How to write and distribute a press release and a pitch for your business. It's my Silver Jubilee s

Hello, welcome. My name is Jim James and I'm the host for Speak PR, and I have been running my own PR firm since this week in 1995 when I moved to Singapore to start the offices of East West Public Relations. Then in 2006, I moved to China to start the operations there, and along the way I've had a number of other companies that have included importing Morgan sports cars to China Wake Drinks to China and starting the British Business Awards in China. So I have both worked with over 500 clients on getting them noticed, but I've also used public relations to get my own businesses started and noticed. And now I'm back in the UK. So on this podcast, I'd like to share some tips and some technologies that entrepreneurs and business owners can use so they can get their own companies noticed. Now today I've been working on the press release because 25 years is a jubilee anniversary, and that's one not to be squandered from a PR point of view. Now it takes me back because of course years and years ago writing press releases was what we did and what I did as an agency day in, day out. And I'm a little bit out of practice, to be honest, because over the years we've ended up working with other agencies to do that, or I've had staff to do it. But I wanted, because this is my own story, and I've talked on our Speak PR Masterclass about the importance of stories. It's my own story, so I'm really the best person to tell it. So coming to the practicalities of writing a press release, first of all, we need to have some background information. As we all know, the media get lots and lots of press releases every day, And what they're looking for is something special, something that's going to resonate with their readers, something that's going to make their own publication seem a cut above the others. They're not interested in hyperbole and opinion. They're interested in facts because, of course, their readers are interested. We as readers are interested in not the opinions of third parties but of facts. When I write the press release for East West PR, I use the Headline Planner tool to see about the quality of my headline. And in the end, I managed to get up to a score of 66 on the Headline Planner with PR is even more essential now than ever before. Now, I use the Headline Keyword Planner that I've mentioned in the previous podcasts, and I'll put that link again in the show notes. To get a score of some 66 in the end for this headline. And the headline that I needed to come up with in the end was that, now more than ever, eSource PR is absolutely imperative. I apparently had enough power words in there and enough intrigue to get myself above the 40 to 50, which I was getting when I said East West Public Relations hits 25-year anniversary. So my subtitle then is referencing the, the need and the fact that I've got 25 years of success in Asia. Now the founder Jim James doesn't open offices in the UK because what I'm doing here is I'm trying to create a little bit of intrigue and I'm referencing the fact that I'm working with a new business model where everybody now is a freelance contractor and that I no longer have the fixed infrastructure. So the headline needs to be something that is attention-seeking for the readers and for the SEO bots, but also that's still relevant. And this is, of course, part of the art or the magic of the writing. The next part then is the writing of the press release itself, which isn't exactly as easy as it might seem. By and large, a press release shouldn't be more than about 700 words, so about one, one side, single-spaced. In the opening paragraph, as we learned at school, it should really explain the entire story so that whoever reads it in their email, on their phone, can understand the entirety of it. We put a date and a location. I'm putting The the 17th of June, I'm putting Singapore and Bath on the headline because I'm going to release it in two different locations. And because the 19th is the actual anniversary, I'm going to send it out just two days beforehand so that if anyone's interested in an interview or a story with me, then we've got enough time. The the second paragraph is often called the stand first. And the stand first, because that really is like the meat and potatoes of the story or the press release that you're sending. In that then is the reason why you're sending out your press release. So in my case, I have the opening paragraph, then the stand first, and then a third paragraph to get a little bit more detail. And then the fourth one, I have a quote from me which is then articulating why I've come back to the UK, what opportunities I see, and briefly why I think this is newsworthy. Often then the next paragraph will go on, if you have a partnership, to introduce more details. And the 5th paragraph would be a quote from your partner or a customer, for example. The 6th and the 7th would give some industry context. So what is the nature of this industry? What's the size? What's the growth? Some statistics that make the story, uh, resonate, but also give the journalist who may not understand your industry a sense of why this is important to people other than you. So then at the end of the final paragraph, which might tie up and give a conclusion to your press release. Then we put the media contacts. Normally you just have the agency, for example, or you put your own contact details, or you can put both contact details. But there's not much point in having an agency contact details and your own contact details because they might just go straight to you. And part of the operation that the agency will provide is to field those calls for you. Often worth using an alias for your email address. In other words, not putting your actual email address, but for example, pr@ and your company name. This will reduce the amount of spam that you're going to get, because once your press release goes online, if the, if the media channels do issue your press release in its entirety, your email address will be picked up by the spam bots. So that's the first part, is getting your press release written. Not always the easiest thing to do. It then needs to be accompanied by some graphics, and that could be, for example, a company logo, the photograph of the spokesperson, a product photograph, an infographic that you've developed. So when you're laying out your press release, think about the corporate identity. Do you put your logo on the top left or the top right, which are the standard places? With the words press release on the opposing side. And the attachments are not necessarily embedded because that can make the file size too high, but they are attached, not linked, because the journalists don't want to be opening— or may not open, in fact— the links for security reasons. So what we can do though is say that there are press attachments available And explain what those are and where they might be. So that can be the first part, is the press release. Now, the other thing I'm doing for my announcement is I am pitching the media to try and get some interviews. Now, to accompany the press release, we also develop a pitch. This is if you want to have interviews with your spokesperson or yourself. Now, the pitch is a different document. And would only be 150 to 200 words. In other words, just 1 to 2 paragraphs long. It's not too wordy, but it has to get to the point. It also has to have a catchy headline. My headline in this particular case is, How Jumping Out of an Aeroplane Led Me to Start a PR Firm in Asia, and 25 Years Later, What I've Learned About Public Relations. So the headline actually talks about The first time that I worked in sales and was raising money as a young man to go on Operation Rally, did a parachute jump to raise sponsorship money and realized how much more lucrative that was than earning pounds by the hour. And so I segue from a personal story, and I have the picture of me jumping out of the plane attached, into being a— once I'd realized that sponsorship was good, I then managed to get sponsorship and from a company that gave goods away and got them into the local media with me basically saying how this local camping store had given me a discount on its equipment. And that leads into my then going to Asia because I went to Asia on Operation Rally and then I went back after university to start the agency. And now I'm back. I'd like to talk about the journey of starting companies. In Singapore and China and India. So you can see there's a narrative. All of this is contained in that 150 words. And in there I say, and here are the three angles of the story: one is as an entrepreneur, the second is about public relations, and the third is about Asia. So I tie those together by saying entrepreneurs will be interested in this story, other agency owners will be interested in this story, and businesses in Britain. Will be interested in the story because Asia represents a great opportunity. And I'm available on Zoom, on Skype, by phone, or by email to talk with that media. So it's important then to have your 2 documents together. And again, with my pitch, I have the photographs ready to go. Then it's about distribution. Now, press releases, you can tee up and get ready. And on these different services, and I'm going to list some for you here, on these different services you can select the free version or the paid, and you can also choose to add in scheduling and so on. So there are a few. For example, I was just trying today, uh, issuewire.com will let you send out a press release for free, and then after that it's $21 per released. Now it seems mainly US outlets, so they say they've got 150+ media outlets. Another one is prowly.com, and they're giving a free trial. So I tried that, logged in, and they let you log in and find the media, but then in order to see the media contact details, you have to upgrade and pay, and that's $210 a month. So these are good if you've got, um, an agency. But if you're on your own and don't have that much volume, you have to start thinking about it. There's one called pressrush.com, and that's some $49 a month or $490 per year. Now, if you're in the UK, you can use some— for example, I've just put my press release out on prfire.co.uk, and they'll publish that for free but to a limited distribution after 48 hours. If you want to pay £60, they will give you a better distribution and more speedy. So, um, the other one is journalism.co.uk, and for £60 plus VAT, they'll deliver your press release to over 18,000 email recipients, and they'll tweet it to 15,000 followers and share it with 24,000 comms professionals on LinkedIn. Now, the issue is they may or may not be relevant for your business, but that's a scattergun approach. So what I'm outlining here for you is that you create 2 different documents. One is the press release, which goes to a general audience, and that may be what we call Tier 1 media and Tier 2 media. The Tier 1 media then deserve a pitch, and those are the media that actually you're hoping to get interviewed by. So those will be your top 3, 5, maybe 10 media where you'll take the effort to research what the journalists have written before. And each pitch then is uniquely written for that journalist because you need to angle your story according to their editorial emphasis. Now, on a phone call yesterday with this Chinese journalist from CGTN and CCTV who was interviewing a client of ours today, she said it's very good now. In the past She had a beat, and she was only allowed to cover stories where she could go and visit the the person she was interviewing or on the same time zone. But she said since COVID they now have a global remit. So the the impact of COVID has been that they've been liberated from their from their beats, and now journalists like Xia who lives in London can cover stories all over the world. So she was interested in my Singapore. Contacts, for example. So it's really important to spend some time if you're getting ready to send out press releases to work on the facts and the figures so that your press release has got some detail. Make sure that you've got good quality photographs, infographics, and diagrams because that is what the journalists will use to assemble the story. And as I've mentioned before in the reports, for example, by Cision on the state of the media, journalists have really almost no time at all, and they may be getting up to 100 pitches per week. And as the Cision report said, the majority of those journalists say that the majority of what they're sent is irrelevant. In other words, in order to move out of the 100 and be in the top 10 that they might write about in a week, we need our pitches to be accurate, and to be informative and to be well supported with other information so the journalists can take what they like, fashion that into the narrative that suits their readers, but they don't have to go online and do the searching and the formatting and making the color and the pictures look presentable. That's our job. And of course, this is why over half of the content on the internet and in media now is provided by agencies and by customers and clients, because actually we're all providing the, if you like, the labor and the raw materials for the media to come together and to publish the stories. There are a number of different outlets that you can use. Some are free and some are paid for, and some have freemium models. We need a blend, actually. There is no right or wrong. It's about the scale of your public relations and about the, the scale of your business. If you want to go to the next level up, there are companies like Cision that have phenomenal dashboards, media contacts, media histories, and they also do the reporting. You can purchase their services on a one-time basis or an ongoing basis. They've become very flexible at this time for their pricing. So this takes us on to the next part, which is the monitoring. It's one thing to send out a press release, but it's another one to know where it's all appeared. So this is where tools like Cision actually have integrated into the suite the media monitoring. Otherwise, you're going to need to go to some monitoring services, and I'll cover those in a— in tomorrow's podcast and probably over the next few days as I start to see the coverage from my own releases. I'll be able to share with you what's been effective and what has not been effective. But media monitoring from companies like Meltwater, for example, will enable you to see the reach of your, of your press release. And of course, your own individual pitches will need to be monitored and followed up. The media are extremely busy, of course. They've got better things to do than to wait for interesting articles to come as a result of interviewing us. So Ideally, if we can, we've got the email, but we've also got the phone number so we can follow up with them to see what they like, if there's anything else we can offer them, and also to schedule a time that maybe will not be now, but maybe at some time in the future when our story is of interest to them. As we've written and shared on this podcast and on our newsletter, press releases form the bread and butter of the public relations work. They are the preferred medium of choice for journalists because easy for them to file, easy for them to read. It's essential therefore to learn how to write press releases or to outsource that using one of the journalists or freelance writers that there are on, on sites like Upwork, so that the central tenet of your public relations activities is to issue out cogent and well-researched press releases accompanied by compelling pitches. Thank you very much for listening to today's episode of Speak PR. I hope that I've shared some information that you find of use. Do check out our newsletter at eastwestpr.com, subscribe to this podcast, and if you can, I ask you just to give us some ratings on the podcast player that you're using. It really does help to let other people know that you like this, and then it'll be shared by by other platforms even more so. In the meantime, I wish you good health, profitable business, and that you keep on communicating.