What's the biggest PR mistake?

We recently ran across one of the biggest mistakes businesses make in their public relations: Letting a partner do publicity.

No one would ever have an engineer work as a lawyer, yet this happens all the time in public relations.

Invariably, the person chosen to do the PR says “Why don’t journalists ever write anything good?”

This immediately shows they know nothing about newsworthiness—the basis of journalism.

Journalism thrives on conflict. But, journalists also use the following criteria to decide what to run:

·         Impact (how many people are affected);

·         Timeliness (how recent);

·         Prominence (how important the players are);

·         Proximity (how close);

·         Bizarre-factor (how unique, i.e., man bites dog);

·         Currency (how topical).

Choosing someone with no journalism experience just shows how little firm executives value their credibility with the media.

If you want the media to know you’re a player, if you want press, hire someone who knows what they’re doing.  

For more information, call us at (916) 455-4790 or go to Dell Richards Publicity at www.dellrichards.com.

PR people can help plan your event

So often people come to us wanting publicity for an event that’s a month away.

Although we still can help them, it is too late to get as much publicity as we could. 

If a company gets us involved in the planning stages, we can actually use our expertise to make choices that fit the media’s needs.

If someone wants an anchor from a local TV station as a celebrity speaker, we can help them get a sponsorship to go with it. 

We also can stop them from getting celebrities from competing stations, which makes it hard to book either.

If we have enough notice, we can get nonprofit events into spots reserved for charities.  

We can also steer them away from ratings sweep time when getting press is more difficult. 

We also can advise them on website changes and collateral for the event.   

And we can set up a publicity schedule for traditional and social media.  

For more information, call us at (916) 455-4790 or go to Dell Richards Publicity at www.dellrichards.com.

How to talk to the media

Speak slowly. Tap your foot as you speak to slow yourself 

down.

Pause between phrases. Wait for the reporter to catch up.

Speak in sound bites. The shorter the sentence, the better.

Use short words. Two syllables are better than three.  

Do not use jargon. If you have to explain a word, you will 

lose your audience—and your reporter.  

Use the "child" test. In your mind, explain it to a child.

Avoid complex sentences. If half got lost, would it mean 

what you want?

Never say anything you wouldn't want your boss, your 

mother or everyone you've ever met to know.

If you must say something you don't want to admit, go  

"Off the Record." Never do this unless you absolutely 

have to. The reporter may respect it, but an editor may 

not.

If you don't know something, say you're not sure, but 

you’ll find out. Then, get back ASAP.

If a reporter calls and you can’t talk, find out their 

deadline. Tell them when you’ll get back to them.  

The media usually only calls once on a story. If you don’t 

get back to them—and you are not absolutely crucial to 

the story—you will never hear from them again. 

For more information on Dell Richards Publicity, call us 

at 916.455.4790 or visit www.dellrichards.com.

How readable is your writing?

While the Gunning Fog Index was developed in 1952, it is more important today than ever before.

In an age of biz-babble, written language uses more jargon every day—and becomes less easy-to-read as a result.  

On the Gunning Fog Index, a readability score of 12 can be read by a high school student.

For universal comprehension—and the standard journalists aspire to—the goal is 8. Eighth grade.

Annual reports often come in at 26.9 or more.

The lower the score, the better luck you’ll have getting people to read it. 

Journalists will love your releases.    

To lower your score, scratch the three-syllable words. Shorten the long sentences and muster active verbs.

This copy had a Gunning Fog of 8.001.   

To test your copy, go to http://gunning-fog-index.com/ or the Flesch/Kincaid Grade Level at http://www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/index.php. 

For more information on Dell Richards Publicity, call us at 916.455.4790 or visit www.dellrichards.com.

Have your 8-sec pitch ready, but...

People think at 600-800 words a minute, but only speak at 115 to 300.

Which is why people only have eight seconds to gain someone’s attention.

The only time this isn’t the case is when giving a presentation.

Speakers have about 30 seconds—if they’re saying something valuable to the audience. *

As if all that doesn’t make sales difficult enough, how it is said is actually more important than what is said. 

We are visual creatures. We believe what we see more than what we hear.

Here’s the breakdown:

          Body language = 55 percent,

          Paralanguage (tone of voice, pitch, volume) = 37 percent.

          Words = 8 percent. **

Regional dialects and class accents—which often carry stereotypes—also complicate the matter.  Think "street slang" versus "erudite academic".

Individual words also have positive and negative connotations or feeling responses, which affect people without them being consciously aware of it.  

Have your elevator pitch ready, but in the long run, being genuine, interested and compassionate works better than a canned pitch.

For more information, call Dell Richards Publicity at (916) 455-4790 or visit www.dellrichards.com.

*Max Potentials seminar

** Albert Mehrabian’s “3 Vs”

Ethics trumps expedience....

We recently had a press conference that television covered—only to find a few hours later that the spokesperson didn’t want her face seen because of domestic violence issues.

We immediately called the reporter to see if we could get the woman’s video clip removed.

The reporter said she’d pull it, but was very curt. It had been her lead.

We got other coverage, but were disappointed to lose a story on homeless housing.

I thanked the journalist, apologized via email—and sent a large box of chocolates to her, even though she wouldn’t get it for a few days.

In the meantime, the client put better controls in place for choosing spokespeople.

In the end, the journalist was able to salvage the story, which ran the next day. By cutting the anecdotal lead, she made it shorter, which the producers loved, she quipped.

We were lucky it worked out for all concerned. But we didn’t know that when we acted.

We did what we had to do, no matter what the potential cost, because it was the right thing to do. Period.

For more information, call Dell Richards Publicity at 916-455-4790 or visit us at www.dellrichards.com.

How to kill a press release

The easiest way to kill a press release is to ignore the target.

That means not using language journalists use, but using language a professional in the field would.

If journalists smell jargon, they’ll think you can’t speak at the 8^th grade level the media requires and they’ll delete the release immediately.

Jargon can be used for trade journals where technical information is more important, but not mainstream media.

Journalists are swamped and only want the basics in a release.

We constantly remind clients that you can’t tell it all in a pitch.

The purpose of a release is to plant a story idea.

Educating everyone comes later.

You present a problem, back it up with facts and offer a solution, nothing more.

If you allow your knowledge or focus to get in the way of what the producer or editor needs, you’re only wasting everyone’s time.

For more information, call us at 916.455.4790 or go to www.dellrichards.com.

The worst time to pitch a reporter is

People sometimes call us because a competitor has a story in the media.

It’s great they want publicity, but they’re not going to get an article from that source, which is usually what they’re after.

To paraphrase Jeff Haden, a columnist at Inc.com, “If I just wrote about the subject, I’m good for the next year or so.”

Luckily, there are always other media to approach.

If the article was in the local daily paper, we could pitch the local business journal, the local weekly or monthly magazines.

We could go for broadcast media: television and radio appearances or quotes in Internet stories.

We could target trade journals—not the ones clients themselves read—but the ones read by their clients.

To do so, we come up with angles focused on the specific media.

That way, a missed opportunity becomes a way of creating a broad-range public relations campaign that delivers long-term results.

For more information, contact Dell Richards Publicity at 916.455.4790 or visit us at www.dellrichards.com.