The Biggest Mistakes To Avoid In PR

Here Are The Biggest Mistakes To Avoid In Public Relations:

Never call a reporter outside of office hours if it can wait.

Never try to turn a boring story into major news.

Never pitch non-newsworthy or totally inappropriate stories.

Never pitch a story to a reporter who just wrote about the same subject.

Never challenge journalists about why they didn’t print the picture you provided, or use your data or your quotes. Also, similarly, avoid asking reporters who do not cover you for tips for getting covered next time.

Never call journalists when they are on deadline.

Never pester journalists.

Never mail out something unless you have the time and energy to follow up with several phone calls, emails, or even social media messages.

Never make a promise to a journalist that you can’t keep.

Never be obnoxious, arrogant, pushy or argumentative.

Never fail to measure results.

Never fail to keep up with the news.

Never fail to monitor what’s being said about your company.

Never ignore or neglect your online presence.

Never disrespect the media.

Avoid poor timing. 

Avoid a poor choice of language. 

Stay away from jargon, hype and buzzwords.

Avoid poorly written news releases. 

Avoid poor or non-existent follow-up.

Avoid having no plan of action.

Avoid not understanding news value.

Avoid not understanding urgency.

Avoid over-writing and over-editing.

Avoid not doing research.

Failure to do adequate research, strategic planning and homework---including scenario planning and contingency and succession planning can be a huge mistake.

Not coaching organizational executives with media training prior to exposing them to the media.

Not integrating PR strategy into long-term organizational goals.

Not communicating clearly. comprehensively and completely as well as widely enough the standards of the organization’s performance and enforcing them regularly.

Failure to strategically and properly (effectively and efficiently) launch PR campaigns.

Failure to provide the glue to keep the disparate and different elements of the PR campaign from becoming disconnected from one another.

Not being unique, novel, clever and creative enough to break through the clutter and the noise with an important newsworthy and memorable message that captures media and audience attention on an ongoing basis.

Failures to set and create attainable and realistic PR goals for the organization. 

Failure to establish a unique selling proposition (USP) for the organization and to do proper ongoing strategic branding of iit that sets it apart always from its competition and gives it a sustainable differential marketing advantage.

Failure to continuously measure and monitor and adjust strategies, goals, tactics, and results.

Failure to do internal campaigns before external ones.

NOTE: Be sure to hire a public relations advisor to advise, guide & inspire you and help you avoid errors like these!

P.S. What would YOU add to this?

The author, Dr. John B. Charnay, CEO of Charnay and Associates in Greater Los Angeles, is a leading and award-winning public relations advisor...and a top social media advisor. He has been a strategic PR advisor to many famous celebrities and Fortune 1000 CEOs. To meet him and ask for his support, invite him to be LinkedIn (email in profile) and contact him today!