Articles and News

Merrick, NY—Even in the digital age, good old-fashioned PR can be one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to promote your company. One good editorial mention—whether in print or online—can do wonders for your company because it’s coming from an objective third party and not directly from you. Not to mention, it’s free.

But how do you get the reporter’s attention, and, more, get him or her interested in your story? Here, from CBSMoneywatch.com, are three key tips to keeping your press out of the trash:

• Send news, not promotion. What’s the difference? News is objective, not subjective, so skip the superlatives and remember that if your press release sounds even remotely like advertising, it’s going to get greatly edited at best, or, more likely, it’s going to get the dreaded “delete” button.
• Send your news release to the right person. Don’t take a shotgun approach thinking that the more copies you send the better your chances are of being picked up. But in reality most of those will end up being—you guessed it—deleted. Instead, take the time to find out the relevant editor’s name and target your releases to that person only. For luxury jewelers, it’s most likely going to be the business, lifestyle, or fashion editor.
• Back down on your follow-up. Though it may seem counterintuitive, says the CBS article, the kind of persistent follow-up that works for customers and projects can wreck your PR efforts. A conservative and appropriately timed follow-up is ok with journalists, but being pushy not only won’t improve your odds, it’ll probably put you on their mental list of annoying people to be avoided.

Read the entire CBS.com story here. And, courtesy of The Centurion Newsletter team, here are three more tips to make sure your press releases have the best chance of being printed. As an added bonus, a professional approach can help position you as an editor’s go-to source for jewelry-related information.

• Make sure all your contact information is prominent and easy to find. This includes your name, business title, address, zip code, phone, email, and website. Include your fax number somewhere. Rarely will an editor fax you with follow-up questions, but they may want the number for mention in the story. Hyper-link your website so the editor can easily click on it from the release. And check your email at least daily: many editors prefer email to phone for a quick fact-check.
• Once you’ve established contact or a relationship with the appropriate beat editor, ask how they prefer to receive photos (high- or low-resolution, how many at a time, etc.) and ask what format they prefer (Word, PDF, etc.) for news releases. Then do what they suggest. Corporate email often has size limits for individual inboxes, so if you send a dozen photos at 4 megabytes each, it can fill up an editor’s inbox pretty quickly, and that’s not the way you want to be noticed.
• Make sure all images you send are labeled and captioned. Rather than use the standard file names generated by your camera, rename each image with a short name that’s relevant to the story and identifies what’s in it. Be sure to provide complete caption information, including who or what is in the photo, their title and affiliation, or, for a product photo, describe the piece clearly.

Image: Happyabout.com