Year-End PR Housekeeping
By Caron Sjoberg
The end of the year is a good time to take a look at your business plan and assess the information and tools that represent your business to the public. Here’s a quick checklist of 10 things you can do now that will improve your PR results over the coming year:
- Update your news release boilerplate. (that’s the paragraph of important information that should be at the end of all your news releases and media alerts).
- Conduct a collateral audit. Put one of every piece of marketing collateral you use onto a table. See if they are branded, professional and tell a consistent story.
- Check and update your media lists. Check the website of each stations and publication and make sure you have the most current contacts and email addresses.
- Write a social media policy for your business. It’s very important that everyone in your business knows who handles social media messages, how to handle negative posts, the legal implications, etc.
- Navigate through your website to make sure all the information is current. Check to be sure there are no broken links, out-of-date information, or pages that say “Information coming soon.”
- Create an “editorial calendar” for your business, a list of newsworthy events or milestones throughout the coming year that will form the basis for media releases and PR.
- Update your email signature. if you don’t have one, create one. If you do have one, add a link to your company’s Facebook page or blog.
- Thank your vendors. You have no idea who they may be talking to who might be a potential client, donor or volunteer. And it’s the nice thing to do.
- Find out how you rank on the search engines. Go to Google, type in a phrase that people would use if they were looking for a company like yours, then see if you come up. If you don’t, then start working on optimizing your website now.
- Make sure that potential clients can find you in lots of places online. Each of your online communications: e-newsletter, email signature, Facebook page, blog, LinkedIn page, website, etc. should have links to the rest.
