Guide to PR

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. Meltwater began its life in the early 2000’s as a platform to search and track online news--transforming the traditional press clipping service into a more automated, intelligent media monitoring service. It has since evolved to add engagement and analysis and is now one of the largest media distribution platforms on the market. It was among the first major media distribution platforms to track bloggers and social publishers in addition to traditional media and adds “influence” rankings to its search results. It includes new media publishers into...

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. I was recently given the task of choosing the best social publishing platform for our agency. I did my research, I was thorough, and I ultimately discovered each option has its own pros and cons. The best thing for me to do was choose which one I believed would fit our agency the best and give their free trial a go (all of the platforms mentioned here have free trials available). Here is what I discovered about a few of the top options: Hootsuite Hootsuite seems...

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. In today’s multichannel media world, reaching journalists, publications, and other influencers with your company’s news represents an enormous challenge. There are traditional print and online news outlets like CNN and Yahoo! News, there are trade publications and websites focused on specific industries, and there are bloggers and social publishers with a range of followers. The landscape changes every day. How do you find them and how to do you contact them? Journalists typically dislike mass, anonymous email pitches. Anonymous pitches tell them immediately that a) the...

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. Press releases should be simple, but they rarely are. Why? Because when it comes to making an announcement from company headquarters, people tend to freak out. They analyze every word and make revision after revision. Press releases tend to get far more internal scrutiny than, say, web pages and blog posts--which might actually get seen by more people. I’ve had press releases run up to version 42. After all the anxiety over press releases, most fall flat and don’t achieve their goal of winning press coverage....

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. With public relations professionals outnumbering journalists nearly 5:1, pitching to the press can feel like a blood sport. A survey of 500 leading digital publishers conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that on average, 45 percent of writers only publish one story per day. In fact, 60 percent of writers publish two or fewer stories per day, and 40 percent said they publish only one story per week. Meanwhile, 40% of these writers get pitched a minimum of 20 times per day. And among those...

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. Investing in a PR Platform is a big decision and hopefully one that will be a sound investment for several years. Each year, our agency evaluates the top choices on the market to keep tabs on changes and updates and make sure that we’re going with the best technology available. Vetting out several platforms is a complex process with a lot of moving parts, so we’ve also developed a tip sheet of 50 questions that you should ask before you buy Vocus, Cision, or Meltwater, which...

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations” blog series. Create a newsworthy press release that appeals to media outlets by building relationships and making your outreach initiatives personal. It’s frustrating putting time and effort into creating a well thought out press release only to have it ignored. Yet, it’s a common experience in the realm of media relations. Why do media outlets pick up some press releases for stories, but not for others? After all the effort spent on brainstorming a newsworthy pitch and compiling relevant media lists, the media doesn’t bite. What gives?! Here...