From a publicity perspective, I am all about how things look from the outside – what the customer sees before experiencing what you have to offer. These things involve; your online branding of the website and social network profiles, advertisements you place in publications, the sign on your building to the look of the carpark and entry to your venue, the front door, the décor, table and chairs, the visual appeal of the menu right down the business card you leave in the bill folder.

Anything to generate a bit of chatter about your business is a great thing. If they are going to talk – may as well give them something to talk about! Local press always love a local story and one where the community benefits are always a winner.

Getting involved in your community is always something many restaurants & cafes aim to do, or already do but feel they don’t get the benefit from it.

Some benefits are:

What to look for when engaging a PR Company

Not every company in the world needs a PR representative, it all depends on circumstance, resources, what you actually want to accomplish and whether or not you can achieve it yourself.

(Extracts plucked from the fabulous book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott )

The web has changed the rules. If you’re still following the traditional PR techniques for your venue, I’m sure you’re finding that they are ineffective. To be much more successful, consider these New Rules of Media Relations:

City Publicity's 30 Free PR Pitch Tips

1. If you’re really good you can pitch your release in 140 characters ( twitter)
2. A good phone pitch should be about 15 seconds in length, (about 140 characters) right? Everything has not changed.
3. Best pitch is timely, personal, unique. Bad pitch is spam with no understanding of the reporter
4. Don’t twitter-spam journos – follow, engage, build a relationship first then pitch ( if relevant to their field).

When should you send a media release to the press? If it's newsworthy and useful to the reader send it out.

When determining the need to send out a press release, there are many things to consider. There are no hard and fast rules, but as an online pr specialist the key thing the remember is to make sure that the release will be of interest to the reader of the publication you are targeting and is newsworthy. If it doesn't fit these two criteria, you're just wasting both your own time and that of the editor.

If you own a local business, there’s good news when it comes to online PR. You can win big with online marketing and localised public relations to generate free messaging or promotion for your business.

When a local organization produces its own online news content, it almost always results in increased search engine rankings, traffic, and business. The more education and informative the content is the better your results. Here are three easy ways to get started with local online PR:

Put a News Section on Your Website

Are you READY  to receive the exposure you are chasing?
Being ready to receive media exposure is the biggest part of the process.  Getting media attention and coverage is very exciting indeed! Receiving  3rd party endorsements via articles and editorial is one of the best ways to promote and give your business and profile some credibility.

Media often send out what we call “Media Calls” or Media Call outs”. They are notifications of what they need for a story and Requests for pitches. I currently receive them via email, twitter or sometimes by phone.

Media usually list SPECIFICALLY what they need and the deadline and who to contact. If I have what they need then I respond with the details requested. If I don’t, I usually you put a call out to my networks to see if anyone else has the info required.
It s a good opportunity to share the media love and possibly score some exposure out of it J.