8 Approved Tips for DIY Public Relations
When you’re ready to promote a church event or a new program in your organization, it’s important to share your unique piece of news with the masses. You want to target your contacts and followers, but also to the community at large. And since most of us aren’t in the celebrity gossip business, gaining attention can be a challenge.
Read ahead and find 8 approved tips for outstanding do-it-yourself public relations.
1. Think Locally
Earned media is difficult to achieve. During election years when the media is focused on politics, you might find it especially difficult to attract coverage for your organization’s new leadership training or your church’s back-t0-school event. This is why it’s wise to think locally.
As stated by Melanie Downey on the Fit Small Business blog, your local media outlet is looking for a great story with a local angle, so the likelihood of being published is greater. She also states:
“You also have a greater chance of the journalist including a photo, which makes it easier to catch.”
Try the local angle and start developing a relationship with the reporters in your area (more on that below!).
2. Build Relationships with Local Reporters
When you focus your coverage efforts locally, it’s critical to develop a relationship with the reporters whose genre and interests might include your cause.
The folks at Pinkston suggest spending time with them and genuinely finding common interests. Once they see you as a trusted source in your industry, your relationship can become mutually beneficial.
For example, if you contact a reporter whose children play in your kids’ soccer league, it would be a natural opener to invite the entire family to your church-wide Easter egg hunt, asking them to attend as your special guests. It’s a genuine and positive experience, and has the potential to begin a relationship where you can call on that journalist for other coverage, and she can call on you as a source for local church- or kid-related activities. It’s a win-win.
3. Pay for Media
Depending on the subject, sometimes it’s worth the investment to focus on paid and owned media efforts. As described in Martech Advisor, paid media is the “purchase of ad inventory on a media channel or publisher site to broadcast your brand message and reach your target audiences.”
This can include things like paid sponsorships, digital advertisements or paid search results. We’ve all seen the “Ad” tag on the first couple search engine results, or the “Sponsored Items Related To This Product” section on Amazon. These are all examples of paid media.
Learn about social media advertising: 3 Things to Know About Creating Successful Facebook Ads.
4. Use a distribution service
Whether you are pitching your story locally or you are committed to a wide range of outlets, news services will help you create your press release and give you options for picking the best distribution package for your story. There are many choices, but here are some of the most-used and raved about:
When you utilize a service, you have the potential to connect with exponentially more journalists and media outlets. Think of it like an Amazon for journalists: when the writers are ready to research subjects or find stories to publish, they “shop” the distribution service.
5. Write a strong headline
Sam Allcock for Hubspot reports:
“According to research by Fractl, 85% of publishers decide whether to open a pitch email based on the subject line alone.”
Here are Allcock’s tips for writing a strong headline:
- Keep it short and sweet (The Hubspot article reports that 75% of publishers prefer subject lines with 10 or fewer words.)
- Ensure it's unique
- Make it super-specific
- Provide exclusivity
Pro Tip: Learn more about writing traffic-increasing headlines at CoShedule. Be sure to check out their free Headline Analyzer.
6. Send emails, not blasts.
We all want to be treated like we’re the only customer, and journalists are no different. A personal email with a pitch sent to a journalist’s inbox will stand out above the more than 200 blasts they receive a day.
In fact, Cision's reported in their 2017 State of the Media that an overwhelming majority of journalists prefer to receive press releases via email. For this personal approach, find your target journalist’s email address and start there.
Read more about email marketing at 5 Insider Tips To Boost Your Email Marketing.
7. Engage With Journalists on Twitter
Aaron Agius for Social Media Today shares some great tips for engaging with journalists in real-time via Twitter.
- Know your target journalists: Check the hashtag #Journorequest or use relevant keywords to determine their interest areas.
- Get your house in order: Is your Twitter bio impeccable?
- Read, like and share content: Read a journalist’s content and wait for the right time to like and retweet. Don’t stalk.
- Pitch with care: Personalize and stand out.
- Follow up…. Once only
8. Diversify
Instead of approaching your communication the same way every time, try sending your message through a different medium. We like the suggestion of Peter Panepento at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, who says:
“...I encourage every nonprofit I work with to consider doubling down on op-eds… With reporting staffs only growing smaller, many outlets are hungry for well-written, timely work. If your organization has something important to say, this offers you some great opportunities. Consider allotting some of your media efforts around creating opinion pieces for news outlets.”
Find a copywriter in-house to start this piece on behalf of your organization, and be sure to send it around the real or virtual “office” for sign-off, since an op-ed is an opinion-based article that reflects strongly on your organization and its mission.
With the wealth of information available online, organizations and churches like yours have ample opportunity to handle an amount of public relations and gain your own media attention.
Tell us how you’ve handled PR in-house. Leave us a comment and share your best practices.