ACPR Blog » PR

Get in touch with parenting journalists today.

admin — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:34:44 +0000

If you want the fastest way to get to the people who can provide editorial coverage, get the ACPR parenting media contacts database. Up-to-date, this is the same database I use every week to promote my PR clients. With contacts at national parenting magazines in the UK and Ireland, plus details of local parenting magazines, parenting websites and journalists with an interest in parenting in the national media, this database can make your PR far more effective. Just £125, you will save hours of your time: the cost is far less than buying all the magazines and laboriously ploughing through to find contacts too. Pay electronically using our secure payment provider and the database can be with you on the same day so you can start promoting your business to the right editors right away.

What do journalists want to know about this month?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:04:01 +0000

If you are planning this month’s PR, here are the topics to focus on:
News pages are being completed for November: you are just in time to get coverage if you have a topical event – contact the editorial assistant if you are unsure who handles the news pages in your target publication.
Features writers are looking at wrapping up their Christmas stories. If you have had something amazing happen to you at Christmas get in touch with some of the real life magazines.
You may be in time for a few last minute Christmas product features, but you are probably better looking at ideas for the New Year – will any of your products help with detoxing, New Year Resolutions or generally making a fresh start?
If you want some personal help pinning down an angle that will get your business covered, email antonia@acpr.co.uk.

10 ideas for Planning your Marketing and PR

admin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:57:48 +0000

I spend much of my time coaching small business owners to help them promote their own business. Here are some tips from my talks:

Start by being clear about what is unique and different about your business: it is hard to stand out from all the other businesses, especially if you want to use press releases to get free editorial coverage.
Make a plan: write down all the ideas you can think of for promoting your business – using sticky notes can make this easy to sort out. You might want to do it with a friend to help stimulate ideas.
Draw up a month by month activity plan: have a look at the promotional plan and action plans at PRBasics in the Free Download section to get more of an idea of how I’d lay out a plan and some promotional ideas. Have a column for advertising, public relations, online marketing, events, and perhaps include leafleting and direct mailing and any other marketing strategies you will use. Note down when new lines will be coming on board, especially ones exclusive to you, when you will have sales, and seasonal events like Mothers Day with which you could tie in promotional activities. If ideas and planning don’t come easily to you, I can help with a telephone consultation which will really get your brain going, or even write your plan for you after chatting through all the issues.
Spread your promotional ideas out throughout the year, so you have something going on every month and week. Some people do PR every Monday, or the first week of every month, say.
Once you have your ideas, look at the fixed costs for e.g. attending events, getting flyers printed. Set aside a small amount for ads each month.
Think about your strengths and where you would need to get help in. If you like writing, you might want to write your own press releases: again there is a template at PRBasics.
If you can’t imagine how to start writing a press release, I can write one for you to get you started, and you could then adapt it to cover ‘new news’ the following month. Press releases cost £40 per hundred words and are usually around 350 words long.
If you have written your own press release and want a professional edit, I offer a press release ‘health check’ service.
To make it easier to get in touch with the people who can give you coverage I offer an extensive and up-to-date database of media contacts at parenting magazines (national and local), websites, and journos with an interest in parenting at womens mags and newspapers (£125). You can then email and phone with your news as often as suits you.
Finally, I have a limited number of slots to do PR for people: a single press release costs in the region of £600 with a reduction if you book regular work.

Which magazines will reach the customers you are targeting?

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:43:13 +0000

The latest ABC figures came out this week, telling us which magazines have gained readers and which are going down in popularity. In the last 6 months the credit crunch has hit many magazines, especially those featuring celebrities.

If you are looking to target women, you can’t beat coverage in Take a Break which has two or three times the circulation of most other women’s magazines, leading ABC’s sales tables after the TV guides. After that, the most read magazines include Saga, Reader’s Digest. OK!, Closer, Glamour and Chat.

If you want to reach younger women, Glamour and Cosmopolitan lead the tables: for older women look at Good Housekeeping, Yours and Woman & Home.

I can’t live without…..Google Alerts

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:36:50 +0000

If you have not yet signed up to Google Alerts, you are missing out on one of the easiest wasys to see if your promotional efforts are working. It is ideal for business owners or anyone in PR or SEO. Simply enter your business name – or if you work with clients, the name of your client’s company – and you will get daily alerts to new occurances of the brand on the internet. In their Link Building Article, KKSmarts recommend using it to track when other sites use articles you have written. I use it to see when press releases get used in unexpected places. Try it today.