5 Tips on how to go home earlier and look good for the bosses if you work in public relations

Us public relations folk know that it is all about the image. You can be the worst PR person in the world but still have a pretty sweet industry reputation if you know exactly where to sprinkle the glitter on the turd.

With the glitter analogy in mind, and with 20 years of "fake it till you make it" under my own belt, here are the tips that can make you look good in front of the bosses and get to pack up early and go home for the day... p.s. I guess these are basic PR101 tips for most, but may also be handy for small businesses having their own go at flirting with the media.

1. Work smarter not harder on your press release sell in, but watch out for "the bulldog"

Imagine a situation where you could call one media outlet, secure coverage and it would mean that your story would get syndicated across hundreds of media outlets. Oh, hello there Press Association (PA). PA powers a truck load of the UK media (and further afield) and if you can sell in a story to them, your story will get a load of media hits across regional and national titles.

Casually drop the pages and pages of coverage in front of your bosses, stay for the pats on the back then swan off home early knowing that you have done it for the day. Three things to note. 1. Press Association is hard to get coverage from and the news desk is guarded by a no nonsense fella that our office calls "the bulldog". If you can get your story past him, you are 90% there. He is fairly cut throat though. 2. You will still need to ring around the news outlets that ran the story to try and get live links for your client/business. PA stories do not always result in live links being transferred to all the news sites once it has been syndicated. 3. Don't be tempted to cheat and use the paid for Press Association wire, its crap, expensive and doesn't result in what many (or maybe just myself) would call "credible" coverage. Just lots of news aggregators and spammy looking sites.

2. A fast and flowery reactive comment to breaking news can take you global baby

The trendy kids call this Newsjacking, or NewsHacking (the idiots), but I simply call it "piggybacking", 'cos I am old yeah! Every agency worth its salt has TV's up on the wall in their offices. The bigger agencies even have a bank of three TV's with one always showing MTV, 'cos they is cool, innit. I digress.

One of the TV's in your office should always have the main news channels on to monitor for breaking news. If a story breaks that your business can comment on, no matter how niche or clutching at straws, then get an interesting comment out fast. The speedier and more quirky the comment the greater chance of it getting picked up. Once again, go to Press Association first. As a general rule of thumb, if you "Google News" the story and it has already been written up by PA, you are too late. Here is a good example of how bad I am at judging a situation, but how good I am at PR (modest).

When I worked in financial services I was asked by a national radio station group, news desk, to comment on the possible announcement of the housing market going bust. I gave an ace quote about there being more chance of the Loch Ness Monster swimming up The Thames than there was of this happening. It ran everywhere... that evening I basked in the glory of being a media super star and PR whiz. The next day the housing market went bust and I looked a tool. Be careful what you say kids! Anyway, you get the drift, get a good quote out fast and you WILL get major pick up (fact). Show the successes to the bosses, pack up and go home early for the day.

3. Build up your own network of social media influencers, not connected to your agency or company

I have lost count of the number times I have thought a story was going to fly with the media only for it to die on its arse*. Usually this happens when you have spent a fortune on a client campaign, or convinced your CEO that this is the campaign that they need to invest big bucks in. It gets to the Friday report and oh no.

This is where social media can really help. Everyone should always be building private influencer lists on Twitter and other suitable social platforms. Getting to know people, "liking" their crap jokes, sharing their shite content and generally trying to become cyber-buddies, just so that cometh the moment when your own story dies on its arse, you can push it out to your 'network" and they will start sharing it too.

Ideally, some of these cyber-buddies will be influencers in their own right and hey presto, a journo who follows them will see the story and run with it. As we all know, success leads to success, a snowball effect begins and, usually, once one big ticket news outlet has run a story, more will follow. Share the successes with your bosses, pack up, go home early for the day.

4. Find friendly freelance journo's who write for multiple places

When I started in PR there were thousands of journo's employed by the nationals, regionals and magazines, we went on lots of jollies together and the world was all good. Fast forward 20 years and the number of journo's employed directly by news outlets has dropped dramatically. The transient nature of journalists in the modern age (is "transient" the right word, or have I just called journalists "tramps" - I only went to a Comprehensive school?) means that journo's seem to move around, and leave the industry or move to become a freelance in far greater numbers than they did when I started out.

Many freelance journalists now work across multiple titles. This is why you should try and find a great freelance journo and get to know them well. If you can place a story with them that they can then sell in (for cash monies) to various titles then you both look brilliant. Go share the results with the bosses and go home early!

5. Get to know your local news agency

Similar to Press Association there are several really well connected news agencies across the UK that can take your story to a wider media audience far quicker than you can. For example, we have worked with Caters News and also South West News Service to help get quirky client stories out there. These services take your story or press release and turn it into an actual news story, like offa the news papers, and then sell it in to the actual news media. They get paid for every story that they place.

A word of warning, whilst Caters and South West News Service are both awesome to work with, some of the other, similar, news agencies are pretty cut throat and will even "accidentally" drop the client or brand mention if they think it risks a story not doing so well. Some have also taken a consumer who has committed to being a client case study and signed them up to exclusive agreements saying that they will only work with the news agency in question and no longer with the client (dropping the client or brand mention again). This is the main difference between the likes of PA and these news agencies (not including Caters and SWNS - did I mention that?), PA is far more transparent with its stories and what it plans to do.

You have to keep an eye on what is going on. If all goes well, you will get a tonne of coverage that you can show to your bosses and, you guessed it, pack up early for the day and go home (like a boss - link very Not Safe For Work!).

Anyway, 5 tips to get you started and hopefully get you home earlier!

*PR term