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November 13, 2009
Forgotten Tools of PR Trade
In an era of shrinking newsrooms and disappearing travel budgets, PR pros are increasingly having a hard time finding editors and reporters who have the time and resources to attend a tradeshow or visit a company’s headquarters.
What many PR Pros forget to remember is you have the ability to take your clients to the newsroom!
Once forgotten with the advent of ‘new media’ desk side visits are an opportunity to PR professionals and their clients to visit writers and reporters in the newsroom or magazine headquarters.
While these meetings don’t guarantee stories on clients, my experience has found them to be valuable and cost-effective relationship-building sessions that have generated increased media requests for interviews with clients who previously flew under the radar of most reporters.
Desk-side briefings are relatively easy to arrange, however included below are a few do’s and don’ts:
- DO time them when your client has news to break or opinions on timely topics.
- DO provide media training to your key spokespeople before the trip to hone your key messages. Even executives accustomed to talking to reporters have found the training crucial. It’s especially important when two executives are making the visits together to avoid embarrassing contradictions.
- DO provide background information on all reporters on the itinerary, including recent articles they’ve written. Reporters inevitably perk up when their work is cited.
- DO leave behind easy-to-access contact information and succinct background data, and follow up just as aggressively as you arranged the desk-sides. Otherwise, reporters are likely to quickly forget about your client when they turn to the next story.
- DON’T overlook the key trade media covering your client’s industry. Often several outlets from a common publisher work in the same building, multiplying the number of placements that result from the visit.
- DON’T fret if breaking news causes a reporter to cancel at the last moment. That doesn’t faze the client if you have a busy schedule of visits, and the reporter may be more receptive to your next call because they remember – or you remind them of – the last-minute cancellation.
- DON’T pack the schedule so tightly that travel delays, interruptions or longer-than-expected interviews put you behind schedule, jeopardizing key interviews.
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