I don't really know what PR people do - what is it that they can do for a small business?

[vacaloca]

I've just been reading a few posts from PR people and I realised I don't really understand what they do. Is it like marketing? Do they improve the look of your business or find you clients, or what?

I saw this thread yesterday and knew it was all going to kick off! Especially with the "you need to write the article for them" line.

""with that attitude"? what. one that thinks that just because you want to be in the papers doesn'tmean you ought to be?"

Yes, sadly. I know you are right but you say we should just pick up the phone and ring a journalist. I think I'd just get shouted at down the phone.

nnoooooo you wouldn't. that's just journalists on the telly. just ring the featues desk and ask for the email addy of the poor misbegotten hack who deals with x or y local'life in the day' style article.

LOL at you being fluffy and nice. I'm not scared of journalists, even telly stereotype ones. But you were coming across a bit, well, telly stereotypical.

Vacaloca, we have a very good PR company though work and £200 would get a day of their time.

i'm not goiing to apologise for giving a shit about the quality of paper i write for and thinking that readers deserve something decent for their money, tbh.

Aitch, I think you are being naive if you think that it is just as simple as picking up the phone. If I let some of my clients lose on you journalists they just wouldn't be able to get past the detail and present something to you in a way that you could see why your readers would be interested. I am working with a client at the moment who has got an interesting story but it took a lot of digging to get past the technical detail to the crux of the matter. If they called you first that would have been the end of the matter and you would have been bored stupid after 2 minutes .

I agree there are a lot of unscrupulous PRs out there (as there are journalists) but there are also a lot of good ones. And perhaps you need to work on cultivating relationships with the good ones. It really is a two way process which can be mutually beneficial if you work on building the relationship.

Vacaloca - happy to talk to you about rates and what you would get etc. Would rather not do it on this thread but if you want to email me I am at tracy at tgm dot ox14 dot com. I can't promise I can help you because I may not know the sector you work in and you could be better off finding someone who has done all the leg work and has the relevant contacts but happy to give you some advice.

you're bound to say that, twofalls. im telling you, 95% of the stuff i get from PRs on one piece i do is useless. otoh some of my best friends are PRs, but they don't represent small businesses.
and how insulting by the way, that i wouldn't be able to ferret out a GOOD story if it's there. of course i would, and have done many times in exactly the 'naive' circumstances you describe. your whole business plan would fall apart if you acknowledged that you aren't actually necessary a lot of the time (except in tarting up stories that aren't good enough in the first place).

I actually think 100% satisfaction from clients who simply do not have the time or expertise to carry out PR activities, and a significant number of very positive, mutually beneficial relationships with journalists will tell you that actually the function I carry out is far from unnecessary. In fact, I find your assertion that it is pretty insulting tbh.

well then we are mutually insulted.

Glad that the balance is evenly restored in the journos vs PRs debate

I can't help myself, I have to jump in here.

For a start, I think it depends a lot on the type of media/journalist - i work in house and believe that I do an invaluable job. In some cases, as a facilitator as Aitch mentioned - often a journalist can get what he/she needs, in one call to me, without waiting four days for an interview with a random banker because I am plugged in and have lots of useful information handy [and other facilitation type things like being able to find the right banker, at the right timeline when I can't answer the question off the top of my head]. And other times, I find ways to translate a story to make it interesting - or just ways to translate a story so that the bloody banker stops talking about the structure and starts talking about WHY anyone should care. Surprisingly difficult.

But I've always maintained that PR isn't rocket science and a lot of it is just about being able to communicate effectively and be effecient.

I've also often wondered whether doing PR for widgets is very different - in that instance, I can see why the journo would quite frankly just prefer someone from the company to call up, tell them about the product, send over a sample and leave it at that. [although I did some widget PR once, and it has to be said there was a surprising amount of story idea generation and a LOT of admin. Sigh!]

Well, twofalls, it makes a change from the usual MN argument of Breast V Bottle, or SAHM V WOHM.

Perhaps the problem here is that we've only got one journalist with only one view on the world. The arguments above have reached the stage where we don't generalise on such issues. We know that one WOHM's experience or behaviour is not necessarily another's.

I think for a more balanced debate, we may need a few more journalists of different sorts. Aitch, perhaps you could round some up please?

I am a journalist, working in various women's mags mainly. I used to be a press officer, in the voluntary sector; I made an unusual transition the other way.

I was a pretty damn good press officer; however, I'm not hogwhimperingly wild about quite a lot of the ones I come across. And if someone offers to write a story 'for me' I'm afraid I am not at my friendliest. However, someone who'll say 'yep, I'll find you the right person/get the quote across/give you our line and get the right person to be the 'official voice' is bloody marvellous.

That's me MotherI!

haha - for every good PR person, there are 15 bad ones. At least. I was at a breakfast thing this morning and some PR person actually asked the journalist when his deadline was. Perhaps not the stupidest question when it's some piss pot publication calling up asking you for a favour, but when you're at a breakfast, hosted by a well known publication to discuss how they work, you'd think you'd know their weekly deadline.

But maybe that's just me. I can't even get bankers to understand that calling the FT at 7pm is NOT going to get them the front page the next day.

Very interesting discussion - there was no answer to my original post for 5 days and I thought maybe I'd asked a very stupid question.

I still get the impression that the PR you're talking about is more focused on big companies.

I've got an ad in the small business section - in case you're interested in what type of business I run and you want to tailor your advice to me.

that's what got right on my tits immediately, MI, the bit about press releases appearing under the byline of a journalist. that's just fraudulent behaviour imo. mind you, i don't even much like it when they ring saying 'i've got a great story for you'. i purse my lips and think 'i'll be the judge of that, thankyouveryMUCH'.

but if i contact a PR because i need a quote etc from teh organisation (rather than have them 'journalist hassle' me) and they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it... fab-yu-luss. it's this PR as hard-selling that is most un-chic. just buy an advert if you want your geegaw in the paper.

vaca. what's your personal story? do you live there? how did you end off there if so? how do your children like it? how does your day differ from your old life, good and bad? how has the move helped or hindered your relationship? were you running away from something? did you do up the apts yourself? any particularly interesting materials used? any local trends you can think of that might travel well here? bler bler bler that's just off the top of my head, and the sort of thing that can be tailored to regular little features.

in the paper i work for if the ed finds out you've used so much as a couple of words out of a press release you're on your jotters, tbh. keeps you on your toes. (keeps you reaching for the thesaurus, as well).

Good. Because when I write press releases, while I use a news style, I also just write them to give the facts and our view of the facts. And while my business lines would love journos to use them word for word, I think it would be very inappropriate in most of the papers and trade journals we talk to!

lol TQS. And there should be loads of them around lurking. I know a lot of them use MN as a source because their PR contacts never deliver them anything useful

I hope you get some help vacaloca. (Sorry I couldn't provide much input. My background is the publishing industry so not really plugged into travel but I hope you got my email.....)

bling, that's the kind of release i like. sparing use of bold, lots of white space... let me see the facts etc.

That is because you work for a good paper Aitch. A leading daily national wanted to run a feature on a book I was representing so I put the journalist in touch with the author, gave him loads of background info, highlighted some useful parts of the book. He basically published my press release with a bit of embellishment. But that wasn't my fault. It is not what I asked or expected him to do in fact, I thought it was pretty lazy of him and quite odd to see my words in a national paper. So I think there is a fair amount of shoddyness all around tbh.

i really think that's terrible, twofalls. no wonder newspaper sales are down if that's the standard of professionalism.

Vaca - here's some free advice for you.

Get in touch with the press offices at Easyjet and Ryanair and also your local tourist office (they may have an office in London) or the Spanish Tourist Board (they'll definitely have some kind of PR representation in the UK). If you're happy to provide some free accommodation for journos coming on what they call fam (familiarisation) trips, they'll do all the legwork for you.

There's lots of other things you can do, but that would be a starting point and could get you some feature-length coverage in national travel pages.

Good luck.

I've had a publicist (employed by the publisher, not by me) working to promote me whenever I have had a book out. I find it incredibly depressing the number of journalists - in regional papers especially - who, given the luxury of a 250-word review in which to say what they like about a book, spend 220 words reproducing the press release word for word. Some don't even get that far, and just reproduce the back cover blurb.

The publicist rounds up all the various bits of media coverage I get and sends me a batch of photocopies every few weeks, or whenever she can be arsed. So I've been known to get an A4 brown envelope six months after the publication date, when I've pretty much forgotten the damn thing ever existed and am busy working on the next book but one, and rip open said exciting-looking envelope to find an A3 folded sheet inside with one clipping on it photocopied from the Spunkbridge and Jizzchester Gazette, reproducing words I already have on the book blurb on my shelf and ending with a limp, lukewarm exhortation to that week's readers to investigate the book. I have to say I am always overwhelmed at how hard these people are working on my behalf

twofalls - I just saw your email. Extremely helpful - thanks. I'll reply properly now.

Aitch - thanks for your suggestions. I'm from the area but I've been living in the UK for ages now (something tells me that story wouldn't sell quite so well)