Do It Yourself Publicity: How to Get Journalists on Your Side

Be honest now, when you’re reading through a magazine or newspaper, how much attention do you really pay to the advertisements?

Not much, right?

Sure, you might give a quick once-over to the odd one or two that really catch your eye but, if you’re like most people, you probably bypass the bulk of a publication’s advertising and get straight to the articles.

This is hardly a secret, and at a time when financial resources are becoming all the more scarce, it’s the reason why everyone from independent musicians to big businesses are seeking other ways to get their name out to the public via the medium of print.

To be more precise, they’re investing a little time, effort and perhaps some funds in generating exposure through what is commonly known as Public Relations (or PR as you’ll probably hear it referred to).

What this essentially means is that they’re convincing writers, journalists and editors to run articles about them; they’re products, services and events. Thus, they’ve still got their name in print in a much more credible and effective fashion than they would had they simply paid for an ad.

What’s more, PR costs far less and produces far more results than paid advertising, which is why those with big enough budgets often invest in dedicated PR professionals to run successful PR campaigns for them. Though if you can’t afford to do so, there’s nothing to stop you doing your own PR.

You could put together a press release, call up a journalist and tell them you’re news over the phone, or even go all out and pull off some elaborate publicity stunt.

Search the Internet and you’ll probably find a whole host of articles on how to do such things, though the one thing these articles often overlook is how to endear yourself to journalists.

Believe it or not, journalists and editors are busy people with tight deadlines, mountains of work to get through and a need to constantly deliver great stories. Simply sending off your press release won’t necessarily mean they’ll run a story about you, even less so if you manage to find a way to irritate them.

Here then, are a few quick tips on how to help get journalists on your side when running a Do-it-Yourself Publicity Campaign.

1. Make it newsworthy

When you start putting your publicity campaign together think about what makes you stand out from everybody else. Why should readers of a publication care about what you’re doing? More importantly perhaps, why should journalists want to tell their readers about it?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but just because you exist doesn’t mean anyone should care.

Read the papers and magazines you’re planning to target and see what kind of stories they go for. Think about what makes them newsworthy and use those ideas to formulate your own publicity game plan.

2. Don’t make contact until you have something to say

This is especially pertinent if you’ve been asked with handling PR for a specific project, group or company.

Many journalists will tell you that few things are as annoying as a plucky press officer calling up to say something along the lines of:

“Hi, my name’s Peter Press Officer. I’m handling PR for Firm X and I’m just ringing up to introduce myself and make contact. I’ll hopefully have some press releases for you soon.”

Really? How nice for you. There isn’t much a journalist can do with that piece of information other than allow it distract them from finishing their copy before that all important deadline.

It’s a mistake a number of PR folk make, believing that by making prior contact with a journalist, they’ll somehow be in a better position to get their first press release into print.

Instead of doing that, why not try this:

“Hi, my name’s Peter Press Officer. I’m handling PR for Firm X and I’ve got a press release on this really great thing I think you’ll be interested in. Is it OK for me to send it across?”

That way, you’re less of annoying PR person and more a useful contact with something interesting a journalist can use.

3. Don’t take it personally

A story on your competition or a similar project or group is not a slight against you, so please do not go calling up a journalist and getting all angry at them.

“Hey, you ran a story on those guys last week. That’s not fair, why didn’t you think to include us?”

Well, because you didn’t get in touch and tell us you were doing something newsworthy, those guys did.

Getting cross at a journalist for not including you, especially when they had no idea you existed or were up to anything interesting, is hardly likely to endear you to them.

You may feel a bit miffed that the competition were featured and you weren’t, but instead of shouting at them and demanding they give you some coverage too, try this approach:

“Hi there, I noticed you ran a story on Group Y last week. I represent Group X and we do a similar sort of thing. At the minute, we’re doing something really interesting and I thought you might be interested in covering it.”

4. Cooperate

So, you’ve convinced a journalist to run a story on you. Well done, that’s half the job complete.

The second half is to cooperate and help the journalist pull the story together. Be available in case they need to contact you for further information. Have additional quotes at the ready if they want to use them and be as helpful as you can.

If you’re impossible to get hold of or can’t deliver what they need, journalists are unlikely to be as keen to work with you in the future.

5. Send Photographs

If you’re sending out a press release, or even a basic e-mail, send out photographs where possible.

A story with a great photograph stands a much better chance of being printed than one without.

If you don’t send photographs right off the bat, be prepared to do should a journalist ask for them. Please don’t go down the route of responding to a request for images by telling a journalist to go find them on your website.

In truth, they probably will do but there are a number of reasons why this isn’t a good idea.

The first is simply that images on a website, unless they’ve been placed there specifically for PR purposes, are likely to be compressed and won’t transfer all that well to print.

The second is that a journalist might not pick the images you feel best represent the story. If you send them yourself, you can be certain that a journalist will be running the best possible image.

The third simply comes down to time. Remember we said that journalists are busy people constantly racing towards deadlines?

Sending your images in an e-mail rather than making a journalist go off and hunt them down on the web will save them precious time, and more than likely they’ll be grateful for that.

You can have the best press release and the most amazing news story in the world but if you’re a pain in the proverbial to work with, a journalist is likely to go with the guy who is always helpful and cooperative when faced with a story just as great as yours.