To All You Lovely PR People Out There

I'm a big fan of publicity people: both of my parents worked in the field, each at one time owned their own agency, and my first work as a writer was penning radio ad copy for a local office-supply company.

However: it's 2010, and that's about five years past the point where you should be sending out giant press releases and automatically expecting web sites to host them, frequently having to take the time to reformat them, and then drawing attention to your announcement for you via a closed loop on their dime.

Here's what seems to be the bare minimum industry standard right now when it comes to nearly every news story in the product announcement, exhibit and event and personnel move categories: companies start their own web sites and on their web sites they post this news. You can get a place for this purpose in about 30 seconds through a free blog provider, but you probably already have one. The vast majority of PR people then include a link with the press release so that the other web sites out there have the option of linking to that news -- not spending 10 minutes reformatting it, not using their own bandwidth to host it, not being responsible for getting the information right, but running a link to what you want to say, how you want it formatted, how much information you want to host. If the PR person involved is running an event, they frequently make a poster or graphic announcement in the form of a JPEG to send along as well.

It's all easy to do, and I'm guessing you'll get a lot more coverage that way -- I know I'm pretty much done with doing that part of your job for you. If that takes me off your PR list, that's fine, I apologize for the affront, and I'll pick up the information as best I can elsewhere.

Thank you for your continued interest and support.

(I've already had some questions in the 20 minutes since I put this up. I'm not trying to dictate terms, all I'm saying is that if getting your news out depends solely on me copying and pasting the entirety of what you've sent me into its own document on my site and then drawing attention to that new document, you're missing out on opportunities where I might not have the time or the inclination to do all of that for you, but I might have the time and inclination to run a link to your web site that says "Eric Wince New Brigadoon Comics VP" or "Phantom Dog Newest Add to Brigadoon Digital Effort" or "via PR comes word that Brigadoon mainstay John Burgess has an art exhibit opening up January 24 at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis.")
 
posted 11:33 am PST | Permalink
 

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