Project Publicity and Press Releases
Publicity and promotion of a project is often a step that people forget, leave to the last minute or think unnecessary, however it can be vital if you're trying to attract support for your project. It's a good idea to think about publicity right at the start of the project. It's important to think of publicity as a continuous process that includes pre, during, and post project publicity.
Top Tips
Here are some top tips on how to make sure your press releases are successful:
- Decide what sort of publicity you want - who's attention are you trying to get? What you do to attract funding from local businesses might be very different from what you do to attract volunteers or to tell people about the project.
- Agree on a key message that you want to communicate. Different people saying different things will just seem confusing and journalists want a quick and concise story.
- Make sure your press release identifies where, when, who and what you're doing.
- Decided who's going to be your spokesperson, make sure they're friendly, articulate and available.
- Make sure there's someone who the press can contact for information and make sure they're accessible. Journalists will soon lose interest if they can't speak to someone.
- Make sure you know when you want to get your story out by. It's no good the paper or television running a story about an event you want to attract people to when it has already happened.
- Are there any good photos you already have or will there be photo opportunities? Make sure the press are informed.
- Be creative - find an unusual way to attract the press's and publics attention.
What to put in a press release (Example Press Release)
- Use A4 page and double-lined spacing, keep it to a maximum of two pages.
- Put the name of the person who the press release is meant for at the top of the page.
- Give it a short, catchy title
- Paragraph 1 - this should be concise, newsworthy and state all the essential details: who, where, when, what and why!
- Paragraph 2 - this should be either more details of the event or new information.
- Additional paragraphs - only use these if you have more or new information. This is the place to include quotes; these should be from someone who is willing to talk to the press and will be contactable.
- Include contact details at the bottom of the press release, in bold if possible; these should be name, home or mobile phone number.
- Additional information for editors; this should include a word count, a description of your project and group and any relevant basic information or statistics. Remember to include your website address if you have one.
Planning a publicity strategy*
You may decide you want to do more than one press event or that your group wants to publicise a whole range of activities. This would be a good time to consider developing a publicity strategy. A publicity strategy is where your group plans how it's going to raise awareness of itself and its aims over the long term. There are several things you might need to consider:
- What are you trying to achieve? Do you want more people to know about you - who and why? Do you want to achieve this within a certain time frame - a year, three years or by the end of a particular project?
- Who's attention are you trying to attract? If you say everyone it can be unclear. If you try and target your publicity to certain groups it will be more effective and you will get more results. You need to find out how your target audience keeps informed - it's no good writing press releases for newspapers if your target audience mainly listens to local radio!
- Decide what you want to say and make it short, snappy and simple! A key message that reflects the core of what your group is trying to achieve can be repeated in press releases for different events.
- Timetables - do you want a steady flow of publicity or one big extravaganza? It's important to give yourselves a timetable as most magazines, even local ones, will plan stories several months ahead and will often want stories three months before they print them. Each method of raising publicity will have its own timetable. Planning your strategy and setting some targets will mean you won't miss opportunities for publicity.
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