Getting Ink

One Alfred Place

Just a quick post to say a big thanks to the lovely Rob at One Alfred Place, who hosted the:101 this week for a training event.

We feel obliged to point out the food at One Alfred Place is seriously good, the facilities are very professional, and the attentive service was much appreciated. Iggy the concierge was a huge help in sorting out details for our event and suggesting we feed our clients pastries and coffee in the morning, which I think was appreciated by our guests. Gary says sorry he hogged the coffee, but it was quite early, and he's usually more of a late riser. 

I suspect One Alfred Place is used to a slightly fancier clientele than a herd of rowdy journalists - one hack did think he might actually be fleeced on the way out of the building in case he'd nicked the cutlery - but if you're in PR and looking to impress clients, we'd give it a big, two thumbs up recommendation.

Thanks again to Rob and his team. 

New Nationals/Broadcast Workshops

The:101 is running two nationals and broadcast workshops in the next few weeks, in London and Manchester.

We have a few spaces left for the Manchester workshop (Oct 6th) and just one spot left in London (Nov 12th) so please drop me a line if you're interested in coming along.

The workshop is a practical one-day course for PR execs and marketing people who want to learn about selling stories into mainstream broadcast and print media. The course looks at the practicalities of pitching - who to contact, when to get in touch, what to say - and also some techniques for increasing the success rate of pitches by tailoring stories for different audiences, using the news agenda and working with case histories and third parties.

Our trainers have experience of working with the likes of GMTV, This Morning, BBC News, News of the World, Guardian, Telegraph, FT and a wide range of consumer magazines and websites.  There will be lots of great advice, role plays and the chance to test out your techniques. Places are £250 per person, with discounts for groups/charities/freelancers/non-profits.

You can also book or find out more at the:101 website.

Thanks!

Sally

Knowing Your Trades

So, I'm still alive. Just needed a bit of a break from blogging while I recovered my enthusiasm for sharing random thoughts and over-opinionated rants with a bunch of hyper-critical strangers.

Seriously, thanks for all the comments and emails over the last week or so. I'd like to say the great advice, lovely sentiments and wise thoughts prompted me into blogging again. Well, I'd like to say that, but actually the reason for blogging again was that I couldn't wait to share this gem:

I trained a B2B agency this week in media relations - how to turn fleeting email exchanges with hacks into long-term working relationships. We started by chatting about differentiating between titles - how magazines can all look the same, but they see themselves as very distinct products. So, I asked, what's the difference between Computer Weekly and Computing?  After a long pause, one PR ventured: "Is only one of them a weekly?"*

It's an easy mistake to make - nobody is born knowing about trade publications, after all. But if your job is pitching trades, there are three things you have to know:

1. Who reads it (job titles, circulation figures)
2. When it's published (day and frequency)
3. Who does it compete with, and how?

If you want to have long-term working relationships with hacks, a good story is vital. But so is knowing that my magazine has a bigger public sector readership than its competitor, or that our features section goes to press on a Tuesday.

* This is the wrong answer, obviously.

Seven things I've learned this week

1. Things like copyright infringement become less stressful when you just hand it all over to the lawyers. Also, I'm a bit mean when riled. Sorry, Richard.

2. That stupid new brain game on Facebook? More addictive than crack (I imagine, obviously, not having tried crack)

3. Twitter is much less annoying when you don't have Twitterific popping up on screen like a hyperactive bunny ever five seconds. Have used it much more in the last week, and started blocking the Twitter tw*ts.

4. My PR client is more excited about being in a scholastic magazine than the coverage I scored in the Daily Mail. Go figure.

5. Accidentally sending personal messages to an email forum for journalists is A Bad Thing. But also quite funny when it's other people doing the accidental sending.

6. Chris Middleton: Internet fibber. FACT.

7. I really, really need a weekend off. So we're heading to Harrogate while the sun shines. See you Monday!

New 101 Course in Manchester

We're taking bookings for the latest Nationals&Broadcast:101 course in Manchester on October 6th - do drop me a line if you're interested.

There is lots more detail on the 101 website here, but briefly we will have a team of fantastic ex-TV and national newspaper journalists helping PR executives to create pitches to sell stories in to national print and broadcast media.

We think it's a unique opportunity to find out what really makes a story interesting to the mainstream press, and how to pitch that story effectively. The cost is £250 for the day, discounts available for students and non-profits.

Just thought I'd share...

Nothing to do with PR or journalism but it was Flea's first day at pre-school today - a big day for both of us, not least because it's first time we've been up before 9am in the best part of a year!

Am now obviously going to be much more productive with all those hours of child-free time in the day. I plan to get on with a proper To Do list, just as soon as I've had a coffee and a quick read of the papers, and maybe checked out some Amazon bargains...

Five quick PR tips

One of the reasons blogging has been light this month is that I'm spending a lot of time out and about this summer, delivering our new telephone pitching workshop (plug here).  Not that I'm complaining - it's interesting work, I'm making loads of great PR contacts and have found a few really good stories in the process.

However, what's really interesting when you're meeting PR folks regularly is how often we take for granted what is common knowledge. I was really surprised, for example, to train one agency in Manchester last week where they commonly send attached images with press releases. Another agency in London was struggling to sell clients into the nationals - but the staff didn't have a regular schedule or time to read the national papers.

So, I thought it might be worth putting together some of my best  tips for PRs. Perhaps most of these are completely obvious, but  if you have any other gems you'd like to share, feel free to add them!

1. Don't send attachments until a journalist asks for them. Yes, we probably have broadband but we may well be accessing our email via a BlackBerry or a dongle, and downloading a 2MB image won't put us in a good mood. If you must, embed a small (like, 200k) image in an HTML email but better yet, just tell us what sort of pictures you have IF we're interested.
2. If you're replying to a request posted on Gorkana, Response Source or similar, change the subject header to include your client's name and what you're offering (So: SAP and Retail: customer interview available). Otherwise we end up with 60 emails, all with identical subject lines, and it's very easy to overlook or lose your message.
3. Don't rely on media databases when it really matters. The vast majority of databases rely on researchers keeping up with who's been fired, promoted or laid off, and the industry moves so fast that is never going to be 100 percent accurate. Even worse are the systems that rely on hacks themselves to inform the databases of changes. Some journalists on the bigger freelance databases haven't updated their profiles in five or six years. Call the editorial assistant or switchboard and get the right person first time.
4. Make some time to read the papers, every day. Don't just rely on Google Alerts or press clipping services. A good tip is to share out all the papers round the office and make a point of reading one paper for a whole week. Make a note of which sections appear on which days, which columns, case study slots and similar appear when. Combine this data with your new knowledge of the news agenda, and your pitches will be much more credible.
5. When you ring a journalist, don't tell them you have a lovely new press release from your client, Widget Incorporated. Tell them you have a story about how businesses can cut recruitment costs (or whatever). Outside of your offices, your client is rarely the news  - the story is news, and you should lead with that. Of course, quickly follow up your, "I have a story about X" with "Is now a good time to talk about it?"

Summer Break

Getting Ink and Getting Ink Requests are taking a bit of a holiday by the seaside, with a sparkly pink bucket and spade. They will be checking on email when they pass a friendly hotspot, but we don't expect to hear much from them as they've been working very hard and deserve a bit of a break.

See you in 10 days.

the:101 signs up more top PR trainers!

We're really excited to announce some changes to the:101 team.

Olivia Gordon is joining us to help deliver our new summer phone pitching workshops and our nationals:101 course. Olivia used to work  as a features writer on Real magazine, but has been freelance for the last couple of years. She has written for the Observer, Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Daily Mail and Evening Standard. She's also a highly experienced magazine writer, and has written for the likes of She, Red and Cosmo Bride.

Judy Yorke is a former features editor at Woman and assistant features editor of Good Housekeeping. As a freelance writer, Judy is frighteningly prolific and regularly writes for the likes of the Daily Mirror, Fabulous, Essentials, Closer, Woman and Mother&Baby. Judy will be leading our brand new women&health course which launches this August in London, and we will also be roping her in to help us out with several other courses.

Getting Ink Requests: a few changes

We've made some small tweaks to the free media requests site, Getting Ink Requests.

First of all, there is the crucial change of colour, so the blog matches my own nice new website - see?  Pretty.

Slightly more fundamentally, we made some changes to the journalist profiles on the site, with a big directory you can browse, plus separate listings of journalists by category. We're gradually uploading profiles to the site a couple at a time (since 80% of subscribers use the daily email feed, we don't want to drown them in profiles), but over the coming weeks we will be providing you with free access to biographical information and contact details for key journalists in a variety of sectors - just click on a journalist's name to see the details we have for them.   

If you're a journalist and you'd like your own site to be listed, or to have your own profile on Getting Ink Requests, just fill in this form with your details. All we ask in return is for a link to the site from your own blog or website, please. You can email us with your details, too.

As ever, we're interested in feedback on the site and changes. We look forward to hearing from you.