It’s Friday evening, and a rant has been brewing all day. I warned James this morning that my experiences with public relations people are destined to be immortalized in a nerdy musing. The time has arrived.
Here’s the thing: public relations is supposed to have something to do with relating to the public. Except that it seems like a lot of PR people spend an amazing amount of time actually avoiding the public.
As a group, the whole reason they draw a salary is to promote a product or service. They send breathless press releases out to news media extolling the virtues of their special product all in the hopes that it will get a mention in some kind of press outlet that has a big readership. Like a newspaper, magazine, or high-traffic Web site, for example.
I’ve written press releases of my own and felt the sting of being ignored by the press, so I have sympathy. But I’ve also seen it from the other perspective. I am one of those people that PR professionals claim they desperately want to reach. I write product reviews for a web site that gets 800,000 visitors/month and articles for a magazine that’s distributed to 54,000 targeted industry decision makers. PR folks should be groveling at my feet.
But they’re not.
So if you own a business and want to get your press release read or your product reviewed, here are a few tips from the "inside."
1. Return phone calls and e-mails. If you want to reach the press, you have to let them reach you. So far, giant companies with the largest PR staffs are winning at being the least responsive.
2. Answer questions. For example, two weeks after inquiring about whether a product is being discontinued, I got this: "it is not [brand x’s] policy to comment on the future of any of its products, so I cannot confirm that with you." Way to weasel out with a corporate non-answer. Ugh!
3. Put contact information and prices in the press release. Most magazines that do product reviews put the company name, address, phone, web site and pricing info at the end of the article. Don’t make me spend hours trying to figure out how much the widget costs.
4. In your press release, use real words, not vague generalities or industry buzzwords. If you sell software, actually SAY it is software somewhere. A "solution" could be a lot of things. Maybe hardware, maybe software, maybe a garage door opener. I don’t know if the press release doesn’t say.
5. Use a spell checker. A grammar checker would be nice too. Unintelligible press releases aren’t picked up, no matter how wonderful the product.
Okay, having gotten all that off my chest, I can now return to writing my many product reviews. After all, some PR people DID call me back 😉