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Are your PR efforts wasting time and money? Do you repeatedly try and fail to get reporters’ attention?
During my many years helping business, government and non-profit clients secure positive news coverage, I’ve felt the adrenaline rush that comes with magnificent news coverage, and the agony and embarrassment that follows a media interview gone awry (scroll down to the graph that starts “Then another tollway spokesperson”).
With those memories I present the Top Ten Reasons Why Your PR Efforts are Getting You Nowhere:
- You emphasized tactics over strategy so your PR campaign lacks clear business goals and objectives.
- You’re targeting the wrong media because you haven’t identified your key audiences.
- You’ve re-purposed an old media list and didn’t delete the reporters who lost their jobs when their papers folded.
- Your final press release required three complete rewrites because you didn’t create a content outline for your boss’s/client’s review.
- You e-blasted the release to reporters and editors and it was dumped in junk mailboxes, never to be viewed.
- You wrote a one-size-fits-all pitch letter that left reporters with two choices — trash your news now or trash your news later.
- You fumbled through a media interview because you didn’t bother thinking through the possible questions and answers beforehand.
- You wouldn’t practice for your on-camera interview and your family still jokes about how your eyes bugged-out whenever you talked.
- Your customers don’t know about your news coverage because you didn’t bother merchandising it or sharing it on social networks.
- Your messages are so confusing that even your mother can’t describe what you do.
Leave a comment if you have additional entries to my top 10 reasons for PR failure. Next up: Top 10 reasons for PR Greatness.
