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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.
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