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Getting_PR_in_your_town_Realities_to_remember
| Getting PR in your town: Realities to remember
In business, getting effective media coverage is often crucial
to success. Doesn’t matter how good you are if they don’t know
you’re out there. But, there are realities to remember about the
media, wherever you do business. Some of them are: • There is a
risk to all PR. Getting media coverage is a gamble. Unlike
advertising, you don’t pay for public relations. Of course,
that’s what makes great media coverage so sweet. It amounts to a
positive third-party endorsement of you with the credibility
that paid advertising can never have. When a business owner
works hard to get a reporter’s attention and that effort
translates into a positive, enthusiastic story – almost nothing
feels better. But the reality is: Just as much effort can be put
into securing media coverage for a story that, unfortunately,
may never materialize. There are a thousand reasons why the
media doesn’t pick up on a perfectly good story, but timing and
luck is a factor, even when all the best efforts are made.
• The media market you live in can determine how much and what
kind of media coverage you can get. For example, I live and work
in Houston – the fourth largest city in the United States. This
can be fortunate or unfortunate. What makes Houston the
energetic, vibrant place it is, is also the reason there is
fierce competition for media coverage here. Business people who
live in small to mid-sized markets like Baton Rouge, Syracuse,
Santa Fe, and Mobile, can enjoy a whole different kind of
relationship with the local media. Here, reporters and writers
are likely to have children in the same schools as your kids.
Their wives and husbands may work in the same place where you or
your spouse works. Smaller market media-types are likely to live
in your neighborhood or go to your church. Lots of good stories
develop out of personal relationships that just are not possible
to develop in a huge city like Houston or Boston or
Philadelphia. Of course, it works both ways. Business owners who
live in small markets are also limited to a fraction of the
potential customers available to you in a big city. What can you
do about these public relations/media truths? • Work smarter to
get media coverage. Look at your business objectively through
the eyes of a reporter and decide what could be the most
newsworthy story about your company. This takes practice and you
can hone this skill by reading some of the hundreds of books
available on the media. Just go to Amazon.com or
Barnesandnoble.com and key in the words “public relations.”
You’ll be amazed at what comes up.
• Learn to read your newspaper with the eyes of a media pro.
Familiarize yourself with the names and styles of reporters who
regularly write about topics where news about your business
might fit in. Remember, most reporters have “beats,” which means
they are basically writing about the same topics over and over.
You won’t see many automotive columnists writing pharmaceutical
stories.
• Adjust any negative, self-defeating attitudes you might be
harboring about coverage in small community newspapers. All the
time, I hear people say they don’t want to waste their time
pursuing media coverage in small newspapers. “Nobody reads
them,” they say. But, this is wrong! As Richard Laermer, the
powerhouse PR exec says in his book, Full Frontal PR: “The big
secret is that most journalists read the small news outlets to
find great stories before they hit the mainsteam. Do you think,”
asks Laermer, “that these reporters dream up all those stories
on their own?” In fact, community journalism is big business in
cities and towns all over the country. The best evidence is the
sky-high cost of advertising in these newspapers. It isn’t cheap
– which is a sure sign that people are reading these newspapers.
Getting media coverage is not a snap, but it is far from
impossible, if you deal with the realities and go from there.
About the author:
Sharon Dotson owns Houston's Bayou City Public Relations
(www.bayoucitypr.com), a firm that specializes in getting
positive news coverage for successful small companies. The
firm's clients have seen coverage in USA Today,
Inc.,Entrepreneur,Seventeen and Boys' Life.In 2003 and 2004,
Bayou City PR won first place awards in media placement from the
Public Relations Society of America and the International Assoc.
of Business Communicators.
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