is the practice of designing an event that helps the media connect with a brand through an experience. Think pop-up shop, or tasting event if you’re a food brand.

The best event PR is memorable for all the right reasons, enabling those attending to engage with the brand in a positive way.

The objective is to get people talking about your business because they’ve been impressed by what they’ve seen, heard and experienced. 

A great event should turn those who attend into fans who will spread the good word about your brand.

What skills do you need?

Event experts are highly-organised, creative trouble-shooters – unflappable multi-taskers. They also, know how to write a press release for an event.

Community Engagement

Community engagement is a PR tool used by organisations who are making a significant impact on their local area with their business activities.

This is a particularly important PR strategy for corporations involved in property development or launching businesses that will change the face of the area.

The strategy is to reach out to and positively influence local people. The goal is to build a good reputation and keep stakeholders informed and involved in the work you are doing that may affect them.

What skills do you need?

A thick skin helps!

You must be able to facilitate face-to-face meetings, community conversations and run a strong social media campaign to support the work.

Be empathetic and have the ability to think from the community’s perspective so that all communications are created from their point of view – not yours.

Reputation Management

This is really the mother of all PR disciplines – ultimately it’s what public relations is ALL about.

Our job as PR professionals is to shape and maintain a positive reputation for the businesses we represent.

Why? Because a positive reputation brings trust – and this is the foundation of all business success.

Reputation management is an amalgam of all of the disciplines outlined above. The goal is to influence the way in which your organisation is perceived, both by people outside of it (customers, investors) and those within.

Cultivating and maintaining a good reputation is vital for all businesses. It requires diligence in the digital space, traditional media and with local stakeholders.

What skills do you need?

Because of its holistic nature, this is more often than not a leadership/board-level role and requires many years of PR experience.

This individual has a 360 view of the organisation and all of its reputational pressure points. They have gravitas and the respect of the board.  They can influence the direction of the company, even at a core operational level.

Public Relations Jobs By Title 

Leading-edge PR agencies are now mixing up the traditional PR hierarchy which runs from Account Executive up to Account Director.

This system can tend to mean that everyone ends up being a PR generalist – no matter what level of seniority they operate at.

However, that said, the traditional PR hierarchy still exists in many agencies and in-house teams. The following is a good guide to what those positions are and what you would be expected to do in your role: 

Account Director

This is the top rung in many PR agencies. You will have oversight for the strategic direction of all of the major clients who are with your agency. You will also likely head up the crisis communications end of major accounts for issues of significant importance. 

Account Manager

In this role, you are responsible for the day to day running of somewhere between four to eight accounts (depending on their size) for your PR agency.

You will be signing off press releases, content strategies – and also creating these documents. The client will see you as their main daily point of contact for all PR enquiries.

Senior Account Executive

By now you will have a couple of years experience under your belt and will have proven yourself as a competent and trustworthy PR professional.

You will be drafting PR materials and running social media accounts for clients. You will also be involved in the more client-facing elements of running the account.

Account Executive

After an internship, this is the first step in your PR career.

You can expect a wide variety of tasks – form inputting on press materials and pitching directly to journalists and influencers to helping pull together PR output reports and organising events. 

At this stage in your career, a good attitude is FAR more important than skill. You can learn skills but the right attitude is something that’s harder to teach.

Show you really care and make other people’s lives easier by doing a good job – then you’ll go far.

Public Relations Jobs – Salaries

So what can you expect to earn working in public relations?

The PRCA’s detailed annual PR and Communications Census provides a huge amount of information on the current state of the PR industry in the UK – and this is a good benchmark for the rest of the world.

As of 2019, this is what you can look to earn as a public relations professional – whatever stage you are at in your career. (n.b these are average rates)

• Associate Director – £59,072 ($77,237)
• Account Directors – £45,942 ($60,069)
• Managers – £32,389 ($42,348)
• Account Executive – £22,374 ($29,254)

Which Public Relations Job Is Right For You?

So there you have it – a complete overview of public relations jobs – by specialism and by hierarchy.

Whether you’re just starting out in marketing communications or want to clinch that all-important director role, public relations is a wonderful career.

Having worked in both the media and PR for the last 20 years I can guarantee you’ll have a truly fulfilling time and you’ll meet some wonderful people.

Like anything in life – the more you put into it the more you get out!

And if you are just starting out in your career and you’d like a little more guidance then grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

Good luck!

The post Public Relations Jobs: 2022 Guide To A Career in PR appeared first on Class:PR.

But there are so many options out there it can be hard to know what to choose.

From working with Instagram and YouTube influencers to Google and Facebook Ads, traditional advertising and public relations, there’s no end to the ways in which you can target your customers.

And that can be a problem.

How do you coordinate all these different marketing tactics so that they work together in a coordinated fashion?

In this blog I’ll take you through a step-by-step approach to creating a marketing communications strategy that will work for your business.

I’ll explain the strategic thinking behind all successful multi-channel marketing and help you write a combined marketing and PR plan that will help you increase sales throughout the year.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is a marketing communications strategy?
• How to think about your marketing communications strategy
• Writing your marketing communications strategy
• Implementing your marketing communications strategy
• How to measure your marketing communications strategy

Let’s get to it.

What Is A Marketing Communications Strategy?

A marketing communications strategy outlines everything you need to do to market your product or service.

It’s a comprehensive action plan to get your target audience raving about your brand – and taking an action.

The strategy can include everything from social media campaigns, SEO tactics and events to your media relations work and above the line advertising campaigns.

It’s a carefully thought through, well researched and (ideally) data-driven campaign, over an extended period of time.

Every successful marketing communications strategy is aligned to business objectives, and often involves different departments working together.

Internal and external focus

Your strategy will have an external focus – what information your customers, investors or perhaps, community stakeholders need to receive.

There will also be an internal focus – what do your employees need to know or do? It will include target brand elements, key messages and the communications channels that you will use to achieve your objectives.

The strategy concludes with measurement, assessing how objectives have been improved and asking what did you learn from your work?

A marketing communications strategy is a bit like a road map. It outlines where your brand or company is in terms of market position and reputation.

It points to where you want to be and how you want your brand to be known. Then it maps out how to get there.

But the roadmap is not complete without a look back over your shoulder to see how the journey went and an analysis of what worked well and what needs to be improved. 

How To Think About Your Marcomms Strategy

You can divide the thinking behind a marketing communications strategy into three essential principles:

1. Intelligence
2. Relevance
3. Influence

Here’s what they mean in a nutshell.

Intelligence

Having detailed knowledge of your market, your customer base and the potential of your business is vital.

If you act without the insight into how your brand is positioned and what its reputation is with your target audience you’re flying blind.

But if you gather data and intelligence about how your company compares to the competition you’ll make informed decisions that will bring about the best results.

I’ll take a deep dive into how to understand your target audience and how to truly measure the impact of your strategy later in the blog, but right from the very beginning, I want you to start thinking ‘intelligently’ about your marketing communications strategy.

Adopt a mindset of curiosity and learn from the best marketing books. Understand the social and behavioural trends that affect your company and your customers.

Then you’ll be well positioned to build trust and demonstrate why your business or service is a must-have purchase.

Relevance

Whatever form of content you create, as part of your marketing communications strategy, it must be highly relevant to your target audience.

Potential customers and key stakeholders must be truly engaged as a result of your strategy. Your objective is not just to broadcast information, focus on creating genuine connections to your brand.

Create an army of loyal fans by showing the value that you bring and how integral your product or service is to their lives.

Take the current boom in the horoscope industry with Millennials and Generation Z. This demographic now consult the zodiac more than ever before.

Many use their star signs to inform huge aspects of their lives, everything from making important life decisions to what days they should go out on date.

Sound silly? Well trend forecasters price the mystical market at more than $2billion. Who’s laughing now?

And what’s behind this boom?

Accessibility of information and the unrelenting message that horoscopes can support and guide through every element of your life. At every moment they are relevant.

Weekly newspaper star sign columns are a thing of the past. They’ve been replaced by apps with push notifications, daily horoscope podcasts and personalised zodiac feeds.

Each comms channel providing daily support to consumers so they are never without a connection and one’s horoscope is always relevant to one’s life.

Influence

This is all about how your marketing and communications can affect someone’s behaviour or thoughts/feelings towards a brand.

Marketing communications strategies work best when they develop a positive relationship between a brand and a target audience.

This is an ongoing two-way interaction that builds connectivity and trust between each party, and in time this leads to influence over behaviour, feelings and thoughts about a brand.

This influence can be subtle. Well executed marketing, and in particular a public relations campaign, can nudge your audience into taking an action, buying a product or signing up for a service without them even realising it.

Or it can be bold and loud.

Think Black Friday advertising from a big online retailer that screams BUY ME NOW or political campaigns that are lobbying directly to get their constituents out to vote.

Before you start your campaign think about how you want your audience to think or feel about your brand, what action you want them to take?

Are you going to subtly nudge them in the right direction or is this a loud dynamic instruction?

Include your CTA (call to action) consistently through your content and see how your audience responds.

Once you’ve understood these three main principles, your marketing communications strategy will be a more comprehensive and a well thought through document.

It is a valuable piece of business intelligence that can be utilised by teams across your company. But before you share it far and wide here’s five key points to remember.

5 tips For Your Marketing Communications Strategy

1. It must be jargon-free

Don’t hide behind ‘marketing speak’ just to make yourself look good. If every department in your organisation can’t pick up your strategy and instantly understand it, then it’s pointless.

An excess of management speak = a lack of meaning. Make your marketing communications strategy accessible and engaging. Review and edit your strategy with this in mind and it will bring clarity and greater impact.

2. Choose your metrics before you start

Think outcomes before outputs. Don’t rush ahead with an elaborate strategy without working out how you can measure your success.

Define goals and targets and what they will look like as numbers. This way you can track progress as you go and amend elements of the strategy accordingly if you’re not hitting the mark.

3. Agree your budget

A marketing communications strategy will include lots of paid promotion so make sure you know what you can spend, and when, before you begin. You can’t organise an influencer marketing campaign if funds are not available.

You also need to know what return to expect on your spend – and be careful not to go over budget. Splashing the cash does not guarantee impact. Be frugal and invest where there is value.

4. Be clear on your brand before you start implementing your strategy

Of course this means a consistent look and feel to your brand, but also this will influence what messaging and channels you need to target.

We’ll cover this in detail but if you feel there is lack of congruence in terms of what people think and feel regarding your brand take a step back and spend some time sorting this out before you embark on your strategy.

5. Get the right teams or key people on board

Get agreement with your ideas before you kick start your campaign. A successful marketing communications strategy can involve all different disciplines within the marketing mix – digital, SEO company, internal comms and free PR.

Agree actions before you press the start button and everything will run much more smoothly.

How To Create Your Strategy

When you write your strategy here are the main areas that you need to cover:

1. The goal – what the strategy is trying to achieve
2. Target audience – the people that the strategy will target
3. Messages – what you want to say to those people
4. Brand consistency – does everything about your brand look and feel as it should
5. Channels – the ways you will engage with your audience
6. Content and stories – what you will share with your audience

Let’s go through each section in turn.

1. The Goal – what the strategy is trying to achieve

Think about your ‘Goal’ as what you want to achieve with this strategy. The result you want to enjoy at the end of all your work.

Goals must be measurable so that you know what impact the strategy has had. Avoid generic goals, such as ‘raise awareness’.

Pin your target down with data, and make sure that the goals you set are aligned with current business objectives or the strategy for the wider company.

To set effective and achievable goals you need to know what point you are starting from. Conduct a communications audit before you begin, to collect data on key areas you are focusing on.

Ask questions such as:

• What is your market position?
• What is the current reputation/perception of your brand with your customers?
• Is your company hitting sales targets?
• Collect qualitative data about people’s thoughts and feelings about your brand, their emotional responses to your product.

2. Target Audience – the people that the strategy will target

Who do you want to connect with? Who do you want to interact with your content? These people are your target audience.

Similarly, the individuals that you want to respond to your CTA (Call to Action), to buy your product, to use your service, are your target audience.

Once you’ve set your goals for your strategy, the next step is to nail down who you will connect with to achieve those goals.

Which consumer group, which demographic, what age group, will you target to gain success with your business?

Investing in proper customer research and analysis at the start will also provide valuable insight to guide key decisions throughout the strategy.

If you know personality types of your audience then you can make sure your key messages resonate with them.

If you know where your audience consumes their information you’ll know what channel to choose to share your content.

Here are some questions you can ask to work out who your target audience is:

• How do they think? Personality types, attitudes, values, behaviours.
• What needs, challenges, frustrations do they have?
• What are their primary goals?
• How does your idea, service, or product help them?
• Where does your target audience hang out online?
• What do they do offline? What events do they attend, how do they spend their leisure time, what experiences do they like?
• Where does your audience consume their news?
• What drives your audience to make buying decisions?
• What does your current customer database show? Can you use existing data to define your target group?
• Did you choose the right target group? Always come back to this question and reflect upon your success at targeting the right audience.

As you work your way through your marketing communications strategy don’t forget to invest time to stay in touch with shifting customer demands.

Set up focus groups and periodically review the suitability of your target audience. Always keep your work focused on achieving your goals and don’t be afraid to adjust your audiences if necessary.

3. Messages – what you want to say to those people

Your messages, or key messages as they are often called, are the key information about your brand that you want your audience to know.

This could be important product information, what makes you the best on the market, or it could be crucial event information that attendees need.

Key messages should be short and memorable. If they are too long, your audience won’t engage and they’ll be lost in all the other marketing noise out there.

What’s your USP? Make sure it is included in your messages – if you don’t tell your audience what is unique and special about your product then who will?

4. Brand consistency – does everything about your brand look and feel like it should?

A brand is more than just a logo and a strapline, it’s how people think and feel about your product or service.

It’s important that every consumer touchpoint is a consistent experience of the brand – you want every customer’s contact to be of the same quality.

If your target audience all think and feel different things then they’ll be no agreement on what your brand stands for and how you are different from competitors.

This will lead to confusion and instead of loyal fans, doubt will grow in the minds of your audience. They won’t buy into your product or service.

Before you begin your marketing communications strategy conduct an audit of all your marketing touchpoints and collateral and make sure they are consistent with each other.

If they’re not, take charge and make changes to ensure your brand is represented in its strongest form for all your target audience to enjoy.

Channels – The Ways You Will Engage Your Audience

Marketing communications channels are what you use to share content that will reach and then engage your target audience.

The channels that you choose are sometimes referred to as your ‘marketing mix’ – the combination of media platforms that you use to reach your potential customers.

Your marketing mix could include:

• PPC and digital advertising – banner ads etc
• Social media advertising – Facebook, Instagram etc
• Offline advertising on print media, billboards or TV
• Influencer marketing – partnerships with social media influencers who will endorse your product
• SEO and content marketing – creating content that ranks well on search engines to reach and engage new and existing audiences
• Celebrity partnerships, brand ambassadors and corporate relationships – creating a network of promotional partners for your brand
• Events and stunt marketing – connecting with your audiences in person, face to face like these public relations examples

The biggest gripe that our students feedback on

In the main, it’s how to choose the right marketing channels for the audience and then to successfully run these channels day in day out.

It’s undeniably hard, it’s a skill to make sure the most engaging content is posted/shared/published on the most effective channel to reach your audience at the right time.

Not only do you need to be switched on, creatively, but you need superpowers of planning to deliver content on time so you can meet all deadlines.

There’s no short cut here, it takes time so don’t rush this stage. Don’t go live on one channel until you have all your content lined up for the rest.

Timing is everything and we’ll deep dive into this in the How to Implement Your Strategy, later in this blog.

6.Content And Stories – What You Will Share

The type of content and stories that you share across the channels will be specific to your brand.

You’ll need to ensure that they generate as much engagement as possible with your target audience to achieve your marketing communications objectives.

Here’s my top five tips to creating content that resonates and sparks engagement.

Be relevant

Whether you’re making video content or figuring out how to get a story on the local news ensure that it’s relevant to the audience.

This means it something topical, current or connected in some way to the lives of your audience. In our PR campaigns we call this being newsworthy. If you want media coverage you must demonstrate the news value of your story.

Be succinct

There’s a lot of competition for consumer attention, your audience will be inundated by content from other brands, so you need to get your message through quickly and clearly.

Make sure your stories are to the point – keep videos to less than 1 minute, know how to write a press release so that it’s no more than a page and record your podcasts for no longer than 20 minutes.

Be consistent

To create a holistic and clear reputation for a brand all marketing content must be consistent with agreed messaging.

Make sure that everyone involved in story writing and content creation, including external suppliers, is well briefed and everything is presented consistently.

Be bold

Beige and boring content will not drive engagement. It will be ignored.

Don’t be afraid to push boundaries and try new types of stories for your brand. If you’ve always been seen as a conservative brand then try switching things up and showing a more human side to your company.

Be timely

As much as preparation and planning are essential to marketing success, this is 2021 and marketing must also be done in real-time.

Your brand must have a visible ‘real-time’ presence on social media and online and so it will require you to think on your feet and create reactive content to events as they are happening.

How To Implement Your Strategy 

Timing is everything.

Work to deadlines and make sure everyone is on board to achieve those deadlines. If you fall behind on producing a set of content for one channel then this will impact all your other work.

Be upfront about delays so that everyone can plan accordingly. Better to readjust time schedules and allow creatives to take longer with their work than to miss deadlines and leave your audience waiting.

Don’t Miss Out On New Opportunities

Timing is equally as crucial if you need to implement a reactive or opportunistic marketing communications strategy.

These are very common in certain industries, like fashion.

For example, a famous celebrity or influencer wears your company’s product. This is public relations and marketing gold and a strategy must be actioned immediately.

With each hour that passes after the celebrity was spotted means that your product is becoming less and less hot. Wait too long and you’ll be yesterday’s trend. Such is the fickle world of fashion.

As soon as possible you need to start the PR plan element of your campaign. Make sure that the product the celebrity wore is in front of every journo/influencer/media platform/celebrity gossip/music site you can think of so they know where it came from.

You’ll need to email them images and all key product specs/story – as a press release. ‘Influencer wears latest hot brand’.

Your digital/social media advertising strategy will also need to go live almost instantly if you want to cut through the noise. Get your ad sets signed off and get those algorithms working for you.

Stakeholder relations is a must here too. You’ll want to reach out to all your industry contacts, stylists, buyers and anyone influential to your business.

Let them know your product is on trend and in demand. If you’re hot to someone else you’ll be hot to them too.

Your Mindset Matters

Adopting a successful marketing mindset is just as important as having the right marketing tactics in place.

Stay calm and don’t let yourself become overwhelmed with information when working on different areas within the strategy.

Act on one thing at a time and prioritise what is most important.

Prioritise your tasks at the start of each day, work on the most time-critical content first.

Don’t cause a blockage – if you’re sitting on material that needs to be signed off then you’re at risk of putting the whole strategy off track.

As we discussed at the top of this section, set realistic deadlines and communicate when you won’t be able to achieve them. If you can’t make deadlines don’t consider this a personal reflection on yourself.

There are only 24 hours in the day and it takes time to produce quality content and run an effective marketing communications strategy. However, good time management can help you be more efficient and helps run your strategy more smoothly.

Check your task list around lunchtime – have priorities changed throughout the morning? Stay flexible and allow yourself to readjust your schedule if you need to.

Now It’s Your Turn!

Have a go at writing your own marketing communications strategy.

If you find it a drag to get bogged down in the planning before the exciting execution phase remember the old adage of the British Army – the 7 Ps: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!

And if you’re really ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

Good luck!

The post Marketing Communications Strategy: How To Do It Like A Pro appeared first on Class:PR.

It may not contain the most important part of the press release template – the news angle – but it still provides vital background information.

Information that a journalist will need if they are going to cover your story.

If you want to know how to write a press release properly you also need to know how to construct the boilerplate.

This is how you do it.

What Is The Purpose Of A Boilerplate (Press Release)?

The boilerplate – or the section marked ‘notes to editors’ – includes additional background information which could be of use to the journalist but is not critical to the main story. 

Including this information anywhere else would slow down the press release and get in the way of the main news angle.

If you know how to write a media pitch then you’ll know you cannot waste a second communicating your story to a busy journalist.

But if they ARE keen on your story then they will want supplementary information and the boilerplate press release can be the place to include that data.

There is no set list of information to include in a boilerplate for a press release but it often includes the following:

• Some biographical information about the founder, the CEO, the person quoted in the release
• A little information about the history and size of the company
• Membership of trade bodies
• Extra statistical information (sales figures, demographic information) that could provide the journalist with additional detail
• Links to reports or articles that may be of use to the journalist

The boilerplate is standard media relations practice and should appear at the bottom of all of your press releases.

So the good news is you only need to get this right once!

There is also an SEO benefit to having an effective boilerplate. 

If you use one of the best press release distribution agencies then your press release – with its boilerplate  – can feature on hundreds of online news sites.

Google will see this boilerplate posted multiple times and the text you use can help you rank for certain keywords linked to your business.

Where Does the Boilerplate Go In The Press Release?

This is easy.

The boilerplate should always come last in your press release.

Like this.

Download our press release template to see exactly where you should put your boilerplate.

How to Write a Company Boilerplate In 10 Steps

1. Make it easy for the journalist

We recommend setting your boilerplate out as a series of bullet points (see the example boilerplate at the end of this blog).

You may see some businesses produce a huge slab of text for their boilerplate but this just makes it harder for the journalist – it’s more difficult to extract the pieces of information that THEY want.

This is an example of a bad boilerplate.

At a glance it’s too hard for a busy journalist to see what is the most important information for their story. 

In addition, there will be bits of information that you really WANT the journalist to use and if you bury it in waffle you may lose out. 

2. Include useful statistical information

A journalist is always looking for those tiny details that give their story extra colour – and this includes statistics.

List a few stats that link to your story. 

Perhaps the overall value of your market. The number of sales you’ve achieved this year. Customer feedback data. Anything that can add credibility to your story.

And if these statistics come from a trusted third-party source all the better – especially a respected trade body or academic source.

Public relations is all about building credibility.

3. Give a short history of your business

It can be a good idea to include a small amount of biographical information about your business.

When it was founded, where it was founded, who founded it, your current number of employees.

Again, this information may not be required by the journalist but it will help them out and save them time if they do.

4. Awards and recognitions

List any recent and relevant awards your business may have won – or your leadership team.

This gives more credibility to your story and builds authority – the whole point of winning awards in the first place.

PRO TIP: It’s 2021 so avoid the trap of listing awards you won more than five years ago. 

Doing that can actually work against you and make you look like you’ve been resting on your laurels. 

5. Weblinks 

It’s rare that serious journalists, and the media they work for, will include a backlink to your business in their story.

They know the huge SEO value it brings and they don’t like to be seen to endorse businesses unfairly.

But if they think it’s essential to the story they may include it – and you don’t want to miss out. 

Don’t forget to list an up to date web link to your business – they may just sneak it in for some free PR.

6. Think SEO – do your keyword research

If you use a press release distribution service to send out your press release there’s a good chance it will appear on a large number of online news sites.

These media might not be the likes of The New York Times but they could run your press release in full, including the boilerplate.

This is a great SEO opportunity. 

Make sure your boilerplate includes all the keywords that you want your business to rank for in search.

If you’re unsure about the best keywords for your business use an online tool such as SEM Rush or Ahrefs to help you find this data when you make your PR plan.

7. Include a CTA

Your main press release should first and foremost be a news story – no matter what the subject is.

If you know how to write a press release for an event you’ll know that even that needs a news angle.

If the press release is too advertorial in tone it will be ignored by the journalist.

Instead, include your more sales-focused CTAs (calls to action) in the boilerplate – that way they won’t get in the way of the main story.

CTAs can include your web address, the price of your product/service, where people can get hold of your product, a link to your petition or crowdfunding page, a free download – anything you want your target customer to KNOW or DO.

If you include these in the main press release it can dilute the story – don’t do this.

8. Keep the language simple 

Just because this is your boilerplate doesn’t mean you should slip it to corporate speak.

Use clear and simple language – if you get this right the journalist may simply copy and paste this information into their main news story.

Also, avoid unnecessary acronyms. If you must use them then spell them out in the first instance.

Just because you know what the DFCA (Department for Complex Acronyms) is doesn’t mean the journalist will – and especially not the reader. 

And don’t go overboard with hype and hyperbole – journalists hate this – stick to the facts of your story and your business.

9. Always use the same boilerplate

Once you are happy with your boilerplate make sure you apply it to all press releases.

Keeping this standard version will avoid issuing journalists will conflicting messages about your business.

10. Review your boilerplate

Make a note in your diary to review your company boilerplate once a year.

This should be often enough – unless your business goes through any major changes.

Committing to review your boilerplate every 12 months will ensure you keep it up to date and accurate.

The last thing you want to do is issue the media with outdated information about your business during a public relations campaign.

If you‘re now a ‘$10m company’, rather than a ‘$5m company’, make sure that information is listed!

An Example Of An Effective Press Release Boilerplate 

Our friend the gluten-free blogger Vicki – aka The Free From Fairy – has a great boilerplate for all of her press releases.

As you can see she includes relevant background information that will give a journalist a complete view of her business.

The bullet points ensure the relevant information pops off the page and makes the journalist’s job easier. They are much more likely to actually run a story.

Remember journalists can get up to 200 email pitches a day so ANYTHING you can do to help a reporter out puts you ahead of your competition.

Now It’s Your Turn

Have a go at creating a boilerplate for your next press release. It’s essential in most public relations jobs. 

Remember, keep it fact-heavy, clear in terms of language and light on hype.

And if you want to see more examples of quality press releases then get hold of our Ultimate Press Release Template Kit.

Good luck!

The post 10 Tips To Write A Great Boilerplate For A Press Release appeared first on Class:PR.

It’s one of the most important public relations jobs.

The only sure-fire way to do effective media relations is to target specific journalists and influencers with your press releases. 

You need to know who will cover your story and why – so that means you have to do your research and create your media list.

If this sounds like a daunting task, don’t worry, it’s not.

Work through our four-step guide and create a media list that works brilliantly for your business.

Step 1. Identify your target market and their favourite media

Step 2. Create your media list

Step 3: Find journalists’ contact details

Step 4: Regularly update your media list

If you want to walk through each step with a media list template to hand download it right here.

Now it’s time to get your business in front of your target audience – let’s get to it.

What is a media list and why do you need one?

A media list is where you collate your research about the reporters, publications, bloggers, websites and influencers creating content about your business and brands like yours.

The media list is vital to your PR plan because, if you follow our instructions carefully, it’ll be an accurate and dynamic directory of the key contacts who may be interested in your stories and are best placed to share them with your target audience.

Your list needs to be specific, detailed and personal. No spamming. 

Don’t be tempted to add people to your media list who only have a vague connection to your sector or niche. PR and influencer marketing is much smarter than that. 

Wildly flinging out stories to unrelated contacts is a waste of time.

Stick to journalists and content creators who will want to hear what you have to say because it’s relevant to them and their audience.

Step 1. Identify your target market and their favourite media

You’d be amazed by how many businesses launch without doing basic customer or market research.

All the best marketing books will warn you that this is a big mistake.

Don’t let that be you!

For any decent public relations campaign, you need to establish the publications your target market reads, what they watch and where they spend time online.

This information is the cornerstone of your media list because once you know that you can start to compile your list properly.

Think about:

• Your customers – the people who will buy your product or service
• The stakeholders in your company – the key people (like investors and senior level management) who require evidence that your PR is working
• Industry experts – people in your sector who you want to notice your company
• Regulators – bodies that have a direct influence on your sector and who it is beneficial to impress

• What sort of demographic are these people in?
• Do you know what their interests and hobbies are?
• In which media are they most likely to consume information about your product or service?

Here’s an example:

You are the marketing communications manager of a glamping site and you want to encourage more bookings for summer weddings at your venue. 

Your target markets are:

• Bride and grooms
• Families of people getting married (those who might be funding it)
• People who enjoy luxury camping

Your media list should include:

• Wedding and bridal magazines
• Women’s lifestyle magazines
• Regional websites, newspapers and magazines covering your area
• Bridal bloggers and influencers
• Wedding websites
• Travel publications that include features about holidays in your area

 Here’s another example:

Your company is about to launch a new shampoo bar that eliminates the need for single use plastic in your packaging.

Your target markets are:

• People passionate about the environment and sustainability
• Retailers who are interested in stocking more eco-products
• Members of the general public who wash their hair

Your media list should include:

• Eco and vegan bloggers and influencers
• Eco-focussed publications
• Trade press for retailers
• Beauty writers in the national and regional press
• Journalists regularly compiling round-ups of eco products

In both examples we’ve given, there will be more to add to your list, this is just a starting point.

Just make sure you know who your ideal customer is, what they are interested in and the media they are likely to regularly read or watch.

Step 2: Create your media list

Now you’ve started to build a picture of the media outlets you want to connect with, you need to get organised.

A good media list is clear, concise and regularly updated.

You can pay big bucks to services like Gorkana, Cision and Meltwater (these guys are among the best media monitoring services out there) and create a list using their expensive platforms. 

However, if budget is an issue, there’s no reason why you can’t create your own.

Here’s an example of a great media list – take notice of the format.

These are the columns you need to create in your list.

1)    Name of the publication/blog/website

Identify the exact name of the media outlet and use this in the first column of your media list.

The reason this goes first is because reporters will move around and change jobs, so you want to make sure that you are focused on the publication itself – and in particular, the readership – not just the contact.

2)    Publication website address

This is a handy shortcut to have on your media list so you can easily refer to the online presence of this media outlet whenever you need to.

3)    Reporter/Blogger/Journalist/Broadcaster full name

Don’t even bother to send press releases or stories to news@bignewspaper.com or similar email addresses.

It’s the trash can of journalism.

You need to be precise and personal. We will run through how to find this information a little later on but for now, just know that you need to find exactly the right person to contact and their full name.

4)    Job title

It’s a good idea to keep a note of the position the contact holds at their publication as it might become relevant for your media pitch.

Use this guide to know how to find someone’s email so you make sure you get to the right journalist.

If you have some breaking news about your industry, it’ll make sense to send it to the news editor and mention that it could be a story suitable for their news section. This is the perfect way to help a reporter out.

This kind of detail pleases journalists because it shows you’ve paid attention.

5)    Email

Obviously, you need the email address of your contacts for press release distribution (make sure the subject lines include an attention-grabbing headline).

We’ll show you how to discover the email addresses you need a little bit later on. 

6)    Phone number

Get their phone number too because you may want to ring up and talk to them about a story, or to chase up a pitch you’ve sent to see if it is relevant.

7)    Social Media details

Journalists are more than likely to be found on Twitter.

It’s a very smart idea to have the contact’s Twitter handle and any other social profile addresses to hand, particularly as you might want to build a rapport with them by talking on social media.

8)    Frequency

Keep a note of how regularly this publication goes out. Think monthly magazines, weekly newspapers, daily bulletins. This can have an impact on the stories you send. 

It’s no good sending a story with a strong news hook to a daily newspaper a week after the story you are following hit the headlines.

However, a monthly magazine might welcome a pitch that follows on from a big story with a fresh perspective to fit in their pages a few weeks after it first came to light.

9)    Story ideas

This is your chance to align the stories you intend to send with the right people.

If you have a collection of different stories or angles, you can paste them into this column, so they are linked to the most relevant reporters or broadcasters.

A quick look at Response Source will show you how important it is to have that angle and to give the journalist what they need.

By doing this properly, you can ensure that you don’t end up sending your press releases to the wrong people.

10) Notes

Use this column to keep track of important information that could prove useful in the future.

You can add in the stories they have written recently, specific areas they regularly do features on, notes about conversations you’ve had on social media with them.

This is a good way to keep track of them and any interactions you have.

So, there it is. It’s really easy to create this on Excel.

Or download ours right here.

Once you’ve created your sheet using those 10 columns, your media list is ready to be populated via the research phase.

Step 3: Find a journalist’s contact details 

Next up, you need to find out all the details to fill your 10 sections for each media outlet, reporter, publication, outlet or influencer. 

This will take a little bit of time, but getting it right pays dividends.

Method 1: The contact page for your chosen publication

When you head over to the website of a publication, there should be a contact page which gives you the details of each section, who runs it and their email address.

This is the London Evening Standard’s contact page.

It clearly states the purpose of the page and then as you scroll down, you’ll find specific information about each section. 

You can easily see who looks after business, travel, sport or any other area you are interested in.

Fair warning, not every media outlet is as good as this and some won’t have detailed contact pages.

But the contact page is the best place to start your search and could save you time.

Method 2: Twitter

Did we mention that journalists love Twitter? They really do – and with good reason.

Many journalists are able to track down case studies, comments, stories and experts via the micro-blogging platform, so it’s quite unusual for a journalist not to be a Twitter user.

For example, if you search Country Living or Motorsports Monthly or Digital Spy in the search tab and then filter the results by people, you will be able to scroll down and find the writers for those publications.

Some journalists on Twitter will list their work email in their bio and some will have their messages set to open so you can DM them.

Those that don’t have their messages open? Follow them and then @ them a brief pitch. If they like what they read they’ll follow you back and you’re good to go.

Method 3: Twitter lists

The other good thing is that you can find Twitter lists bursting full of journo contacts.

Twitter doesn’t make it easy to find these super useful lists, but luckily, we’ve got some handy hacks to help you out.

Go to the profile of someone likely to have compiled a public list that would be of interest to you.

A good example is the smoothie company Innocent drinks, they’ve compiled lists of bloggers and magazines.

Click onto their profile and on the right-hand side, under their cover photo, you’ll see a button with … on it (see below, next to the email envelope icon).

 When you click on it, a hidden menu comes up and you’ll see ‘View Lists’. Click it.

This will bring you to a page that shows you this screen where you can see the Twitter lists owned by Innocent drinks, the lists they subscribe to and the lists they are a member of.

Other brands will have done the same.

If you find the equivalent Twitter users in your field, you could stumble upon a goldmine there too.

Method 4: Check other social media platforms

Twitter is not the only game in town, it’s just the most useful one when you are trying to track down reporters.

You can also take to LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook when you are trying to find contact details.

LinkedIn, in particular, has useful search functions that can help you find the reporters you are looking for.

Simply type the name of the media outlet into the search bar and find out if they have a company page. 

Here’s the example of Red Magazine.

You can see that Red has a company page and on the left-hand side you can see that it has a tab called ‘people’.

When you click on that tab, LinkedIn shows you all the people who use their platform who work at Red and you may be able to find detailed contact information for them on there.

It’s handy if you can’t get any joy on Twitter.

Method 5: Go retro and ring up

If you’ve exhausted your digital channels to find the contact you need, you can go old school and simply ring up their offices.

You could ask the publication’s reception to give you the relevant information without having to bother the journalist directly before you have a story to pitch.

Sometimes the person answering the phone may not want to give out contact details but to get around that you can just ask for their email format – is it firstname.lastname@publication.com?

If you know their name all you need is the email format.

Once you’ve got their details then you’re ready to pitch your story.

Don’t worry if you aren’t sure how to approach this next crucial step of the PR process.

We’ve got two guides that will give you the step-by-step instructions you need.

Our guides can show you how to write a press release or how to write a media pitch.

And there are plenty of public relations examples for you to look at or feature story examples too.

These guides contain a wealth of information to help you get the free PR that your business needs to really grab attention with your target audience.

Step 4: Regularly update your media list

So, you’ve done the hard work and got a media list that is full of relevant media contacts.

Sorry, but your work is not over.

Journalists move around a lot. You’ll discover that an email list made in September might be out of date by November.

You need to keep checking and updating your list – particularly on the publications, podcasts and blogs that are most important to you.

A good rule of thumb is to double check each one every time you send a story out, and if you get any bounce backs or automatic replies that tell you the reporter has moved on, take that information down straight away.

Keep track of where they have gone next, particularly if you’ve built up a good relationship with them, so you can update their details and add the new role onto your media list.

And find out who has replaced them at their previous media outlet – it’s a new contact for you to add to your list.

Now it’s your turn to create a media list

OK, so you’ve now got what you need to create a winning media list that’ll help you contact reporters who want your stories.

This is a vital step in your media training.

Don’t forget that once you have got your media list sorted, you need to start sending out the stories that’ll capture the imagination of the bloggers, social pros, influencers and reporters you are targeting.

The good news is that we’ve got some great free tools to help you do just that – whether you need guidance on using awareness days to your best advantage, how to write a press release for an event or how to get a story on the local news.

We’ll take you from understanding ‘what does PR stand for’, through to high-level, detailed Public Relations tactics that’ll give you the edge. 

And one more thing

And if you’re really ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

Good luck!

The post Media List: How To Create One That Gets You Press [2022] appeared first on Class:PR.

And while the two are very closely related, they are different.

Think of it this way.

Media relations is actually what you probably mean when you say ‘public relations’ (PR).

Confused?

Don’t be.

In this article, I’m going to explain exactly what we mean by media relations and why it should be at the heart of your broader marketing strategy.

I’m also going to give you 16 proven media relations tactics that are working great right now in 2022.

Let’s get to it.

What is Media Relations?

Put simply, media relations is the art of persuading a journalist to write a story about your brand/business.

This media coverage will be the vehicle that conveys certain key messages about your product to your target audience.

Media coverage can include news stories, feature story examples, comment/opinion pieces, media interviews, reviews and even product placements.

When media relations strategy works well it can be an incredibly effective tool to give your brand both awareness and credibility.

The endorsement that comes with being featured by the right media for your target audience can do wonders for trust levels in your business.

That’s why so many businesses have a list of the media that have featured them front and centre on their home page.

Like SEO expert Backlinko.

There are also significant SEO benefits to a media relations strategy – securing powerful backlinks – but I’m not going to go into that today.

This is for the media relations purists who want to know how to secure high impact mainstream media coverage, fast.

So media relations is basically just public relations then, right?

Wrong.

Public Relations

According to the UK’s respected Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) public relations is this:

Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

PR or Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

The media just happens to be one of the most effective ways to build a positive reputation with a brand’s ‘publics’.

Pro Tip: Your publics are customers, employees, shareholders, regulators, critics, pretty much anyone who engages with your business in some way.

Of course, positive media coverage is not the only way to build a reputation.

In 2021 public relations jobs include many elements – from social media, influencer marketing and SEO, to stakeholder management and crisis communication.

This will give you a good overview of the many elements of an effective public relations campaign.

But today we are interested in media relations, and how to do it well.

Why You Need A Media Relations Strategy

You can say how great your business is until you are blue in the face.

If you’ve got the budget you can take out all the Facebook and Google ads you like to shout about the features and benefits of your business.

And that’s great.

But it’s not enough if you want to build a reputation that will create trust in your brand and drive sales.

This is where media relations comes in.

1.Credibility

When a trusted media outlet writes about your business, on the merit of your story, it brings huge credibility to your brand.

Credibility = trust.

Trust = sales.

Think of it like this.

I am one of your customers and I read the New York Times on a daily basis.

One morning I read an article on their website that talks about your business as an innovator.

Suddenly you’re on my radar and crucially I’ve heard about you via a media source that I trust.

What’s the next thing I do?

Well, I’ll probably go and check your website and see what you’re all about – if your business is doing something that is relevant to me.

In this era of a billion tweets getting information through trusted sources carries real weight and is more important than ever.

This is why having a media relations strategy is crucial if you want credibility from a third-party validation.

2. Awareness

Sure you can buy awareness.

Google ads and Facebook ads will do that for you.

But they ain’t cheap.

A clever and creative media relations campaign can get you featured on websites, in press, on radio, TV and on podcasts that reach literally millions of people.

That’s huge awareness for your brand right where your target customers consume information.

And not only do you get the uplift of the initial coverage, in the digital age that favourable media coverage stays online potentially forever.

Your reputation has a digital footprint.

Also, (and I did promise I wouldn’t go into SEO but these disciplines are so blurred nowadays), your search profile will be hugely improved by securing meaningful media coverage.

If the first page of Google has several pieces of positive media coverage about your business, from credible publications, people will trust your brand more.

And if you can secure backlinks with your media coverage it will improve the visibility of your own website.

3. Lead generation

Ultimately this is the objective of your media relations campaign.

To generate leads.

And to sell more or fundraise more. To get more people to back your campaign.

The combination of the awareness and credibility that your media relations strategy will create will drive lead generation.

If the strategy is right it can’t not.

Your job is then to measure the effectiveness of the campaign so you can show a direct line of sight between the media coverage you have secured and the bottom line.

There are lots of ways to conduct measurement and evaluation so you can make the case for future investment in media relations.

16 Proven Media Relations Tactics

It’s clear that a media relations strategy will add huge value to your marketing communications strategy.

Here some of the best media relations tactics to use in 2019.

1. Create a news watching brief.
2. Respond to media opportunities with Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
3. Answer Press opportunities from Response Source (if you are in the UK)
4. Use the #journorequest on Twitter
5. Compile a media list
6. Create a PR Stunt
7. Offer Comment and Opinion
8. Make sure your pitch is newsworthy
9. Target Local Press and Local TV
10.Think About Images
11.Go Against A Trend
12. Produce Kick-ass Case Studies
13. Don’t Forget Your Trade Press
14. Be Polite and Helpful
15. Awareness Days and Anniversaries
16. Make Yourself Available as a Talking Head

This is essential for any media relations specialist.

You understand your business and the sector you work in so you need to start forward planning to know when there will be opportunities for you to add your voice to the media.

To make sure you don’t miss an opportunity you can use a paid-for forward planning tool such as Gorkana or Kantar Media to do this – or bootstrap it with some clever Googling.

This will allow you to know what reports, white papers, company results, legislation changes and the like are coming up that could affect your business.

Use this information to create a calendar for the next three months so you know when the news opportunities are coming.

Contact journalists at your target media ahead of time to offer comment and opinion on these upcoming news stories.

Make sure you know how to write a media pitch first.

They may invite you to write a blog, give a media interview or simply provide a quote.

These are all valuable ways to make your brand relevant to your customers.

What is HARO?

HARO is a simple, and free, way to connect with thousands of journalists from major media outlets around the world.

When you sign up to HARO you’ll receive daily emails with journalists looking for quotes, expert opinion, case studies, feature story examples and spokespeople for their stories.

It’s perfect for businesses like yours who want to be heard – it’s an essential media relations tool.

Crucially, by helping to give a journalist the information they need when THEY need it you have a much better chance of getting media coverage for your business. This is free PR.

How to do HARO

Firstly head over to the HARO website (it’s run by a company called Cision – don’t worry you are in the right place) and register an account as a media source.

Choose the “BASIC Free!” package – there will be more than enough media opportunities there to start with.

Once you have an account you’ll be able to select the types of media requests that are relevant to your business.

Choose wisely as you will get as many as 50 requests from journalists under each category.

Make sure you only select categories that are directly relevant to your business and its speciality.

Going forward you’ll receive three emails a day at 5.35am, 12:35pm and 5:35pm EST Monday through Friday.

Look out for source requests relevant to you and your industry, expertise or personal experience.

Your emails will look something like this:

It can be a little overwhelming to face so many media opportunities so only chose the ones that are fully relevant to your business.

For a full guide on how to get the most out of Help a Reporter Out go here.

What is Response Source?

Response Source is a lot like HARO but this is a paid-for service.

It’s still a lot cheaper than hiring a PR agency and will provide you with daily media opportunities relevant to your business.

Reporters are always looking for experts, case studies, thought leaders and insights to use as part of their work.

Response Source is the place where they can post those requests.

It’s a goldmine for people like you who have industry insights and an expert perspective to share with the world.

As soon as a journalist posts a request about a story that is relevant to your experience, you can respond and offer your help.

What’s great about Response Source is that you will know exactly what the journalist needs, rather than sending a story you hope might be of interest to them.

It’s also a great way to build relationships with writers working in your sector.

How to use Response Source

Click here to go to Response Source’s website and you’ll arrive at the home page. You’ll notice at the top of the page there are sections for either PR Services or Journalists.

Choose PR Services. Click on there and you’ll arrive at a page where Response Source invites you to ‘Reach the media.’

Select Journalist Enquiry Service as this is the place where you can start connecting with UK journalists to get the media coverage your business needs.

There are literally thousands of reporters posting requests. They are covering national press, consumer titles, trade publications and local news too.

Here is our full guide on how to use Response Source.

Journalists all over the world use this hashtag to make requests for interviews and case studies.

Compile a media list of the journalists who work on your target media and then cross-reference them with #journorequest.

Use a platform such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to set alerts for #journorequest so you don’t miss easy opportunities to get media coverage for your business.

Opportunities will look like this:

When you reply to the journalist with your pitch keep it short and emphasise why you have a story.

Don’t fall into the trap of overloading them with advertorial information – they won’t care.

The journalist just wants your story.

Make sure you cover the basics of your media relations strategy.

That means having an up to date media list so you know which journalists to pitch to.

This is how to create a media list:

1. Think of your customers, which media are they most likely to read?
2. Get online and study these media platforms – magazines, newspapers, blogs, podcasts, TV shows. Get a real sense for the types of story they are after.
3. Look at any stories they may have run that are similar to what your business does.
4. Find out which journalist created that story.
5. Dig out that journalist’s contact details (our free PR course gives you lots of tips on how to do that).
6. Create a Google sheet and record all of the contact details for each journalist – email, telephone, twitter handle, most recent articles, what their favourite subjects are.
7. Keep this list up to date – journalists switch jobs all the time.
8. Then when you’re ready to pitch them make sure you know how to write a press release and use the best press release template.

PR stunts have had some bad, er, PR in recent years.

When they are blatant and forced the media tend to avoid them like the plague.

But there is still a place for a truly creative, imaginative and informative PR stunt – your media relations strategy should include one.

Take a look at these public relations examples for some superb PR stunts.

Golden Rules of PR stunts

• They must be authentic to your brand – don’t do something shocking that is out of line with your brand values just for the sake of it.
• Think of the headline you want to appear in the media and work back from there to form your PR stunt.
• The PR stunt is for the media, not for your customers.
• Having a truly creative – and often humorous idea – will get you a long way. A budget can also help – but money alone won’t do it.
• A PR stunt must push boundaries in some way, otherwise, the media will not care.
• Think visually when it comes to a PR stunt – the pictures will almost always be a big part of it.
• Be clever in your thinking and fast to react to current news trends.

PR Examples have some great, ahem, examples of PR stunts here from 2018.

One of the surest ways to build trust in your brand is to be seen as THE expert.

You want to be the ‘go-to’ thought leader for your industry.

And you want to take your expertise beyond your own blog.

That means writing opinion pieces and blogs for major media and your trade media.

It means appearing as a talking head on rolling news panel discussions.

How to offer comment and opinion

Study the trends and the patterns that are important to your business and offer a journalist a contrary view of these trends.

Research your target media and KNOW which are the slots where they accept comment pieces or blogs.

When you make your pitch present it in a way that will match this opportunity.

Here’s an example.

If you are a luxury food business, say a chocolate maker, and you have an idea for a comment piece about how climate change will affect chocolate prices, pitch it in a way that is relevant for say The Washington Post.

Use your news watching brief (See section 1) to get to journalists ahead of time with your blog and comment ideas.

If you can tip them off about an upcoming story that they not have known about they will love you for this.

It helps them look even more informed in front of their editor.

Have an opinion!

There’s no point in pitching a comment piece that is bland and boring.

Be unafraid to stand for something and to argue a case.

The media doesn’t do boring.

This may sound obvious but whatever you’re doing in terms of media relations make sure it’s newsworthy.

If you’re replying to HARO, if you’re offering comment on a rolling news story or if you’re pitching a story about your business – all of them must have news value – otherwise, you’re not doing media relations.

If you’re hosting an event, make sure you know how to write a press release for an event – one that contains a news story.

You must ensure your PR plan is grounded in news –  that is the secret to a winning public relations campaign.

When you start your media relations work it can be tempting to focus on the big media brands.

But getting coverage in the likes of The Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, TechCrunch, The Evening Standard and Entrepreneur is hard.

It can take time to build up enough PR merit to be taken seriously by the national media.

In the meantime figure out how to get a story on the local news.

Getting local media coverage is vital for smaller, or regional businesses, whose customers can often all be in one geographic area.

Working with the local media you’ll discover that the bar for what makes a story newsworthy is much lower than the national press so you’ll have a much higher hit rate.

This can build your confidence and actually get you some great online coverage that the nationals will see when they come to think about covering your stories in the future.

Think of getting local media coverage as a stepping stone to the big league.

Everything you need to know about how to get a story on the local news is in this guide.

When you’re developing your media relations strategy make sure you think about the visual aspect if it.

Most news coverage features powerful images – the words are just half the equation.

You can have the greatest story in the world but if the images suck then you may miss out on the media coverage you are after.

That’s because in print (magazines and newspapers) the images you provide will dictate how the page is laid out by the sub-editor.

And online images are vital – no one wants to look at an endless slab of text.

You see?

Dull.

The types of images to include will vary from a simple profile shot of your company spokesperson to a product image, company logo or a dramatic shot from your PR stunt.

The main thing is the quality needs to be high.

Axia Public Relations have a great guide on how to take photographs for the press.

Much media coverage follows particular trends…

An explosion in vegan food.

Growth of mindfulness meditation.

The latest tech business to revolutionise how we exercise.

Society’s move to low-carbon living.

The role artificial intelligence will play in healthcare.

As a business, you can either try and jump on the back of one of these trends with a story of your own – or even better look to contradict it.

The media is always interested in the exception to the rule. That’s what makes news.

The unusual.

So in your next media relations strategy think about how you can swim against the tide.

This one sounds simple – and it is – but most media relations campaigns fail because they don’t cover the basics.

Journalists, particularly feature writers, need case studies to illustrate the trends or patterns they are writing about.

Whether they’re writing for the national press or for your monthly trade magazine all journalists need vivid case studies.

If you can provide them with a well-written, detailed (full of colour) case study with great images they will love you.

That way when a journalist using HARO, Response Source or #journorequest puts out a request for a case study you can be the first to reply.

Often the first to reply is the one that gets used.

What you need in a media case study

• Full names of all the people included
• Detailed quotes on how your product/service has impacted them and improved their life
• A human-interest element that gives your case study an emotional hook and will make the reader keep reading
• High-resolution images of anyone quoted in the case study.

Examples of media case studies

==> An electric bike company: an interview with someone who bought your bike and now commutes to work and has transformed their health as a result.

==> The oat milk business: an interview with a customer who was dairy intolerant and whose life was improved by discovering your oat milk.

==> A law firm: a customer who managed to protect the intellectual property rights and make a success of their business.

No matter what your business does there will be trade media that covers it.

From Health Investor and food industry bible The Grocer to fashion news outlet Drapers and PR Week – every sector has its own media.

Do not overlook these.

They may not speak directly to your customers but they will build your authority as a thought leader.

Your investors may well consume this media too.

Trade media will want:

• Stories about your new products
• Insight about customer trends (look at your customer data to identify these)
• News about senior appointments
• Comment/blogs on industry trends

The newsworthiness your business needs to get in these types of media is much less than the mainstream press so make the most of these media relations opportunities.

Not so much a media relations tactic, more of an ethic.

Journalists are human too and you’re trying to build a relationship here.

It’s highly likely that your media relations work will require you to go back to the same journalists on repeated occasions – so play nice.

If you’re helpful and not too pushy they will be much more likely to use your stories.

But if you approach media relations thinking the journalist is there to do YOU a favour you won’t get far.

Journalists are getting at least 200 email pitches a day so make sure yours stands out but that you also do it with a smile.

Everyone wants to work with people who make their lives a little better.

Every media relations campaign needs a news hook.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your budget is the media will only cover your story if it has a news angle.

Awareness days are a tried and trusted way to make a campaign newsworthy.

And while it’s true that the media may be a little wary of the more contrived awareness days they are still a proven method to get free PR.

Awareness days have been constructed by organisations to give journalists a reason to write about a specific industry, cause or thing on an agreed date.

In their most serious form, awareness days help raise the profile of issues such as dementia, diabetes, road safety or cancer.

The education world uses them to promote literacy – think of World Book Day or Learning Disability Awareness Day.

Fun ones like National Lost Sock Memorial Day strike a very different tone!

As a marketing pro, awareness days can be an open goal and a brilliant opportunity for you to secure an attention grabbing headline.

This is how you can use awareness days in your media relations strategy.

Media relations isn’t just about the written word.

Think about how you can get your brand on TV, radio and podcasts.

The exposure and credibility you can get from regularly appearing on local and national broadcast platforms is huge.

One of the best ways to do this is as a talking head (no, not the band).

TV rolling news is full of panel discussions and opportunities for you to give an interview as an expert.

Here’s how you do it:

Set up your news watching brief (see section 1) so you know the media opportunities that are relevant to your business weeks before they happen.

Make sure you’ve had some basic media training so you’re ready for all types of questions. Then…

1. Research – know your interviewer and their media platform
2. Prepare – know the questions you will face, even if it’s just for a simple awareness days type interview
3. Key messages – know what YOU want to get across in the interview
4. Facts – be armed with stats to back up your argument
5. Skilful answers – acknowledge the question and give the answer YOU want to give
6. No ‘no comments’ – don’t ever do this
7. Camera etiquette – smile, look at your interviewer, give clear, concise answers
8. Dress to impress – the right threads for the right occasion

That’s Your Complete Introduction To Media Relations

Now it’s your turn.

Have a think about how you can build a media relations strategy for your business that will get the media coverage you are after.

Try combining a few of our 16 media relations tactics.

But if you do just one – create that news watching brief.

Knowing the news that is coming up in your business sector and contacting journalists ahead of time with story ideas is KEY to your media relations success.

And if you’re ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.

Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.

Good luck!

The post Media Relations: 16 Tactics For Getting Media Coverage appeared first on Class:PR.