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PR Tips

PR Tips | Benefits of WordPress

August 29, 2013
If you've had a conversation in the past 2 years about developing websites, you've probably heard "WordPress" mentioned -- and with good reason. WordPress now powers more than 60 million sites, making it the most popular CMS (Content Management System) platform in the world . . . by a long shot. Currently over 25% of all English-speaking websites use WordPress, and it's not just for bloggers and small businesses anymore. There are several Fortune 500 companies that utilize WordPress on their websites, including: -The Wall Street Journal -Pepsi -Ford -CNN -Samsung -Intel . . . and many more So, why is WordPress so popular? WordPress takes care of the heavy lifting of web programming and lets the you focus on the fun stuff. Imagine you were tasked to create a spreadsheet to analyze your company's widget sales. You wouldn't start this exercise by hiring someone to write a spreadsheet program from scratch; you'd probably just open Microsoft Excel, then enter the data in the spreadsheet. Now imagine that you were tasked with revamping your company's website. You could start by hiring a web coder to write a lot of HTML and CSS code from scratch, or you could simply start with WordPress. Just as Excel is a tool for creating spreadsheets, WordPress is the #1 tool to create websites.

PR Tips | Nailing Your Interview on Talk Radio

July 19, 2013
Speaking on a news or talk radio program can be a great way to spread your message to a large, reasonably captive audience. Your quote for a newspaper article may run only a sentence or two. Television can require travel -- not to mention hours in the make-up chair -- just for a 10-second segment that may end up on the cutting-room floor. A radio interview, on the other hand, can run anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more. You can fit a whole lot more than 800 words in that chunk of time. And there's no risk of your segment being edited out. But contrary to popular belief, long-winded bloviators are not welcome on the air. It's important to be short, clear, and to the point. Talking points are an interviewee's friend. It can be tough to think on your feet during a live interview, so having prepared material at the ready can save you from an awkward pause -- or "umm"-ing, "ahh"-ing, and "like"-ing your way through your spot. Here are some other tips for shining on the radio. - Approach the interview as if it's a friendly conversation. Address the host by name, and thank him or her for having you on. Know the market for the show, and make reference to it. "It's great to be with you, Sean, and with all WXYZ's listeners in Detroit." Those little touches can go a long way to ingratiating yourself with the host -- and may lead to an invite back. - Make your talking points snappy. Sure, it's true that there are 522,144 postal workers in the United States. But it's more fun to say that you could line them all up end to end and they'd stretch from DC to Akron and back.

PR Tips | What Do the Colors Mean?

June 25, 2013

Starting a new campaign? Revising your current branding? Color is key. But how do you choose your colors? Here are some thoughts to get you started. RED: Emotionally powerful and associated with energy. Red is often used for sports, signs and lights, and can trigger people...

June 4, 2013

I recently saw this fascinating "apology ad" from JC Penney. In the ad, JC Penney declares to consumers that the company has changed, perhaps for the worse, and that it has resolved to do a better job of listening to its customers. The advertisement is completely...

PR Tips | Want Quick, Quality Hits? Go Local

April 18, 2013
Pitching a story or oped successfully takes a lot of hard work. In fact, it can be so difficult that many people – and even PR practitioners – simply give up. But if you pitch locally, your job suddenly becomes easier. For example, let’s say you wanted to pitch a story about the mayor of a suburban town outside Philadelphia. If you tried pitching the Miami Herald, you’d probably strike out. You’d have a much better success rate if you targeted the Philadelphia Inquirer or a local paper because of the geographic connection. So going local makes it easy to get fast hits. But what if you want to make a bigger splash? You can also apply this technique in reverse. There’s often a way to broaden the appeal of even the most local stories. For example, let’s say the suburban mayor’s solution to his town’s unemployment crisis contains lessons for how other towns could solve their unemployment problems, as well. Voila. With a few small tweaks, we have national appeal. To make our pitch even more attention-grabbing, we could plug in unemployment data for whatever state we’re pitching. If we pitch the Detroit Free Press, for example, we could call attention to Michigan statistics showing Detroit has a major unemployment problem – and our small-town mayor is offering a solution.

PR Tips | Getting Started on a New Website

April 2, 2013

So, you need a website. We all do. But where do you start? What in the world is MySQL? For that matter, what are Name Servers, A Records, Flash, HTML, PHP, SEO, IPS, WordPress, and FTP? There is a difference between hosting and domain registration?!?! And,...

PR Tips | Queries and the Art of Pitching

March 20, 2013
Just about everyone is familiar with the advice, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It's true: A product’s packaging isn’t always a fair representation of what’s actually inside. In general, making an informed decision requires more than a cursory review of the options. In the media world, however, that quick blurb – “the cover” – might be the only thing an editor looks at when deciding what to publish. Editors at the major daily newspapers – and large online publications – receive thousands of pitches every week. Somehow they must choose a few each day. When pitching an editor, it’s best to start with a query – an enticing synopsis of your event, argument or story. A query is essentially your sales pitch, whether you’re promoting an oped, article idea, or media event. The query lays our why an editor (or reporter) should accept your submission for publication, cover your event, or write on your issue. It's therefore critically important for the query to be polished and engaging. Here are a couple of tips to make sure your query stands out: 1. Keep it quick. Your query shouldn't be more than a couple hundred words. Remember, you only need to convey the main point of the piece. 2. Make every word count. With so few words to work with, each one should pack a punch. Leave out unnecessary clauses or explanations and stick to the bold or controversial points that will grab an editor's attention.

PR Tips | The Supreme Importance of Crafting a Good Intro

March 12, 2013
The competition to place an op-ed at a top newspaper is brutal. Major papers like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal receive thousands of opinion submissions every week. But they run only one or two outside submissions per day. Some days, their regular columnists fill the entire page. When sifting through that torrent of op-eds, editors tend to deploy a couple handy, commonsense heuristics. One of them is the obvious but important question: "Is this piece tied to something newsworthy?" You might have composed an op-ed of astonishing eloquence and insight. But if your piece is about a story that transpired a year -- or even a month -- ago, it probably isn't placing. That means your op-ed needs to establish a news hook within the first couple sentences. The best way to give yourself a bona fide chance of getting serious consideration is to craft a timely opening paragraph. Here are four rules to follow: 1) The news hook should be an event from the past few days. Your hook should be of sufficient relevance that it could be covered on the front page of whatever paper you're pitching. Last week, hooks of national relevance would include the sequestration and new gun control legislation. 2) Stay descriptive. Remember, at this point in the piece the editor's chief concern isn't its angle -- it's its relevance. You can save the explicit opinion for later on. In your introductory paragraph you want to provide the basic facts and create some context before laying out your thesis. 3) Keep it short and punchy. The first paragraph should be no longer than three sentences. Don't weigh it down with excess information. You should aim to include only the details that matter.

PR Tips | Building Your Media Footprint

February 12, 2013
Everyone likes to see his name in the paper. At Keybridge, we specialize in just that -- finding ways to get our clients and their messages into the media. But there's a lot that folks can do on their own to increase their media footprint. The key is to proactively present yourself as an expert in your chosen field. You have important things to say! But reporters won't know that unless you tell them. Here are two things you can do. First, sign up for the free HARO (Help A Reporter Out) service. Reporters submit queries to HARO seeking sources for the stories they're writing. Then, three times a day, HARO sends its subscribers an email with all those queries. Perhaps a reporter working on a story on home prices in Chicago would like to include some examples of recent sales. If you happen to be a real-estate agent in the Windy City, you might be able to provide the anecdotes she's looking for. Send a quick email to the reporter with your bona fides and a description of the information you can provide, and you just might land an interview. Second, set up a few Google Alerts on issues, topics, and keywords important to you. Google Alerts put the search engine to work for you by automatically delivering search results to your inbox. You can even filter those results so that you only receive news stories, blog posts, or videos with your keywords in them.