The best PR tips for 2020

A good strategy is essential for being able to achieve different goals for your organisation, without incurring too many costs. The lack of any costs is perhaps one of the biggest advantages of PR over other forms of marketing. With PR, it’s all about, among other things, increasing visibility and improving the reputation of the organisation. Mark explains:

“If you advertise your own services or products with an advertisement, you‘ll most likely quickly be seen as being intrusive or unbelievable. By using PR, you ensure that people assume that you are offering a product or service that really benefits them.”

In addition, person-to-person communication can be really effective for your organisation if you take a good approach to it. A telephone conversation, interview or email to journalists and influencers is already a good first step.

Writing a press release is not only important for reaching your final goals, it also brings with it benefits that you can’t get from other forms of marketing. And because of this, you’ll benefit for a long time to come if you’ve prepared a good press release. It only takes just a little bit of preparation, time and knowledge to put together a catchy piece of text. And this text (as long as nothing has been done with it) can be used again and again to generate an infinite amount of traffic for your website. Especially if you, as an organisation, have to act quickly to clarify a position on something, you’ll need a published press release. Mark says:

“Reputation management is therefore one of the most-used reasons for using PR. In uncomfortable situations, it’s nice to know there are journalists who are willing to publish your point of view. You also don’t need to spend hours on collecting email addresses and journalists’ names. A mailing list can be created in no time with the help of a tool.”

The preparation of a press release is not complicated. If you know what the subject of your message should be, you can already start. By sticking with the following points, you’ll soon have an effective press release right at your fingertips:

• Find a template and adjust it to the corporate identity.
• Check the latest news about the theme on Google News.
• Note the medium, the journalists and the exact topics.
• Google the editorial addresses and put them in bcc or use a tool for this.
• Add text and image.
• Make your point clear in the introductory paragraph.
• Avoid the use of superlatives. Keep your message neutral.
• Always leave contact details.

A well-written message will be selected and published by the journalist. Once published, you’ll obviously gain media attention as a result of the press release. Press releases and other forms of PR can also be used for purposes other than general media attention. If you use PR more often, doors will open for your organisation; for example, to be present at events or to have a product reviewed.

A lot of companies (including the larger ones) forget to carry out other important, additional tasks with regard to a successful free publicity plan. With PR, there are so many opportunities for generating leads and it would be a waste to ignore those opportunities. You can also, for example, make the traffic to your website measurable by creating landing pages that are accessed via PR campaigns.

In addition, it’s also important to consider maintaining good contact with the journalist you’ve worked with, so you can always contact him or her again when you’ve come up with your next PR plan. Also keep in mind that personal contact is always more appreciated.