How should a PR company build up a good relationship with the press for its clients? Here are a few guidelines we follow at antimony communications:

• Try to avoid ringing up journalists to ask if they have received your release. This is the bane of journalists' lives. They can receive hundreds of press releases each week, and if everyone routinely rang to check up on their release there wouldn't be any time for them to put an issue together.
• Press releases need to be written in a significantly different style from brochures or advertisements. Giving the 'hard sell' to a journalist is a big turn-off.
• When ringing up editors on their interest in a possible article for example, make sure you don't ring as an issue is approaching its press deadline. Find out the magazine's publishing schedule and ring early in the cycle, when the editor will have more time. For dailies early afternoon is a good time.
• When compiling target media lists make sure the publications cover your field. A large proportion of information that journalists receive is simply not relevant.
• Make sure your mailing lists of target publications are up to date. Addressing a release to a journalist who left two years ago does not inspire confidence! There are commercially available databases which give comprehensive listings on publications in the UK and elsewhere - at a price - such as PR Planner and Listlogix.
• When sending out press releases by email, put the release into the body of the message and not as an attachment. This is because attachments take up more room, can be awkward to open and carry the risk of viruses. Also the email should be in plain text and not html for similar reasons. Only send attachments when requested, eg for feature articles.
• When responding to a request for more information, don't email a 20 Mbyte Powerpoint presentation! Bear in mind the size of any attachments you send. Journalists are frequently on the road and using slow mobile connections.
• A good format for text attachments is RTF (Rich Text Format), which can be read by a wide range of PC and Mac applications, and doesn't support viruses.
• Press releases are normally sent out by email or post. Fax is rarely used these days, and email is fast becoming the norm. However, some journalists still prefer paper releases, particularly those working on features rather than news. To avoid sending unsolicited attachments by email, images can be sent on request, or made available for download from a 'press centre' on the client's web site.
• Make sure digital images have high enough resolution. Requirements have converged on jpegs (rgb) with a resolution of 300 dpi.

antimony communications public relations
5 Chestnut Way Godalming Surrey GU7 1TN UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1483 416807
Fax: +44 (0) 8707 656807
Email: info@antimony.co.uk