BuzzTart

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

For all those who have asked me what makes a good press release, here’s the inside leg:

http://www.justweb.com.au/public-relations/how-to-write-a-press-release.html

Any other tips, just ask me

how to write a press release, justweb, media release, press release, SEO

A University of Sydney study reported in The Australian’s media section this morning says it’s a myth that journos don’t use PR and press release content to generate their stories – instead, 30-80% of content comes from PR efforts.
The article also reports it’s a myth that PR people don’t spin – or to put it another way, it’s true that PR people spin, when directed to do so by their clients. (You always hope that readers are smart enough to see that, equally, journalists work under the instruction of their editors. They have to espouse the party line they don’t always share and sometimes put a negative spin on stories just to increase their newsworthiness.)
The study’s author, Jim Macnamara, says: “PR is a fact of life. Journalists should recognise it as an important communication channel and not deny it. And if there is PR material being used, it should be open and transparent.” Couldn’t agree more – the more quality PR, the better the relationship with the journalist, the better you become as reliable and trusted a source as any other. Bloggers themselves have become both a source of news and a publishing vehicle for PR – there’s another debate in the making.
A debate on this topic will be held on Wednesday this week in Sydney.

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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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