Ep 65 Are News Releases Dead Media Training March 5 16

Are press releases dead?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life Speaking with TJ Walker.

This question comes from Gerald Breaux and his brocast. I'll link to that in the show description. He's one of my friendly competitors and colleagues in the media training space, does a fantastic job. I would urge you to subscribe to his YouTube channel and watch and listen to his insights on a regular basis. He poses questions to his followers from time to time and they grab my attention. I like to address them as well. The question of the day on the broadcast and here at Speaking with TJ Walker is Are press releases dead? Now you hear a lot of talk about this in public relations circles, corporate communications, government affairs departments. Press releases are dead. Reporters don't like them. It's not a great way of spending your time. I have a dissenting view and I shouldn't suggest that every PR person thinks the press releases are dead, although some do. I think there's always going to be a starting place for initiating ideas for a company, an organization, a non profit, a government entity, a startup. If you want media attention, you have to have ideas. You have to be putting out ideas on a regular basis. If you're going to have ideas, you might as well write them down. If you're going to write them down, you might as well disseminate that information in as many ways possible. A press release is one way. It used to be, frankly the only way a lot of corporations, especially big corporations and publicly traded corporations, would put out information. And certainly if you are a publicly traded corporation, you trade on the New York Stock Exchange or the nasdaq, you're going to have a lot of regulatory oversight on how you communicate to investors in the public. And that's why there's always going to be a role for some official press release going out through an official service of business wire, PR newswire, with the date, exact date, and statements saying exactly what you want the world to know. With the notice that you're putting it out, you're widely disseminating it all at once. I do think there's always role for that. Now corporations these days for the most part aren't using the press releases as their primary tool for generating media coverage. I do agree that with that sentiment that you can no longer rely on a press release as your primary means of communicating with the media. It is simply one of many tools you can follow a journalist and retweet them. It may be a much better way of getting a journalist attention than sending a press release. I certainly wouldn't mail press releases through traditional mail with paper unless you have a specific hard object, something that isn't paper and text to give to a journal. If you want them to review a new cell phone, certainly letting them actually see the cell phone might be more effective than just sending them text. The number one thing I think people need to realize when it comes to press releases is is say something interesting. If you say something interesting in your press release, there is a chance you can still get attention from the reporter. I'm going to go into that in more detail in a moment.

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The days indeed are over of putting out a boring press release just because someone in the corporate communications department says, well, we haven't put out a release in a while, let's put out our monthly release and there's nothing really new or interesting there. CEO Jim Smithers announces that he is pleased to announce that we have opened a new building and blah blah blah. Boring, not interesting. If you're going to put out a press release, you need to have something interesting in it and to use it is a part of your overall communication efforts. Now, of course, I would say, and I'm in a minority on this, anytime you put out a press release, you should put out a video press release as well, meaning corporate spokesperson, a CEO should do what I'm doing right now, which is speaking to people on a video camera. Those of you listening to the audio podcast, this is also a daily TV show seen on YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Facebook video and a few other places. So I'm a big believer that you should use every single format. So the starting point is have an idea, have something important you want the market to know, your customers, your community to know about your business or organization, and then by all means come up with a press release. Repurpose it as a blog post, shorten it to a tweet, and then link to the release. Do a video version of it for YouTube, Vimeo, however you distribute Vimeo and also do an audio version of it if you have a podcast. And the press release can be a starting point or it can be just a supplemental aspect to it. Part of the beauty of press releases now that we didn't used to have is in many cases it doesn't matter if the press, the traditional news media, picks it up and does a story, because you can post your own press releases on Your own website so the people you care about, your customers, your prospects can find it if they're doing their due diligence about you. Sometimes I know I do this with companies I'm looking at. You go into their press room, you click on their press releases. You want to see what have they done that they think is interesting enough to tell the whole world what information is in, how often are they communicating? And this is different from a blog. A blog post is often more personal. Many corporations have a blog post from subject matter experts or from their CEO. The press release is more of the area for this is the official happenings of the company. And here are all the official facts we want people to know. There are still reasons to do that. There is still a purpose. Also, from the standpoint of search engine optimization, it is nice to have that press release talking about exactly what you do, what your products are, and as it relates to the words people need to find you. So if I had a choice between putting out a press release and having the local newspaper call me, none of my readers ever, or none of my customers or prospects read that paper. But the reporter calls me and talks to me for an hour and it's a big, long interview and it's a great story versus a press release that I put on my website. And no reporter ever covers it or picks up or calls me. But this press release page gets a couple hundred views every month by my prospects because they found it through a Google search. Well, you tell me which press release was more effective. It's probably the one that didn't actually reach the press, didn't reach the news media, but bypassed the press and went directly to customers and prospects, directly to web surfers. And that's the thing that those who want to dismiss press releases often forget is these days, everybody is the press. All of your customers, all of your prospects are the press, because they have a Facebook page, they have a Twitter account, they may have a YouTube channel they have the ability to link to from their LinkedIn. So it's not just about getting the major trade association reporters in your industry or the Washington Times or the Washington Post or the New York Times covering your story. It's often about getting your own customers to see a story and tell their friends. These days, they are the press as well. Now, we'll talk about things to avoid in your press releases in just a moment because there are a bunch of things, frankly, that are kind of a waste of time. And I want to save you some of that time.

Your questions.

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Anywhere you see this program or hear this program, you can post your questions and we'll get to it. Now let's talk about specifics of what not to do in a press release. What you don't want to do is put long, boring quotes in it. People always say, well, it doesn't matter what quote you put in the press release, it's not going to be picked up anyway. Not true. I've had tremendous success in my career of getting the actual quotes that I put in a press release picked up by news outlets. And it's because I actually make them interesting quotes. And those of you who are regular listeners and viewers of this show know that I believe all sound bites, all quotes, come from 10 speech patterns. The analogies. They're bold action words. They're cliches, they're humor, they're pop culture references. They are very specific elements, speech patterns. Once you know that, you can package it. And whether you're preparing for an interview or just preparing the quotes for your press release, you will be in much better shape. By the way, if you want to know all those sound bite elements, I'll give those away to you free. All you have to do is go to the website, sign up for the free online media training course@mediatrainingworldwide.com and I'm giving it away to you for free. So you might as well sign up for that. The other things to avoid with press releases is badgering reporters, calling them. Did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it? Well, they hate that. If you truly think that a particular reporter will be in trouble with his or her editor or his or her readers because your story is so important to them, I don't have a problem with someone calling me once, or you calling somebody once and leave a voicemail. But don't call repeatedly. If it's interesting enough, this person will most likely use it. They may run the whole release and they may want to call you. Here's the thing about length. People always talk about be short, be short, be short. You want to use the exact number of words you need to communicate the ideas that are the most important and answer the basic questions a reporter would ask if they were talking to you. That might be as short as three or four sentences. It might be three pages. Now, in general, I wouldn't recommend you put out three page press releases, but you certainly could decide that your audience is really your own customers and people who come to your website. You're not worried about simplifying it just to capture the attention of a busy editor, and you want someone to really go in depth. And in that case, there's nothing wrong with a three page press release as long as you're not expecting other people to print the whole thing verbatim. So keep that in mind. The length should be a function of what is it you're really trying to communicate. Don't use a single word beyond that, but don't artificially shorten it just because you think it has to fit on a single sheet of paper. Things don't have to fit on a single sheet of paper anymore. The other big thing that I want to stress is with press releases, make it easy for your audience. Have a title that sums up what it's really all about, why they should be interested in it, and ideally, what's the benefit to the readers, viewers, listeners of a media outlet if they dive into this story. Don't have something generic like Media Training Worldwide Announces Major Acquisition. Well, that's boring. That's not particularly interesting. So have an interesting title. Have one sentence that really sums up the whole gist of the story. Have a great sound bite, a great quote from you or a spokesperson in your company that really sums up why people should care about this. And if you're genuinely trying to get media coverage, let people know exactly who the spokesperson is. Is it going to be the CEO? Is it a junior level account executive is in a different city who's just putting their name on the release? Make it abundantly obvious to the reporter that if they want to talk to someone, who is it? What's their phone number? What's their cell phone number? What are their credentials? If you're sending a press release to a TV network or radio network, let people know exactly what the experience is of that person so they know they're not getting someone who's afraid to do interviews. Put more information about the person who is available for interviews if you're genuinely trying to get more interviews. So the press release I'm not ready to say rest in peace. It's no longer the primary means generating coverage, but it is certainly a tool. And good PR practitioners don't throw away tools that work. They add tools to their toolbox, but they don't throw away tools that work just because something newer and shinier comes along. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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