By Mohamed Allouba Can your release compete? News Focus Syria Thinks Small Damascus turns to microfinance to combat poverty An Industry Unraveling Once a symbol of national pride, cotton’s prospects are coming apart at the seams A New Way of Doing Business Non-profit group promotes economic development by giving companies a helping hand The Science of Buying Marketers examine the brain to find out what makes consumers tick Digital Booty With electronic piracy plaguing the music business,legitimate media companies scramble for a business model that pays A Rocky Start Theft, corruption and a little chaos mark the launch of a new property levy meant to haul the country’s tax system into the modern era Highway Robbery Reputation of white taxi program takes a hit as drivers caught rigging meters By Mohamed Allouba Avoid the ‘circular file’ by sending well-timed, media-friendly news releases.

By Tom Gara

The relationship between journalists and PR tpeople is a symbiotic one, where each party has the potential to make the other’s life, and work, much easier. Good PR people keep reporters aware of what is happening out there in the big wide world, serving up handy pre-packaged information that can form the basis of a story that their editor and readers will enjoy. Good journalists cover all the important stories of the day, including what is going on in the business world, giving PR people a growing bank of news clippings and press reports to show to their boss and customers. Everybody wins.

Unfortunately for all concerned, this often isn’t how it works. Journalists spend the day complaining about the garbage being sent to them by PR “hacks.” The hacks themselves see journalists as clueless outsiders who just don’t “get it” — because if they did get it, they’d be covering the amazing story of company ‘X’ with much more gusto — why don’t they understand how big and important the story is?

As a business publication, we at Business Today Egypt get our fair share of press releases and company statements, both for bt and our sister publication Egypt Today. Some of them are great and end up inspiring a longer look at the company and industry in question. Some of them are good enough to make it (in digested form) into our monthly news wrap-up section. And plenty are bad enough to make us want to switch to a yearly birdwatching publication just to avoid them.

Regardless of how good or bad they get, there is always room for improvement. In that spirit, we put together some of the biggest dos and don’ts for writing a press release. PR people who would like to write a dos and don’ts for being a good journalists are welcome to reply — via press release, of course.

DON’T:

Arabic tends to be a fairly extravagant language, making use of extensive honorifics, titles and descriptive words. This does not translate well into English. “Our esteemed company, whose great success and highest imaginable standards have been noted with high regard by respected entities across the world,” may be the literal translation of something that sounds perfectly appropriate in Arabic. The problem is, in English, it sounds like a letter that a candlestick maker might have sent to the Queen in 1725.

English is a much more functional, to-the-point kind of language, especially in business use. “Our company, a market leader and winner of 4 international awards,” would be far more appropriate. As a general rule, don’t use any word that is not objectively true, provable by evidence and reflective of real characteristics of your company. Words that can’t be proven or backed up by fact are basically meaningless when it comes to business English. Avoid words like distinguished, esteemed, honorable, greatest, most respected and perfect.

Instead, say that you are a market leader (if you are one), have been noted in X newspaper / television show / magazine (if you have been), have customers across the world (if you do), have been in the industry for X number of years, or are a member of any trade federation, group of companies, or association.

Remember that media people receive piles of press releases every day, and that usually, each release will only be given a few moments of attention to work out whether or not it is worth publishing. If the first three paragraphs of your release are about your company and the titles of its senior managers, the history of the company and its internal structure, then your release will likely be heading directly to the circular file (aka the trash bin). Make sure that the very first sentence of the release follows this formula:

Name of company + brief description of what you do + what the announcement is all about.

So, an ideal opening sentence for a press release would be:

“Business Today Egypt, Egypt’s largest national business magazine, has today released the results of its annual salary survey. The survey, which took place in the month of September”

If sending your announcement by email, be considerate of the user who receives that mail at the other end. Nothing gets a mail deleted faster than a 20-megabyte photo attachment, or a series of 6 5-megabyte PDF files that take five minutes to open. A good idea is to host any images or large files on your own server, and include only a small thumbnail and a link to the full image. If you cannot host images yourself, many free web-based services are available.

You know the story of the boy who cried wolf? After so many false alarms, when the wolf actually came to town, nobody believed the boy. The same thing can happen to your company if your PR people send out press releases like teenagers send text messages. A certain type of PR person believes that sending a press release to announce completely minor details will keep their company “on the radar” in the media. Not true. It will just keep your company on the black list of people whose press releases contain no useful information.

DO:

Nothing will make your announcements and news releases more media-friendly than the inclusion of plenty of usable information about your company and industry. This will often be the difference between your release making it as a two sentence news clipping on page 39 and your release becoming a news story in its own right.

For example, if your company has just signed a major new contract with an international company, don’t just include the name and background of each company and the details of the contract. Include things such as:

The total size of the Egyptian, regional and global markets for your product, in both units and dollars

Which other major, well-known companies your business works with

The background to the deal — how the two companies came into contact, how long it took to finalize

Prospects for further cooperation between the two companies in the future

Will the deal create new jobs, expand current facilities, or bring new investment into Egypt? If so, mention it. When a journalist sees this kind of information, it helps them see the bigger picture of what the story is, making it much more likely that they will follow up on the release with a full story.

When news outlets run a story based on information from a company statement, they will most likely add in the quotes, or at least snippets of the quotes, that were included in the statement. If all the quotes are attributed to the same person, then there is only so much of that one person that most journalists will include in their story. If you include quotes from different people — ie marketing director, CEO and board chairman — then it is likely that a quote from each of them will make it through to the story.

Another good move is to include a quote from someone outside of the company, like an industry analyst, to give a more independent, credible source for comparison. Additionally, if the press release concerns dealings with another organization, include a quote from a senior manager in that organization as well.

If possible, have somebody available for interviews and additional comments in the days following the release of the statement, and provide their contact details in the release. Journalists will often want to add an original spin to their reporting of a company announcement, and being able to speak with someone from the company provides that opportunity.

If your company hopes to see itself getting real media attention, make sure that all your press releases for at least the last twelve months are available online. When journalists are exploring the idea of covering your company in a news story, one of the first places they look will be online — first at your own website and press center, and then at results from search engines and news websites. If plenty of news releases are available, it will help the journalist put together a picture of what your company has been doing (and saying) in the past.

For smaller businesses or those without a decent website, submitting every press release to newswire services like AMEinfo.com and Zawya.com is a good first step. These services will archive your releases and keep them available (and indexed by search engines) for those searching for your company.

Ask yourself when is the ideal time for information in your release to hit the media and the public. Just before or after a product release? As soon as possible? Not until the end of the financial year? Knowing when you want the news published is important in judging when to distribute the press release. Equally, think about the timelines of the news organizations you are sending the release to. For example, a monthly magazine will typically produce the next month’s magazine in the current month, going to print in the last week of each month. If your news release needs to be published in mid-December, then it needs to be sent to monthly magazines in mid-November.

Daily newspapers and television shows will often have a backlog of business news and announcements, but regardless, their production cycle is obviously much faster. A release sent a week in advance of the desired news date should do the trick. Remember: Nothing is more likely to make your release a new member of the scrap paper basket than sending it out in early November with “NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL FEBRUARY 2008” written across the top.  bt