The problem with some Lakeland public relations companies is that they dive into a campaign without really knowing the platform where they like to publish the promotional materials. Even in this age of a highly digitized world, we are still dependent on newspapers for the most vital information about our societies, politics, economics, and even sports and entertainment.

While most newspapers have transformed into digitalized versions, they are most likely following the same formula when choosing which stories to run and give space to. Poor knowledge of this process can negatively affect Lakeland public relations campaigns.

If you don’t know how to be chosen as a story for the newspaper’s main headlines (whether offline or online), how are you supposed to attract journalists, editors, and their readers?

Bypassing Journalists

Here’s one of the mistakes that most Lakeland public relations companies do: bypassing the journalists and going straight to the editors. Unless you’re quite chummy with the editors, that press release you just sent them will be delegated as tasks to the journalists.

At best, the editors will ask the journalists to study the merit of your press release and see if there’s something worthy there to salvage. If you have already made the journalists feel bad by bypassing them, they’ll probably not do thorough research about your company and its products and services.

Be respectful enough to send the same PR material to the journalists, so they know their presence in the newspaper chain is being respected, too.

Mass Media Pitches

Creating a single strategy for all media—newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and the internet—does not work for any business. To truly understand what each of these media outfit needs, you must study their processes and what makes a news article valuable to them.

Only then can you design the right campaign material that will attract the readers and viewers of these mass media companies.

Purposeful Press Releases

Only write and send out a press release if there is something important that happened in your company. If you send a press release every time someone gets a promotion or someone left the company, you will be like the boy who cried wolf.

When it’s time to really publish an article about something major that happened, the editors and journalists will see it nothing as a ploy to get free space in the paper.

Use your press releases wisely and don’t spam the editors with them. There’s nothing more annoying for media practitioners than seeing their 1,000+ inbox getting filled with PRs from you.