Context Public Relations

We’re a selfless lot in PR. No, really. To be able to get the best PR results for you, we need to get under your skin, and this starts by finding out what makes you and your business tick.

PR is as procedural or as innovative as you make it. You can choose to hand us over two press releases a month on appointments and sales orders and get your target number of column inches, or you can make us in integral part of your business, a member of the inner circle, if you like.

The closer we are to your business, the better we can use our consultancy experience to maximise media relations opportunities for you. What you think is a small sales win or customer deployment might have some aspect which will turn it into PR gold. It could be a technology-first, or there could be a human interest to the news. Trust us – we’ve got a nose for these things, and know what makes journalists tick.

Getting closer to your PR agency can also help to open up the way to media opportunities beyond the everyday business focus. You may have tackled the north face of Everest, be an award-winning amateur sportsperson or do a lot of good work for charity.

Whilst not immediately obvious as business-related, identifying wider media opportunities for individuals within your company is not only valuable profiling, but is another way of reaching out to potential customers and partners, and of building relationships and connections.

So come, tell me more about you. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Tags: Public Relations by Luke
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Radio is a fantastic medium for PR, with the potential to reach large, targeted audiences across the country.  If you’ve got a great story, give it a regional angle and make sure you pitch it to relevant radio stations as well as the printed press – it will give you much broader coverage.

But, be prepared for the interview opportunities.  Radio is all about the spoken word, so to bring a story to life you may be asked to comment on it, using examples and discussing the issues with the interviewer.  Some interviews will be pre-recorded – and then cut to meet the radio stations requirements – but others will be live, a thought that can fill some people with dread.

Live interviews needn’t be daunting.  If you’ve not done one before make sure you start with a smaller, local radio station to start building your confidence.  Your PR company should give you a good briefing, including a Q&A on potential questions, but remember that the journalist will just want to get a good story based on your press release.  You know your product, company and industry; you know the details and background to your press release – put simply you are the best person to speak about the issue so use it to your advantage and demonstrate your expertise.

If you want to develop your interview skills why not invest in some good media training?  This can enhance your skills and give you practice at radio and TV interviews, building confidence and technique.

Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses in interviews, but practice really does help, so make sure you make the most of any opportunities that come your way.

Tags: Public Relations by Rachel
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Sitting with a client the other day we started discussing SEO tactics and as expected the conversation soon came round to Twitter. We’d all read about Stephen Fry using it to tell his fans what he was up to but what we discussed was how good it could be for the client business.

Not one to shy away from these issues I happened to mention that I set up my own Twitter account six months ago (I think it was even still in beta testing then) but after the first day I’d not updated it. The key issue for me is that yes, clients wanted to know what I was up to, but in reality if I spent all my time updating my Twitter I’d not be doing any work, therefore I’d stopped using it.

The client basically wanted to know if it was good for business to business marketing and after much discussion we decided the following:

• If you are targeting businesses the Twitter user audience is very limited
• If you don’t have anything to say for days on end the likelihood of attracting new followers that are not already your customers is unlikely
• In reallity it was time consuming (after all the Twitter has to be short and punchy) and we’d not get any other work done

One thing we all agreed on was that Twitter could be very useful in certain circumstances as follows:

• If you have a large user base that needs informing about changes and upgrades quickly
• If you are promoting special offers (Box shifting) that are available for a limited time
• You have a large consumer user base that already use Twitter and you have lots to say, every day

Overall our impression of Twitter is that it is a great social networking tool but that is all it is, it’s an addition to your Facebook profile / Myspace page but very little else. Twitter was not designed as a way to generate new business and it could be very time consuming for very little return on investment.

Tags: Marketing Mix, SEO by Rob
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I recently took a group of IT journalists to Disneyland Paris for a client event (insert your own joke about Mickey Mouse press trips here). As often happens after a couple of drinks, the conversation turned to what’s good and what’s bad in the relationship between PRs and journalists.

One thing that was strongly and universally disliked, was PRs using Facebook or LinkedIn to distribute press stories. The point was made to me quite forcefully that these applications are for social purposes, for keeping up with people you want to keep up with – and not a medium for press releases.

What made me think about this again was yesterday’s report from Nielsen Online, the analytics firm that tracks time spent online at various websites. The report says that in 2008, social networking sites saw more time spent by users than personal email. Nielsen found that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.

The important words in the report are ‘social’ and ‘personal’, which also means that most people see use of social networking applications as separate from their work identity.

By all means, have a blog, or update your profile on Web 2.0 apps so that your connections can see the changes when they choose. But using these apps to send press releases is a sure-fire way of getting onto a journalist’s blacklist.

Tags: Public Relations, Technology by Craig
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How often do you ask your PR firm or ad agency for referrals? And yet who can be in a better position to pass on leads? You already show them commitment by placing your business with them so they will be more than keen to point you in the direction of other clients, or network contacts that you could do business with. I did a quick, back of the envelope, calculation and worked out that we have referred around £200k worth of business to clients in the last year with our only payback being the goodwill it generates for our clients. If your agency tends to keep their clients for many years, their views and recommendations will be taken seriously and you will have a far warmer reception than unknown suppliers. From the agency point of view there is no cost to a referral so, why wouldn’t they help you out? In some cases the referral may result in add-on business for the agency, in which case everyone benefits but usually it is just a question of good manners to help those that have helped you. And, should the worst happen, and you end up personally between jobs you should look to the agency as they will be keen to get you back in the market place for reasons I am sure you can work out for yourselves.

Tags: Marketing Mix by Frank
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