Ask Mickie: Can a Press Release Save My Company?

Darby writes:

Times are tough. Money is more than tight. Can a press release save my company?

Mickie responds:

I’m not going to sugarcoat this. A single press release is unlikely to save your company. I can’t give you Vegas odds. They’re probably better than a state lottery, but reality is that a single press release is simply a start. (Read more…)

Personal Public Relations Blunders: A Cautionary Tale

Lately, I’ve been taking time to reflect. Part of this reflection has concentrated on my career, and more often than not I’m dwelling on my failures, rather than my successes. More than a few of those failures are related to public relations, and considering they say you learn more from your mistakes than from your triumphs, a look at some of my public relations blunders should provide a little insight in what not to do in the future. (Read more…)

Be Careful Not to Create Your Own Public Relations Crisis

Late last week, I received “the freak-out call.”  Back when I was a journalist, one public relations rep or another would call, frantic about a client I was about to portray negatively in a column or story. As a journalist, the freak-out call was a guilty pleasure; sometimes it even provided information for a story that I might not have gotten without the freak-out. The call I received last week revealed what it was like to be on the public relations end of a potential negative news story, and a self-made crisis was narrowly averted through careful crisis management. (Read more…)

The PR Fuel Mailbag: Press Releases as Email Attachments, Expert Quotes. and Loudmouth CEOs

Q: I need to send out a press release that includes graphics. But many public relations pros say not to send out press releases as an attachment. What should I do? (Read more…)

Mickie Plants Trees, Does Push Ups - What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I have to admit, I’m not very green. I resent recycling. I don’t drive a hybrid. But I love trees. And I like Planet Earth — both the series and the orbiting sphere on which I reside. When I started eReleases, I liked the idea of taking paper out of the equation (physically mailing and faxing press releases was still being done in earnest 11 years ago). For me, it was about being efficient. (Read more…)

PR Media Coverage

It’s easy for public relations firms to overestimate the impact of media coverage. Unless you land your client on the cover of Time or the front page of the New York Times, it can be disheartening to see how little impact a single piece of media coverage brings. My own history with media coverage is an example of how difficult it is to quantify the benefits of media coverage in the public relations world. (Read more…)

Turning the Tables: A Journalist Talks Public Relations

A while back, a friend who works in the public relations industry cornered me with a few questions. The following discussion about public relations and the media takes a little peek into how the two intertwined industries relate to each other. (Read more…)

Public Relations Tips: Protecting Your Brand and Working with Investor Relations

Part of protecting your company’s brand is ferreting out which public relations opportunities are being presented by questionable companies. Recently, I turned down the opportunity for one of our company analysts to give an interview to MN1.com, an online video company that covers the stock market. By weighing, and rejecting, this opportunity for seemingly easy publicity, I saved our company from a public relations nightmare. (Read more…)

Turning Other People’s PR Lemons Into PR Lemonade

Very few companies get PR. Many think a press release is a high-resolution PDF created on company letterhead that looks pretty. (Read more…)

Managing Public Relations Through the Strategic Press Leak

My forte as a journalist was reporting bad news. Whistleblowers, inside sources, gossip–I loved it all. I got a tip, tracked it down, and then the newspaper splashed a big, nasty headline on my story. Sometimes, even my editors would have been surprised about how I got my scoops. (Read more…)