BuzzTart

I don’t want to get snarky, but sometimes I wonder if anyone is bothering to teach grammar and punctuation in Australian schools.  As I run a press release service, I often have to reject copy because of errors that could have been averted by spelling and grammar checking.  If I published it, I would be risking my own business reputation and the reputation of the company or individual concerned.   Yet I thought it was well known that when you publish content online, it could appear anywhere else on the web.  If this content is related to your business, such as a press release, how does it reflect on your brand when it’s littered with grammatical and spelling errors?  It’s really easy to solve this – just proofread, and if you don’t know the correct way to do it, ask someone who does.

Here are some common errors and the correct usage:

1.  In quotation marks, a comma or fullstop should be inserted before the closing quotation mark:  “I don’t know where to put the comma so I just leave it out,” she said. She said: “Put the fullstop inside the last quotation mark if it is at the end of the sentence.”  A comma may be placed outside the closing quote marks if it’s a “partial quote”, such as this one.

2.   A quotation should not contain several sentences before the reader know who’s speaking. Attribute  quotations as soon as you can, typically after the first phrase or sentence. “Each press release should begin with a summary of the main newsworthy issue,” she said. “Usually it answers the questions ‘who, what, where, when and why’.”

3.  Using single quotation marks instead of double is another common error; this will just annoy the journalist — as will capitalised headlines. Have you ever seen single quotation marks or capped headlines in a newspaper? Single quotation marks are used only where needed within double quotation marks. For an example see the last sentence of (2) above.

4.  Spelling mistakes; there is a massive incidence of wrongly spelled words. Instead of showing you the misspelled words, here are some correct spellings –

• “confectionery”(there’s no ‘a’)
• “stationary” (still) but “stationery” (paper, envelopes, etc)
• its = the possessive (its claws were sharp); it’s = it is (it’s well known that….the apostrophe stands for the “i” in the contraction of it is)
• hassle not “hassell” (which I think is an architectural firm)
• minuscule (it comes from the Latin ‘minus’ and not mini)

Sorry for the rant but I have much more where that came from. By the way, I have highlighted the fact that this phenomenon is Australian. Press releases from American companies seem to be written with care – in the US it is just not acceptable to send out poorly constructed corporate documents.  Editors are employed as a matter of course before distribution of releases and marketing collateral.  Press releases written by people for whom English is not the first language may be excused to some degree.

citizen journalism, free PR, free publicity, how to write a press release

The Australian Festive Season is traditionally the time when all business goes quiet – only to wake up again on Australia Day. This period between Christmas and the end of January is a fertile time for PR professionals to be thinking about their clients’ media communications calendar for the whole year. It’s also a time when radio stations and metro dailies are crying out for topical stories.

Radio stations employ stand-in presenters during this period while newspapers and magazines often work with skeleton staff. They need ideas that are going to entertain, excite and inform.

Here are some surefire ways to increase awareness and attract media coverage from Christmas through to Australia Day.

1. Random acts of kindness
Many people are faced with personal and financial challenges at this time of year. Tell people about your charity or volunteer work and the difference you make*.

2. Trends and opinions
Tell media about your event and especially any anecdotes or strong opinions that were shared – or any trends you’ve noticed in holiday conversations. Include pics if you have them.

3. New Year sales and promotions
In January, everyone is looking for a bargain. Now’s the time to announce your special offers, deals and sales.

4. Run a competition or survey
While you have some thinking time, plan a competition with a prize suited to your customers. Surveys also work well in media – the larger the survey group the better but even small surveys work.

5. Good news week…
Are you looking forward to a prosperous New Year? Tell people about it – we all want to hear inspiring stories about business growth.

6. Take pictures and record video
Make 2011 the year when you capture everything you can as an image or video. The combination of text and video is the most powerful trend in media. Back it up by announcing your video’s existence in a news release so it will be shared widely.

7. Be bold or crazy
Do something mad, fun and not too dangerous…. Or play it safe and make bold predictions about the year ahead. As with point 6, record them on video as well as text to increase their pulling power.

* Join Donortec for great discounts on software and hardware for nonprofits.

Australian nonprofits; nonprofit technology, free marketing, free PR, free publicity, media, media release, press release, public relations, social marketing, social media

This is the funniest thing I’ve read all day, from Advertising Age. A heated discussion after a US PR firm forgot to BCC her contacts in a press pitch (i love that, makes me feel less stupid!) and were subsequently flamed on Twitter. The bit that caught my eye was … “Then again, some of them are “social-media experts” and we all know that’s a pretty low bar.” (can’t we come up with some other term for “social media” – it’s so last year Found this through #fail where you can find everybody’s bloopers.

http://adage.com/adages/post?article_id=138547

free PR, social media

Shameless self promotion is un-Australian but I reckon we need to get over it. I’ve just spent some time in the US and it’s like talking a different language: everyone who sells anything online, namely anyone with a website, seems to know why they need proactive SEO (eg, to be first page in Google organic search) and SEM (eg, google adwords).
But I talk to many companies here in Australia and there is a profound suspicion of what is widely regarded as a ‘black art’. People don’t want to pay someone else to do it because they suspect they could do it for themselves – but then they never find the time. Get it straight – SEO, SEM and constantly updating your online content are no longer optional. If you want to survive the recession, invest a larger proportion on SEO, SEM, and social media – the only promotion you can really control. That means talking yourself up online at every opportunity. Shamelessly self promoting.

free PR, soc, social marketing, Social Media Strategy

Can journalists and PR people ever really be friends? Mainstream metro daily journalists are driven by their editors to produce a certain kind of content. They are not there to promote your product but to provide controversy, humour, human interest or some other parochial factor that aligns with editorial policy.(This differs from the ‘op-ed’ opinion based columnists who are more like bloggers.)
If you, as a PR person, bombard a business or general news journalist with product-focused media releases, you are going to get the flick. You, and more likely your client, then get upset because your perfectly crafted words and ground-breaking world first announcements have been rejected. Product releases belong with the trades, unless they truly are sensational, ground-breaking world firsts.
It’s a better strategy to offer your favourite journalists a real story at any time – even when it doesn’t apply directly to your client. And even to offer journalists stories you’ve identified when they’re not related to your clients at all.
The problem is of course that your clients want you to send product focused releases – so send them you must. What I find works for me is to send the release but include in the body of the email a note that talks about how the content of the release could fit in a real story – whether this is because it’s relevant to the news of the day or because it could become part of a larger feature story. This is hard work – and you must convince your client of its value. That’s a whole other story .

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The following tips for writing online press releases will help generate buzz about your products and services across the web, driving traffic back to your website and creating a direct channel to journalists, media outlets and customers.

1. Use major keywords in your heading and first paragraph – these are often all that will be picked up by Google and other News Indexing services
2. Proactively share your news using the share and RSS buttons on press release websites
3. Don’t use “you” and “your” or “I”, “we” or “our”, unless it’s within a quote – your press release should be written in the third person so it doesn’t sound like an advertisement
4. Make your headline meaningful to media and search engines – don’t be too clever
5. Keep it short – Google will not index news item that are too long
6. Make your press release relevant to news or trends – get the message across succintly in headline and first par
7. Make sure you have good landing pages on your website relevant to your press release – otherwise you are missing an opportunity
8. Proofread your release and make sure it’s of a press-ready standard; your release could end up anywhere and you don’t want to spread an unprofessional image of your company (or yourself)
9. Use free online press release services tagged with relevant keywords to make it easy for people looking for your products/services to find them – this is the cheapest, easiest free publicity you will find
10. If you’re new to online press releases, post older material first then work your way up to the present so you have a good history online, driving incremental (long tail) traffic back to your website

Have fun – email me editor at newsmaker.com.au if you want to discuss any ideas you think would make a good press story.

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