SAVE ME FROM AWFUL PRESS RELEASES!

This is a mantra you will here from many journalists who are subjected to total BS stories and awful press releases on a daily basis. I should know - I'm one of them and although only about ten per cent of my time now is spent on 'pure' journalism I still get awful press releases on an almost daily basis.

Sadly most of them come from other PR companies and not from individuals who are trying to tell their stories and trying to get 'out there' and having a 'go' at reaching out to a journalist. The reality is that the latter is more attractive to a journalist in most cases.

What is a press release?

Some people will say that press releases are 'dead'. That's utter tripe. A press release is a body of information which tells the 'bones' of a story which a journalist can use in its entirety or it piques their interest and they will seek themselves, if it fits the audience they are writing for, to put meat on those bones. It's for a journalist or news editor to decide if it's relevant - not you.

A press release can be a word document or it can simply be an email which sets out the relevant information. Back in the day when I worked on the then Evening Advertiser in Swindon and previously the North Somerset & Avon Series, these would be sent by post, my post box was full every day and I'd open and look through them all.

Today, of course, this is all online and very few press releases turn up via so-called snail mail. The one exception to that is if someone wants to send you products or they want to send a copy of their book - and my advice around that is not to bother unless you know the journalist is looking for such products or books. Otherwise you are wasting your money. Each year, even now I get 20 books on subjects which don't interest me, from authors I don't know and I have donated them to charity. As a bookworm, now I offer them to my community of bookworms on FB - Bookworms & Bloggers - a new free group I run.

What are the key elements of a press release?

This sounds so simple but so many get this wrong. First of all it should not be a very long essay covering every single detail of the 'story' and it should certainly not be about your 'mission' or your 'vision'. Journalists don't tend to do 'wishy washy flim flam'.

Secondly it has to be a relevant 'story' and it cannot be an advertising puff for your business, organisation or brand.

The latter is hard for many people to grasp and we all have different views on what makes a story and what's interesting to us. Therefore the best place to start is to think about what that journalist, or publication, writes about and ask yourself 'can I write a relevant story like those stories'?

Here are the key elements - a headline which grabs attention or ensure it's relevant to the story; a first paragraph which summarises the story, a quotation from someone relevant to the said story and details which provide context, a little background and a link to a website. You then provide a photograph as a jpeg, landscape, around 1 to 3mg max and contact details. It does help if you are a good writer, particularly with the headline but as long as those elements are included - and the story is relevant to that journalist it should be read.

What does relevant mean?

Well if I write for Horse & Hound I'm not interested in your cats. If I write for the Swindon Advertiser, I'm not interested in your new apprentice for your business in Hampshire. Put yourself in the shoes of the news editor for that publication and think 'would I write about that if I was managing the news today for this publication?'.

This relevancy becomes even more important when it comes to the national press where many journalists are freelance. Then being more personal and understanding the interest areas of key journalists is more critical. A freelance writer across the 'red tops' for example is not interested, ever, in your press release about your new apprentice in Hampshire.

With sector press it should be obvious. Construction News, for example, is not interested in your new software product or your office move or your expertise around wellbeing.

None of this means that your story is not relevant - it's just not relevant in that particular publication.

PR companies are the worst

Sadly I've found this to be the case and it happens almost every week. I get press releases that are so bad, they can make me laugh. Mostly I just delete them - or 'spike' them.

And if you work with a PR company and any of this rings true, then consider the damage you are actually doing to your reputation. Journalists do talk to each other, especially in the UK - we are all interconnected, we all know someone who knows that other person. We do share bad practice, I promise you that.

There are several reasons for this and here are just a few:

*Account managers who have no idea what a journalistic story actually is and will write about anything the client wants and will 'never' push back and say 'that's not a story'. One key thing to remember here is that 'people make stories' not products or services.

*Account managers who aren't journalists and have no 'news' sense or journalistic ability and fire out any old rubbish to as many journalists as possible. They then have a sense of entitlement that a journalist 'should' write about that 'thing'.

*Account managers who use a database to do the above, spamming 100s of journalists when the 'story' may not even be a story or might be relevant to maybe half a dozen journalists.

*Account managers who focus more on making the client feel good and doing what they want and getting the wording 'signed' off with no consideration for the person on the receiving end of those words.

*Account managers who use processes to make their lives easier and provide 'data' for tracking for their clients while often getting zero outcome.

*Account managers who use BS phrases to make journalists work hard to even find assets like 'photographs'. They will send a Dropbox link to download many images or ask them to accept a WeTransfer to send more than they need or even say something like 'click here to enter our virtual newsroom' to get your images. All of which puts the onus on a busy journalist - and in most cases, even if the story is fantastic, a journalist doesn't have time to jump through those hoops. Any good PR should know that you only do this if the journalist asks for it.

*Account managers who see that a journalist has written a story on Company A - that account manager works with a similar company doing similar things. Account manager writes to journalist asking them to do another story along similar lines very quickly about their client, Company B. That's not going to work.

*Account managers who 'follow up' often once their 'pants' press release has gone out. This might be two hours after it's landed in some cases. Then do it again, again, again, again and again. Don't be this person.

*Account managers who create pretty pdfs packed with images and logos to please the client, creating something which is time-consuming for a journalist to unpick and put into the software they use. So they won't bother (except in very specific circumstances).

What's the impact of this behaviour?

Well, it's simple. Do you like receiving spam or irrelevant communications? Do you like being chased for feedback on that spam or irrelevant communications?

Consider the impact on you when that keeps happening? What do you do about it?

Journalists are no different. Behaviours like the above mean a journalist is more likely to always ignore your communication - or even respond to you telling you to stop contacting them.

Even me, who doesn't employ those tactics for my clients (I go for building relationships over time with relevant journalists) can occasionally get a journalist contact me being rather testy and asking me not to send any more press releases about a client - even when it's relevant to their publication.

I don't argue, I simply apologise and leave them alone. It's my signal that this publication has parameters which are unknown to me and I then can abide by them. This is more common in sector or trade press who really want to stick closely with prioritising their regular advertisers. In these cases, if this publication is super relevant, you are going to have to engage in an advertorial relationship.

Are journalists just lazy?

No they are not. They are just busy and there are various reasons for this and here are a few of the stresses they are under in the current climate:

*Very few journalists now work on news outlets - so there are fewer journalists covering a patch (geographical or subject matter) and they will be expected to work at speed and with relevancy. They don't have time to plough through irrelevant communications.

*Journalists are not well paid in most scenarios. Journalists are usually highly qualified, will have done a degree, often a post grad and then a traineeship or apprenticeship of some sort. I trained for six years to become qualified, two years actually on the job - I'd earn far more if I was a lawyer. A starting salary for a trainee journalist now in local papers is about ￡22k and in tv it will be around ￡30k. It's a high pressure, high output and stressful job and many are leaving the profession.

*Many journalists who do continue in the profession are freelance so pitching irrelevant stories simply means that they are wasting precious time earning nothing. They know which stories will or won't fly and they make such judgments every day.

*Journalists don't just write any more. They will often have to do lay-outs (editors used to do that), find or take relevant pictures which fit (far fewer photographers employed than there used to be), sometimes they will also have to take video clips too. So a story isn't just gathering information, writing it up and handing it off to someone else to make it look pretty.

*Journalists have deadlines. These are hard deadlines in most cases. So making them do more stuff to tell stories about you makes their job much harder. On the flip side, make their job super easy and they will be back!

That's enough for this week! In another newsletter I'll talk about why journalists are so important for us all.