Grab some media attention

With all the fretting I hear from garden centers about which form of advertising is best -- “Should I split it among radio, newspaper and direct mail, or pour it all into direct mail?” -- I don’t hear those same retailers figuring out how to get free advertising all that often.

When I do hear from retailers giving free publicity a shot, I’m asked rather telling questions. They want to know what font they should use. And if the headline should be centered or left justified. They’re more focused on the mechanics of how to write a PR piece than in the content of it. Believe me, it’s not how the press release is formatted that will get it thrown out -- it’s what it says.

There are only a few must-haves on a PR piece: contact person, contact phone/e-mail, and if it’s time sensitive, a date. After that, it’s all about what the title and copy has to say.

Before I give you a list of links on how to write decent press releases, let me offer three quick ideas that you should be using.

• Tips. You are a garden expert, so act like one. What are the big issues for your area? Too wet, too dry? Clay soil, or water restrictions? Invasive plants? Then you should be sending editors a tips page on how their readers can handle these issues.
• Lists. Provide a list of tested plants for your area. Gardening can be scary. If you screw up, you kill something. As a local expert on plants, give the public a cheat sheet of fun plants that will live. You can get more specific and offer plants for certain situations: Plants that survive the death ray sun; vines that won’t swallow your garage; tastiest tomatoes that perform in our town.
• Visuals. Editors are trying to convey as much useful information they can as concisely as they can. Images, graphs and charts, if they have decent information attached, are a perfect fit.

O.K., here are the sites I promised:

This page is a good one to start with. It’s written by a journalist about how to approach journalists. It’s a good place to start for strategy. Community Media Workshop

Here’s an editorial I wrote on this topic a couple years ago. GreenBeam.com

This site gives a brief overview of how to approach press releases. And I like the stat it starts off with -- that 90% of news stories stem from press releases. The Write Market

This site has a lot of basics crammed into easy-to-access lists. Colorado State University

Thinking about the national market? Here’s a link about posting to Yahoo and Google news. sites.

If you’re still wigging out about the mechanics of a press release, then this site is a good guide. Just ignore the ridiculous claim that press releases are cookie-cutter pieces. Cookie-cutter press releases are the ones I tend to throw away.

--Carol

Comments

[Kevin]

Carol,

After 20-something years of wielding the editor’s pencil, I have a short list of do’s and don’ts – call them gripes if you want – about press releases and the folks who generate them:

Make sure you list your full address and multiple contact methods – desk phone, cell phone, fax, whatever. Nothing’s more frustrating than having a question about the release and not knowing whom to contact.

If you’re sending a photo with the release, please don’t staple it to the release. Invariably, the staple lands on the subject’s forehead and mars the pic.

Feel free to call me once to make sure I’ve received the release. (Hey, things do get lost in the mail and in the Net.) But for cryin’ out loud, don’t call me every week asking when the release will run. That’s the best way for your announcement to end up on the bottom of the pile.

Please don’t put me in a punctuation-induced apoplexy by using 19 exclamation points at the end of your headline.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!