Motivational PR Presentation

You know you're a WAHM, when you want to do something for yourself, it cuts into your sleep. I only had about 4 hours of sleep last night. I'm taking a writing class that gets me home around 10 p.m. and then I'm up at my normal time of 3:30. I had two meetings today that were rewarding. So, it has been a good day.

I started my day by attending the morning meeting of Success North Dallas. I wanted to hear Jeff Crilley speak. Jeff used to be a reporter at Fox News but 6 weeks ago he started his own PR firm, Real News PR. I wanted to make sure I reintroduced myself to him (we met two years ago), give him my card and let him know I'm available for freelance work.

At the meeting, Jeff was also supposed to talk about "How to take advantage of the social media (blogs, YouTube and Facebook)." Unfortunately, he opened his presentation up to the audience for questions and ran out of time to discuss this topic.

That's OK because I think Jeff is a brilliant guy and every time I hear him speak, I learn something I can apply to my business. It's like attending a motivational PR session.

Here are a few points I want to always keep in mind as I try to get my clients into the media:

• It's not about the press release, it's about the story.
• Stay away from self serving "commercial" press releases.
• What does the viewer need to know and why?
• What is the news value?
• Lead your story with the benefit to the viewers/readers.