On a daily basis, PR professionals decide which story ideas to share with media, when to pull the trigger and which publication/reporter would make the most sense for the angle. Appropriately acting on these issues is the difference between your story or client hitting in the media or becoming the PR pro who always annoys media.
Here are some simple things to consider to avoid the latter:
If you’ve ever been interviewed by the media, chances are you one time or another looked at the final article in print and wondered, “Where did that quote come from? I didn’t say that.” I’m not referring to a damaging, libelous misquote…just the run-of-the-mill what I meant to say doesn’t match the what the reporter said I said. The instinctive reaction is to blame the reporter. They got it wrong! But consider another possibility: We didn’t make it very easy on the reporter to get it right.
Media training can cure a lot of ills…including the chronic misquote. If you engage in an in-depth media training session, you can expect to work on some critical exercises, designed among other things to ensure accuracy in quoting…
I was reading Redbook over the weekend…yes, the actual magazine. Not the digital version. I’m a diehard fan of the hard copy. I don’t have a Nook or a Kindle. They don’t interest me. I just can’t give up that feeling of curling up with a good story and reading it from cover to literal… Read more »
As an English major in college, I spent a good portion of my time writing papers. Papers about books I’d read, how strange my family is, Disney World, why pre-1600 literature is riddled with sexual innuendo…you name it, there is a good chance I wrote a paper about it. One would think that with that many written projects under my belt, writing would come naturally to me by now. To some extent, that’s true. Unfortunately, I don’t write as often as I used to, so I’ve definitely gotten rusty. In the midst of the day-to-day distractions, the dreaded mental incapacitation that plagues so many seeking the written word sets in—writer’s block.
Pitching – it’s a crafty business, but somebody’s got to do it. And, no, I don’t mean everyone should. An effective pitch is not a one-off kind of deal. It is the work of a dedicated individual – one who takes the time to do the research, understand the writer and creatively structure the pitch.
As a young pro trained in traditional PR, I may have grown into my career with the rise of social media, but until recently, I had not branched into blogger outreach. Given an awesome opportunity recently from my manager to broaden outside of traditional media outreach, I sat down for a consultation with two of… Read more »
