For cost, credibility and continuity, you can’t beat PR. It’s a great tool to build brand and boost business.

Public Relations offers an economical way to stimulate awareness of, and the demand for, your company’s products or services. It gives your brand the power to reach millions of people—providing third-party credibility and the “good housekeeping” seal of approval.

Best practices:
1. Conduct an Audit

• A PR audit will tell you whether or not there’s a good brand story to tell. How well does it merit with the media and its respective audience: will it have value to their readers?

2. Hold Strategy Sessions

• Develop the message and story line. This requires creating multi-level stories and angles. (You need a lot of ammunition in your arsenal.)
• Shape your message. Provide expertise and information, not a sales pitch.
• Remember, good content is vital.
• Create an online press kit.
• Stage mock interviews with C-level executives.

3. Stretch Your Media

• Research your core media.
• Make sure content is relevant to your audience.
• Look at related media slightly outside your core target.

4. Be a Journalist

• Journalistic skills, not creative writing, is what is needed to write good press releases and news articles.
• Avoid long prose. (Think in small, easy-to-digest sound bites.)
• Eliminate corporate jargon.
• Use bullet-point lists (easier to make your point and stay on topic).
• Write press releases in clear declarative sentences with no hype.
• To get attention online, put the news in the subject line of the email (preferably in the first four words) without exclamation points or capitalization.
• Tell more in the headline and subhead.
• Provide the story in three sentences. Follow with details and lots of subheads.
• Avoid “fluffy” quotes and “for immediate release” in favor of real information, such as “Financial Crisis tie-in.”

5. Read the Media Daily

• Read the news and ask yourself, “Where could my company fit into the story?” as well as “What was the reporter thinking?”

6. Work  With All Media

• Be willing to build relationships.
• Avoid being arrogant. (The reporter you didn’t consider important one day may wind up working for a bigger media outlet. He/she will remember you.)

Done effectively, PR can really do a brand good.