Managing your own Public Relations

One of the best methods of raising your salon's profile in the local area is to persuade your local paper to write an editorial.  Many of them have a regular women's page and the journalists will always be looking for content. Do some research and try and find out about the type of person who reads the paper, what age group, if it is predominantly male or female and which social grouping or market segmentation it appeals to and how large the circulation area is.

A client of mine who worked as a local TV journalist advised me that there should always be a ‘hook' on which to hang the story. In other words you must have an interesting angle that will grab the readers' attention and the editorial must be interesting and informative. The fact that you have a beautiful salon, with wonderful staff, providing excellent treatments, is not an interesting enough story to warrant editorial coverage. However if you have a high profile celebrity opening your salon, you have become 100% eco friendly, or your staff have raised thousands of pounds for a local hospice you may have a ‘hook' that will appeal to the journalist and make your salon story stand out from the crowd and compete with other planned editorial content.

You can build a relationship with your local paper by inviting the journalist into the salon for treatment so they may experience first hand what your salon has to offer. Provide them with a competition for readers to participate in and a prize of a special treatment for the winners who have the correct answers. 

The traditional method however of approaching your local paper is in the form of a press release - a statement prepared for distribution to the media - providing journalists with information that is useful, accurate and interesting. It is a news story, written in the third person, demonstrating to an editor or journalist, the newsworthiness of a particular person, event, service or product.

Considerations before writing the press release

Why are you writing the press release: to provide information, increase business, advertise a new treatment, improve your profile or reinforce an image?

Study the publication you are targeting, to become familiar with the type of stories they cover. Make sure the story will reach your preferred market

Does the press release contain valuable or newsworthy information that will be used by the target audience?

What do you want the readers to take away from the press release?

Tone and structure of the press release

• Make sure that the press release is grammatically correct and doesn't contain any spelling mistakes, or errors and that your sources are quoted correctly. Proof read the content carefully, or have it checked by someone else before sending it off. Be aware that local media may pick up your press release and run it in their publications as it is, or, more commonly, they may use your press release as a springboard for a larger feature story. In either case write your story as you would like to have it reported. To do this you must write your story with the media in mind and write like a journalist.
• Be concise keep it punchy with the most important points first and don't use unnecessary flowery or over technical language that won't be understood.
• Identify your story's angle. A good story angle must have the following three attributes:

             - It must be the most important fact in your story.

             - It must be timely.

             - It must be unique, newsworthy or contrary to industry norms and trends.

• This story angle must be presented in the first paragraph as well as the headline of your press release.
• Create a catchy headline; keep it short and simple using less than ten words. It should convey the key point raised in the opening paragraph, in a light-hearted manner that catches imagination and the reader's attention.
• Make sure the content is factual, true, and correct and doesn't embellish.
• Time the press release for maximum impact as it may be possible to incorporate the release with a recent news event.
• Collate and organise your facts, a simple rule is to find answers to questions pertaining to; who, what, when, where, why and how. Put a date on the release and remember, yesterday's news isn't going to go far.
• A press release must be presented objectively from a third person point of view. Remove words such as; you, I, we and us. Refrain from expressing personal opinions, unless they are put in quotes. Draw conclusions from facts and statistics only - not general opinion.
• End the press release with an appendix that provides brief, background information on the company, newsmakers, as well as who to contact for further information.

Follow up with a call, as you may have spent a lot of time writing the perfect press release only to find it gets buried on a busy news desk. By checking your release has been received, you will bring it to the attention of the journalist who might otherwise have missed it. If your story isn't used, ask why, so you can learn how to improve your press release for next time.

These tips are not meant to be an exhaustive guide to writing a good press release but, it should help you if you are writing a press release yourself. Remember that practice makes perfect and the best way to learn how to write an effective press release, is to observe how similar news is reported in the section of newspapers you are aiming for.