PR for women in business

IF your company needs help or advice with your PR strategy just drop us a line.

Venus Media specialises in looking after businesses run by women, and we have some fantastic contacts across the media.

Email us now for further details by clicking on the image above.

PR…what is IT all about?

ALL businesses, large and small can all benefit from PR.

Most people hear the words Public Relations and immediately think that this is going to be a huge expense, and something that is really only available to major global corporations with hundreds of thousands of pounds at their disposal.

The good news is…this is really NOT true!

Without realising it, you are probably doing a great job of PR ing your company already because part of good PR is getting people talking about you and what you do. This is turn raises your profile and should eventually turn into referrals and sales or profit.

However, a properly targeted PR and media campaign is a really important part of a business plan, and just dashing off a press release every now and then or attending the odd networking event is unlikely to benefit your business in the long term.

There are lots of small PR consultancies and freelance PRs and media consultants who can help you (many of them work from home too) but there is also a lot that you can do to help yourself.

In this series, we will be looking at simple but effective ways to organise some PR for your business. From writing a press release to being prepared for your first interview and getting some photography organised, we hope to walk you through the whole process and give you some tips along the way.

So first of all, what is the point of PR and how does it differ from advertising?

PR involves raising your profile, both to the media and to potential customers. You can tackle this is a variety of ways including through the local media for your area.

Advertising often involves handing over large amounts of cash. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Properly targeted advertising can pay huge dividends, but free editorial in a newspaper or magazine is worth more. After all, anyone can pay for an ad, but not everyone has a story strong enough to make it into print. Maybe you do…

Journalists LOVE a good story, but how do you know if your business is a headline grabber?

The first thing to do is start looking at the papers every day/week, and/or news feeds via the internet. Local media should be your first port of call so check out the business pages and any local or regional business and lifestyle magazines that are relevant.

Get to know who writes what so that you know which journalists might be relevant to your business, and your story. When you have compiled a rough media contact list you can think about what kind of stories your business is generating.

You might be moving premises and relocating because business is booming. Perhaps you have won a big national or international contract worth millions, or you have decided to go green and adopt some environmental policies.

If you make or sell beautiful things there could be a story in the style or lifestyle sections, perhaps you are a busy single parent who juggles running a business with bringing up children, or planning to climb some mountains in aid of charity?

The options are endless, it’s just a case of looking closely at your business, your life and thinking carefully about what you think is interesting enough to put into a press release.

Perhaps you are an expert in your field and have some excellent comments to make about a new EU directive or government policy? Stories about people who have given up a high pressure job to downshift and work from home are always winners with journalists, or perhaps you have started your own local business network for people who work from home?

The first step in effective PR is to examine what you do, what you think and how you think a story or feature about you and your business would fit into a local paper.

Local newspapers, radio and television like news and features. News items tend to be shorter and are the most up to date news you can provide. Features are more in depth and generate more coverage. Either way, while you are thinking about your story you should also be thinking about pictures because journalists will nearly always want to get a snap of you to illustrate the story. If you don’t have a decent set of photographs, it might be worth investing in some professional shots, but often newspapers will send a photographer out anyway so think about what they could feasibly photograph to strengthen your story.

Next time we will look at how you can convert this information into a press release, and how best to approach your local media.