Public Relations - How To and Tutorials

Public relations is often referred to has earned media, but how do you get that earned media coverage? Learn what public relations is and not only how you can do it yourself, but how you can do it effectively.

It is important to have a solid understanding of how the press works. Guest Columnist Todd Brabender shows you how one company achieved great success using publicity and public relations. Learn how you can do it too in this featured article.

What do readers want -- and what to editors and reporters want to see? Here are five ways to catch the eye of your audience, whether you're writing blog posts, press releases or doing a Public Service Announcement campaign.

Most press releases fall into a giant slush pile, where they drown a lonely death. And those are ones written by professionals. But it's not hopeless. There are simple things that amateurs and rookies can do that will vastly increase the odds of a release climbing its way out of the slush pile and making it into the newspaper or on the airwaves.

How do you write a fact sheet? It's not just a collection of numbers. There are good reasons to pick and choose which facts you use, and which order -- and different types of fact sheets, whether you're explaining the size and significance of a problem or announcing the price and specifications of a new product.

A statement is quicker, easier and often more useful than a press release. Say there's a big news story. Your company just got bought by a bigger rival, you're the quarterback for the Raiders and got traded to the Giants or you're a big-time author who switched publishers. Sending a press release would be silly and pointless, because people already know what happened.

How to write a letter to the editor. The opinion page is one of the most-read pages of any newspaper. Letters to the editor are underutilized. Editors and reporters will roll their eyes if you ask them how many press releases they get every day. Letters to the editor and opeds are the opposite. Most newspapers want more, not less. They're happy to get good pieces written by local public figures.

Putting out a daily newspaper is hard, hard work. It takes a big staff. Reporters and photographers, editors and graphics specialists, layout gurus, proofers, printers -- it's a big undertaking. What if I told you that you could publish a daily e-newspaper, about whatever topic you wanted, without doing a thing? That's the idea behind paper.li...

How you structure an oped matters more than anything else. A beautifully written oped that uses the wrong structure will fail. An oped with pedestrian writing -- but the right structure -- will succeed.

Story kits are a simple idea that are under-utilized. It's a great alternative to the typical press release. Learn how to use a story kit.

A key skill for any public figure or PR pro is working a room. Some people believe this is a genetic trait, that you're either born charming and social or you're not. Those people are wrong. Working a room doesn't mean working up a sweat. Here are five tips for doing it right.

Who are you trying to reach, and what do you want them to do? The first rule of rhetoric is, "Know your audience." Audience analysis is a fundamental issue that often gets overlooked. Every public figure or organization has more than one audience. In fact, you typically have five different audiences.

The purpose of an editorial board tour is to make your case in person. Say there's a school levy on the ballot and you're part of the group of parents campaigning to pass it. You'd want to talk to the editorial boards of your local papers before they came out for or against the levy.

Politicians do it. Rock stars do it. Authors, actors and athletes do it. Whatever kind of public figure you are -- or work for -- one thing is true: Your suitcase will get battered and you'll spend far more time than you'd like in tour buses, taxis and airports. How can you maximize the value of a road trip? And how can you avoid common problems...

A listening tour is an entirely different animal than other media events. You want to do the same preparation as a town hall. Publicize the meeting so people show up. Invite the public. Thank the participants afterward. A listening tour is the opposite of a keynote speech. You're not the speaker; you're the audience. The audience is talking to you.

A panel of experts is an unusual hybrid event. It's not a single person speaking to an audience. Unlike a town hall or a listening tour, the audience isn't speaking -- except to ask questions if there's Q & A. You've got a group of people up front, usually sitting at a table, talking and debating about an issue. Panels can be very useful in solving tough problems.

Debates are popular events because conflict is visceral. A speaker might be boring, but that same speaker can't afford to be boring in a debate. The stakes are higher. There are different kinds of debates, each with a different format. Three basic formats: moderated, town hall and Lincoln-Douglas.

You see photo-ops every day: governors and presidents signing bills into law, Hollywood stars on the red carpet for the premiere of a film or a football owner signing a free agent to a contract. So how do you set up a photo op? It's about the little details: lighting, location, action and the background.

A cutline is written like a straight news piece, with a sentence or containing the Five W's: who, what, when, where and why. Learn how to write photo cutlines.

There is nothing worse than the Typical Staged Group Photo. Reporters and editors despise them, because they're boring, and it means a giant cutline has to run beneath the photo that identifies everybody in the shot. There are three ways to make group photos interesting and useful.

Action photos are inherently more appealing. A story, blog post or oped with an action shot that's relevant will attract more readers than a photo of people or objects posing at rest. The problem is, most people don't take action shots with their subject doing the action they're meant to do.

Monitoring your media could be a full-time job, if you tried to scour the newspapers, blogs, radio and TV stations by yourself and by hand. The good news is you don't need to do that. There are three basic ways to monitor your clips: hire a PR firm, delegate the job or do it yourself.

A press conference is not an easy event, or a casual one. It's a big production and should only be saved for big issues. If you schedule press conferences every week, or every day, the press will stop showing up. A press conference is typically set only to announce huge news. In politics, you'd do a press conference to announce a run for office -- or to drop out of a major race.

Press conferences take a lot of preparation and staff work. That time is well spent, because a great press conference can mean blanket coverage in newspapers, radio, TV and blogs -- but a horrible press conference can haunt you.