The Tasks

Task One: session 2

Gordon, you’ve been doing incredibly well. You’ve made contact with the hospice, and you’ve started to plan things. You’ve written a press release and a crib sheet. You’ve got your press release sorted before you even had to do it. You’ve been networking in the forums; you’re not doing too badly.

I try, but I feel I should be devoting more time to it. It does seem to be quite intensive time-wise, but I’m hoping that that will become easier and smoother as time goes on.

The big thing about PR is that because it’s quite intangible, you can just go on forever and feel like you’ve never done enough. And one thing I suggest that you guys do at the end of the PR section of the Boot Camp is decide on a certain number of things that you’re going to do every month.

It might be to write a crib sheet, it might be put a press release out every month. Just have a list of things that you’ll do each month, and you can cross them off as you go, and then once you’ve done that you’ll know that you’ve covered some PR that month.

If you don’t, you’ll just have a feeling that it’s some kind of bottomless pit and you could put everything into it. If you have a certain number of things that you can tackle each month, then move on to the other things that you’ve got on your plate, over time, thing will happen.

It’s a way of making sure that it bubbles away without taking over everything.

Any questions on what you’re doing at the moment, the current things?

Yes. How do I actually approach the press people to issue a release? Who do I speak to?

Are we talking about the local or wedding press, what specific area would it be?

I think in the first instance, the people that I’ve identified at the local newspapers. What I don’t know is who the contacts should be, and whether I should be approaching them by letter, by phone or by email? I sometimes feel as if, when I’m approaching with like a cold call, that I’m intruding into their space.

This is what the tips are for really. The idea is that if you send out tips every now and again to them, by the time you pick up the phone, they will know who you are. So, yes, you’re still doing a cold call, but at least, hopefully they will have heard of you and be able to put you in context.

As to who you send it out to, if it’s really newsworthy, say for instance the hospice thing that has a specific date, that’ll go to a news editor. If it’s something more general, in your case, if they had a children’s section, it could be that. It could be a features section for the features editor; it might even be a women’s editor, and it would work for that too.

So it could be more than one person at the same publication. It could even be a staff writer. So if you get copies of a paper and just look out for names, you might see that certain people tend to write stories that you think fit in with what you do. If you’re talking to the wedding press, then it's a different lot entirely. So if it's a monthly glossy, you're more likely to be talking to a features editor. Again, it might be more than one person at a publication.

But if you send in tips first, just for a little bit, it just helps break that ice. And you can then be flippant about it and say, “I’m the person that’s been sending you tips about birthday parties”. Hopefully that will chime a bell with them.

So if I understand you correctly, read the papers, identify the names of the individuals, then send the tips by...?

By email. Always use it in the body of your email. Don’t worry about attachments or pdfs of anything like that. But make sure that there are some links going through to your website at the same time.

Okay, and the email address, where would I find that?

That’s a case of just sitting down for the afternoon, and getting on the phone and talking to the newspaper and compiling a list of email addresses.

Okay, and who within the newspaper would be the person to talk to to gte that information?

Sometimes a friendly receptionist will help you out. If you’re not having any luck with that, you can ask to be put through to an editorial assistant; they’re basically trainees. They’ll be the people that open the post and stuff like that, so they should know who everyone is. And actually, if you can make friends with an editorial assistant, or with anybody on any publication, they can be a massive source of information for you.

Right, so basically, a phone call to the offices of the paper, just say, I’m a children’s entertainer, I have a number of tips I’d like to send over, who do you think would be the best person to send that to? They’ll give me an email address, and should I ask for the children’s section..?

Okay, if you’re asking for an email address, you don’t need to say that you’re a children’s entertainer or anything like that. Keep it very professional, very businesslike; “I’m looking for the email addresses of the features editor and the women’s editor, could you give them to me please?”

You don’t need to go into explanations. Going into explanations makes it sound a bit amateurish, if you know what I mean. For all they know you could be someone from Alan Sugar’s office calling... so act as though you expect them to help, but in a nice way.

I think that’s my stumbling block at the moment, not knowing how to get these particular details.

Yeah, and the other thing to do... it is very important to read the publications that any of you are approaching, because quite often you will see little columns like ‘a day in the life of’ or ‘the most important thing I’ve learned’ or little things like that that you wouldn’t otherwise know about.

But when you see things like that you can say; “Oh in your last issue I saw that someone had put some tips together on creating the best BBQ or something like that, I thought you might be interested in these”. That sort of thing puts it in context, and sometimes with the press you have to do that. Otherwise it just gets skimmed over. If you can actually put it in context and make it fit, then it helps a lot more...

And Gordon, this might be something you’d be interested in, I don’t know if you’re on. But obviously you’ve got a few different niches there, so you could be following the wedding press, and putting out little tips wedding wise.

I don’t understand Twitter, I have to be honest. It’s one of the things I need to learn about.

The thing with twitter is just to set up an account, follow some people and just sit on it and see what they do for a while before you dip your toe in. Just follow and see. That will help you get to grips with it. And I know from other clients, the wedding press actually and very collaborative and very welcoming. It’s one of those niche press things that you don’t get in much other niche press that they are very friendly and they do communicate a lot. So that could be an area that you concentrate on; making sure that you follow wedding magazines and planners and al that side of things.

The other thing I thought I would talk about today is actually adding something else to the PR mix. At your parties, is it just you or do you have a assistant helping you out?

Solely me...

Okay. This is crossing over with PR and marketing really... One thing I thought you could do... do you have a database of people who have had parties before of had contact with you?

Yes, I’ve a whole load of names and addresses.

So you could create a database... As I’m sure all of you know, it’s always easier to sell to existing customers than it is to bring in new ones. You could put together a database, or get someone in to do it for you, and actually create a twice yearly newsletter. I’m assuming you’ve just got addresses and telephone numbers for these people as opposed to email addresses?

I did do a little run at Christmas. I save a lot of emails and at Christmas time I sent out a little piece to everyone, that was a letter from Santa. The main purpose of that piece was actually to gather information from people. So, yes, I now keep the email addresses of those people who write to me.

My suggestion is to work on a database, a letter from Santa is fantastic, but another thing you can do is a quarterly or twice a year thing. And because you’re writing these things like the tips, you’ve got material that you could put out to them already. And it’s just that little reminder. You could even go into complex detail in your database as to when the different parties were held, and when they might want to do it again, so actually sending them things out a couple of months before hand, depends on how in depth you want to go.

But just doing something to stay in touch with your customers, and even if they’re not using you again, at least you’re staying in touch and they can pass your details on if perhaps they’ve got a neighbour or friend... and also, the other thing is, you’ve mentioned about the letter from Santa garnering information... once you’ve developed a decent database, then you can actually use that as a method of creating content for press releases. For instance, there’s a site called surveymonkey.com where you can set up a free questionnaire, quite simple, just multiple choice.

So you could put a newsletter together with some tips and a link to a survey, perhaps offer a little prize incentive, like £20 in M&S vouchers or a bottle of champagne for one winner picked out of a hat from everybody that takes part in the survey.

Then just ask them questions like, what’s the biggest hassle about holding a children’s party, or something about taking care of young guests at weddings. And you can use that content to create press releases in the future, and because they’re based around surveys that you’ve conducted it gives it a little bit more credibility.

That makes sense.

Then also you’ve got a great selling tool. And if you ever wanted to sell the business, having a database is a must!

I see that as a longer term thing. I like the idea.

One thing you might like to do then is perhaps get in touch with your local university. Find the employability tutor. Their job is to find work placements for students. Sometimes they’re a couple of weeks, sometimes they can be for a whole year. So you could find yourself an intern to do this sort of thing for you. I use them quite a lot. And as long as you think about what they’ll learn from you so that you can create some sort of programme, it can work really well for both of you.