Media tips
1) Your organisation has just won a national award. You want to use this to gain some positive publicity. Should you:a) Wait for reporters to contact you
b) Hire a PR firm to deal with the media
c) Write a press release and send it out to the media
Doing (a) is unlikely to bring in any publicity. Reporters do not have magical powers that mean they know about stories. You have to tell them.
You could do (b) and hire a PR firm to tell them all about it. But you could first try writing the press release yourself as PR costs money.
This takes us to (c) which is a cheaper way of getting publicity than (b). If the press release is well written it should get used by the media. (If you run a small business and want to know more about how to write a press release come along to one of Kate Betts Media's business seminars.)
2) Following on from your press release the local radio station has asked you to come in for an interview. Do you:
a) Do no preparation. It’s only a chat anyway
b) Prepare for the obvious questions. (What is the award? What exactly does your company do? etc) and work out three points you want to get across
c) Make sure you go in armed with lots of technical details and background about your company and your product
By doing (a) you could be missing out on a good opportunity to promote your business and, at worst, you could say something you didn’t mean to. By preparing (b) for the interview, which may only last three or four minutes, you have the chance to say positive things about your business, which you may not get round to if you don’t prepare. By over-preparing (c) you will fill you head with too much detail, may get confused and may bore the listener.
3) There’s been a terrible incident at your organisation, which has resulted in some very negative publicity. Do you:
a) Say “no comment” to journalists
b) Decide on a company spokesman and prepare carefully what they are going to say
c) You’ve already prepared for this as part of your crisis management planning
“No comment” (a) sounds like you have something to hide. Far better to be upfront and say something to the media (b). They will report on the story anyway. It is possible to say not very much, but sound like you are saying something: “We are very concerned about what happened and will be launching an immediate investigation into exactly what happened. If there are any lessons to be learned we will take those on board.” Even better you will have plans in place for such a scenario (c) and rather than scrambling around trying to work out who is going to say what, you will have rehearsed how to deal with the media as part of your crisis management planning.
If you'd like help dealing with the media contact us now.