Building your personal brand, planning for PR success
Are you a thought leader? To build recognition as a leading voice in your industry, public relations is often key.
In this post, I look at five key questions that you’ll need to consider when creating your own PR plan.
What do you want to achieve?
It’s unlikely you want media exposure for the hell of it. Chances are, you want your business to benefit in some tangible way, such as an increase in sales, or success in a new market. For this reason, your PR activity will most probably be part of a wider sales and marketing plan.
To stand the best chance of success, you need clear targets: a growth target e.g. 50% growth in two years and a PR target e.g. two pieces of relevant coverage per month. Within that period, have interim targets that you review regularly, adjusting your strategy as necessary along the way.
Who do you want to reach?
Your target audience will of course depend on the overall goals you have chosen. It may seem obvious, but it’s not unusual so see businesses simply going after any coverage they can get, without thinking about how it contributes to their goals. If your goals mean you need to reach both industry peers and your customer base, your PR strategy could be two-pronged, with a separate but complimentary plan for each.
How are you going to reach them?
Once you know whom you want to reach, you can create a list of target publications. PR pros generally have the advantage of years of experience combined with journalist directory subscriptions to call on, but if you’re starting out, you’ll probably be using the internet and word of mouth to figure out which publications are key to your audience.
Of course, the work doesn’t end there. The next stage is to get to know and understand your target publications and the people who contribute to them. You need to be getting a sense of each publication’s style, the kind of stories they tend to run with and those they don’t. This means that when you come to approach them for the first time, you can tailor your pitch.
How do you want to be seen?
This isn’t just about the sectors you want to be seen as an expert in, or the skills you want to be recognised for, it’s also about what kind of expert you want to be.
Some ‘thought leaders’ prefer to give very cut and dried advice, some like to be controversial, while other work best when presenting their arguments anecdotally. It helps to have a defining style that is as honest as possible, and to keep your stance consistent, although bear in mind that each publication has its own style requirements, so if you’re asked to contribute an article, you will need to adhere to these.
How do you start winning coverage?
If you’re reading your target publications faithfully, you should be developing a good sense of what interests them. An important distinction, and one worth reading up on, is that between news about your company and an opinion or advice article. The former would generally be pitched as a press release, the latter as an objective article proposal.
In future posts I’ll talk about how to assess the value of a story, how to pitch, and how to make sure you deliver something useful. For now, remember that first impressions are vital, and you can never do too much research and planning before making your first approach.
Emily Cagle is director of Emily Cagle Communications, an agency specialising in copywriting and public relations. For more information, visit http://www.emilycagle.co.uk/
About Sarah ArrowSarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
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21 Responses to Building your personal brand, planning for PR success
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Some terrific advice there Emily – thank you. And I’m looking forward to your further advice on writing and PR generally.
If you want some additional input on the way books can help as PR tools give me a shout … that’s part of what I do for a day job!
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
Maybe you should post about that, Suze – Just the ‘what’ not the ‘how – you don’t want to give the crown jewels away do you
?
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
Yes, sounds like it would be an interesting read!
Some terrific advice there Emily – thank you. And I’m looking forward to your further advice on writing and PR generally.
If you want some additional input on the way books can help as PR tools give me a shout … that’s part of what I do for a day job!
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
Maybe you should post about that, Suze – Just the ‘what’ not the ‘how – you don’t want to give the crown jewels away do you
?
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
Yes, sounds like it would be an interesting read!
Thank you Emily, inspired by this I wrote a press release this afternoon
it wasn’t my first, but it was one of my better ones thanks to you.
Excellent. Let me know if you’d like me to take a peek.
Thank you Emily, inspired by this I wrote a press release this afternoon
it wasn’t my first, but it was one of my better ones thanks to you.
Excellent. Let me know if you’d like me to take a peek.
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Thanks Emily – good to have that kind of stuff spelled out. All I need to do now is find time to read my target market’s publication!
Suze’s right about books being useful. That’s how I ended up on Chris Evan’s show on Radio 2: the real trick is turning that kind of stuff into incoming phone calls, though!
Simon
Twitter: presentations
Ooh, tell us more! Sounds like an interesting case study…
I have been learning the conversion thingy Simon, when I have wrote it down (as a Birds on the blog ebook), perhaps you’ll give it the once over for me? and try it out to see of it works for you (and let’s face it, if it works for me a as courier, it HAS to work for you)
Thanks Emily – good to have that kind of stuff spelled out. All I need to do now is find time to read my target market’s publication!
Suze’s right about books being useful. That’s how I ended up on Chris Evan’s show on Radio 2: the real trick is turning that kind of stuff into incoming phone calls, though!
Simon
Twitter: presentations
Ooh, tell us more! Sounds like an interesting case study…
I have been learning the conversion thingy Simon, when I have wrote it down (as a Birds on the blog ebook), perhaps you’ll give it the once over for me? and try it out to see of it works for you (and let’s face it, if it works for me a as courier, it HAS to work for you)
I shared office space once with a Public Relations doyenne who was brought in to head and build the new PR division in our Business to Business Advertising and Communications Agency.
She frightened the life out of me till I got to know her and discovered what a fabulous sense of humour she had… I also found out why she needed it.
Seeing and hearing her getting a decent brief out of a client and a realistic budget to achieve the desired results was an education in itself
…
As I ran the Business Intelligence Unit (get me!) – essentially practical research for clients – we were both PR – Poor Relations in this set up – to those who produced the higher profile ad campaigns.
Our budgets were tiny by comparison yet give us £10,000 and watch how far we could make it go and what you’d get for it – and our profit margins knocked those of the ad boys and girls into the proverbial cocked hat…
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
I shared office space once with a Public Relations doyenne who was brought in to head and build the new PR division in our Business to Business Advertising and Communications Agency.
She frightened the life out of me till I got to know her and discovered what a fabulous sense of humour she had… I also found out why she needed it.
Seeing and hearing her getting a decent brief out of a client and a realistic budget to achieve the desired results was an education in itself
…
As I ran the Business Intelligence Unit (get me!) – essentially practical research for clients – we were both PR – Poor Relations in this set up – to those who produced the higher profile ad campaigns.
Our budgets were tiny by comparison yet give us £10,000 and watch how far we could make it go and what you’d get for it – and our profit margins knocked those of the ad boys and girls into the proverbial cocked hat…
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
This is really useful advice Emily, I often wonder how some folk get their press releases get into some of the popular publications.
Twitter: ethnicsupplies
This is really useful advice Emily, I often wonder how some folk get their press releases get into some of the popular publications.
Twitter: ethnicsupplies