The Hispanic Child Support Resource Center Nuestros Hijos, nuestra responsabilidad
Communications
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About Media Relations / Tactics

Choose from these media relations tactics to get your organization’s name in the news:


Blogger Relations

You can share ideas not only with journalists, but also with authors of blogs.

While many of the rules for sharing ideas with journalists apply, bloggers have a slightly different perspective. They often are subject matter experts, they are opinionated, and they write primarily about items that interest them personally.

As you would do for reporters, cultivate a relationship with bloggers.

Read their past blogs and become familiar with their topics, preferences, and style before sharing an idea. An informal, conversational approach is more likely to appeal to bloggers than a mass-mailed press release.

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Follow-Up

Follow-up is an important component of media relations. Diligence in following up with reporters can help you land stories.

Make a note to follow up at these times:

  • After you have sent a media advisory or news release.
  • After a reporter has interviewed someone from your office.

During the follow-up, offer to provide any additional information the reporter needs.

One tool that will help with follow-up is a clipping service. For a fee, a clipping service will troll a wide range of news sources—newspapers, magazines, Web sites, radio, TV—looking for mentions of your organization’s name. It then will send you copies of the articles in which your name appeared.

This information is helpful for two reasons:

  • It lets you track the effectiveness of your media relations efforts.
  • It gives you insight into your public image.

Clipping services are similar in concept to Internet monitoring services, which track mentions of your organization in forums, blogs, and other online arenas.

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Media Kit

Media kits are one-stop shopping for journalists. They include everything a journalist needs to write a story on your news. Also called a press kit, a media kit may accompany a news conference or may be a standalone product. You can print and mail it to reporters or send it electronically. You will also want to put a copy on your Web site.

Please ask your public relations officer to approve your media kit before you distribute it.

Media kits may include these items:

  • Contact Information for Sources
    Difficulty in finding contact information is a key complaint of reporters. Make sure that you include phone numbers and e-mail addresses:
    • For each expert.
    • For the person who is coordinating media interviews.
    Doubling up increases the chances that a reporter can reach someone at your organization.
  • Experts’ Bios
    Brief biographies establish your experts as credible and outline the areas on which they are most suited to comment.

  • Fact Sheets
    These include compilations of facts and figures that are relevant to your topic—perhaps the number of custodial parents who receive child support, the average amount paid, the number of clients you serve per month, etc. Fact sheets do the background research for the reporter, so that he or she can write the article more quickly. Pertinent, interesting facts also can interest a journalist in writing a story.

  • Graphics
    Relevant photographs, charts, or other graphics spice up a story. If you can provide these for a journalist, lessening the amount of work he or she needs to do for the story, you will increase the chances of seeing your organization’s name in print.

  • News Releases

  • Organization Background
    A brief description of your services, a history of your organization, and your mission statement orients the journalist, and ultimately the reader, to your organization.

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News Conference

If you have major news to announce, you can hold a news conference and invite all media to attend.

A news conference has these effects:

  • Calls attention to your announcement.
  • Makes your news seem more credible.
  • Gives reporters easy access to your news and experts.
  • May encourage journalists to write a story if they see their competitors are covering the news, too.

Holding a press conference involves coordinating details such as these:

  • Finding a large meeting space conducive to multiple reporters, TV cameras, and other recording equipment.
  • Preparing speaking points, and inviting and coaching speakers.
  • Inviting partners, local officials, and other dignitaries, if appropriate.
  • Inviting media, both local and national.
  • Assembling media kits.

Before you plan a news conference, be sure to involve your public affairs officer.

When you hold a news conference, you can broadcast the video and audio live over the Internet so that reporters who could not attend the conference in person can participate from afar. You also can record these webcasts and post them on your Web site so that other journalists—and interested members of the public—can view the happenings at a later date.

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News Release

A news release is a short article that opens with the news you wish to announce, then gives supporting information and quotes from your experts. See our press releases.

Reporters might run your release verbatim. Yet most will use it as the basis for a story and do their own research, interviewing people outside and perhaps inside of your organization for even more information.

Please check with your public affairs officer before sending a release.

Remember these pointers:

  • Use a strong headline.
  • Condense your story into 10 words, and put them first; they may be all the reporter reads.
  • Explain why the news is important.
  • Include the facts—the who, what, when, where, and how.
  • Avoid flowery or jargon-filled language.
  • Make your contact information prominent.
  • Keep it short; one page is best.

A media advisory takes place before a news conference or other media event and includes just the basics:

  • A brief, one- to two-paragraph summary of the news you are announcing.
  • Event location.
  • Event date and time.
  • Speakers.
  • Contact information for your organization.
  • Dial-in and/or login information, if it announces a teleconference or webcast.

Typically a brief one-page document, a media advisory can be mailed or e-mailed.

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Newswires

To reach a broad audience, you can post your press release on a newswire. You can target the news services to send to only the media outlets that deal with child support and family issues.

The Associated Press, Reuters, and United Press International are major newswires. PR Newswire is a service especially for professional communicators.

Please check with your public affairs officer before posting a release.

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Online Newsroom

To make it easier for journalists to write stories on your organization, create a media section on your Web site. Place on it all of the information you make available to reporters:

  • News releases (include traditional, video and social media releases, current and past).
  • Contact information.
  • Fact sheets.
  • Media kits.
  • Experts’ bios.
  • Photos or graphics.

Highlight current news at the top of the section. As soon as news become stale, move it into an Archives section so that reporters can still use it to research a topic’s history.

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Radio Tour

In a radio tour, an expert gives one or more radio interviews. Your expert can participate from his or her office, no travel required.

To set up a radio tour, first contact your public affairs officer for approval. Then contact radio stations that have talk shows, send them a news release, and if they are interested, schedule a phone interview for your expert. To make a splash with timely news, set up multiple interviews on the same day.

A clear phone line, a quiet office, and a glass of water for the speaker are important equipment for a radio tour. Have your expert write down his or her talking points before the show. One of those points should be to tell people how they can reach your office.

The beauty of the radio tour is the ability to reach multiple audiences with minimal time commitment from your expert. You also may tape these sessions and post them on your Web site as a podcast.

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Satellite Media Tour

A satellite media tour is a TV version of a radio tour, where the expert joins multiple broadcast interviews from a single location.

To conduct a satellite media tour, first ask your public affairs officer for approval. Then, you would need to hire a company with either a broadcasting studio or a satellite truck. That company would coordinate logistics such as recording and broadcasting technology, lighting, and makeup.

To get even more mileage from your interviews, you can record them and post them as podcasts on your Web site or on YouTube or other social networking sites.

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Social Media Release

A fairly new invention, a social media release appears online. This modified press release uses new communications technologies and shares information in multiple formats. In addition to text describing the news, it may include these and other features:

  • Expanded Contact Information: Sources’ phone numbers, e-mail addresses, IM addresses, Web sites, blogs.
  • Videos: Video news releases, public service announcements, or TV ads.
  • Graphics: Logos, pie charts, graphs, etc.
  • Photos: Shots of agency officials, special events, etc.
  • Podcasts: Audio or audio-and-video files that discuss child support.
  • Newsfeeds: A way for reporters to receive press releases automatically.
  • Social Bookmarks: A special Web-based page with a collection of links to online child support resources.

Remember to contact your public affairs officer before posting a social media release.

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Video News Release

While a press release provides journalists with a ready-made story for print, a video news release (VNR) gives them a ready-made story for TV. These snappy video segments may include these and other elements:

  • Interviews with experts.
  • Interviews with members of the public.
  • Demonstrations of products or services.
  • Your logo or other graphics.

If a media source does not air your VNR, you can still share it with others by using it as a podcast or posting it on YouTube. Be sure to ask your public affairs officer for approval before creating a VNR.

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Last Update: December 1, 2010 1:44 PM