Writing an effective press release is important if you want to get your company’s voice heard and proactively reach a wider audience. People remember great stories, so when the time comes that they need your product or service, they’ll think of seeing your news and achievements in the media and consider your company for their needs.

That said, writing a press release is easier said than done and there are a few key elements that each release should contain before you pitch it to your target media publications.

1. A unique news hook
One of the most important elements of any press release. Having a unique news hook/angle is what differentiates your news from being published and not being published. It’s easy to think that everything your company does is immediately newsworthy, but that’s not the case. When evaluating how interesting your story is, put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and consider whether other people would find it interesting. Even better, run your idea past a PR specialist to sound it out, or look online and see if similar topics have been covered. This will give you a good indication of whether your news will be picked up by the press.

2. A newsworthy headline
When it comes to pitching a press release to the media, a catchy headline is the first thing that will entice a journalist to open your email and read more about what you have to say. Headlines also offer a chance to be fun and use a play on words to draw people in. Even better if your headline of choice makes people smile. Keep it short, snappy and don’t give too much of the game away in the press release header.

3. Supporting information
This is the who, what, where, when and how of your press release. Once journalists and readers are hooked in by the headline, they’ll want to know the essential background information about your company and the news story in question. Make sure you put yourself in the reader’s shoes for this section and fill in any gaps that your headline and introduction haven’t covered yet. For example, if you’ve won an award; where was the ceremony held? Who were you up against? Who was judging the awards ceremony?

4. Insightful quotes
A great press release should also include a couple of quotes that add value to your release and offer new insight to your readers. If you’re partnering up with another organisation, a quote from your companies CEO along with a high-profile contact from the other company will go hand-in-hand. If you’re writing about winning an award, a quote from the CEO and a member of the judging panel will both make great additions to your story.

5. A selection of great photographs
A great photograph is vital to securing media coverage (especially in print publications). If you can include several high-quality, relevant photographs in your press release then it has much more chance of success. Visuals will make your story more visual and allow readers to put faces to names – humanising your news story. Professional photography is also best but not always attainable for smaller businesses with a minimal marketing budget. In this case, use a high-quality phone camera and take several images, selecting only the best for inclusion in your press release.

For advice on getting your company news into the media and, email Sophie at LIT Communication - a Huddersfield PR agency, at hello@litcommunication.com

1. Curate your brand’s social media content
As we know, business owners can be very, well… busy. Marketing your brand easily falls to the bottom of the to-do list when you’re spending time doing your day job and other admin that comes with it. LIT Communication can make sure your social media accounts are populated with daily social media content to keep engagement levels high and attract new audiences through your key channels.

2. Craft an attention-grabbing press release
Do you have some news to shout about, but you don’t know how or where to shout about it? We can start by drafting a press release that tells a concise story and helps voice your business achievements, ready to send to local, regional or national journalists who’ll be interested in publishing your news.

3. Write content for your blog
As you might have realised by reading through the LIT Communication blog – we love to write! And what better way to do put our skills into action then helping you populate your own website’s blog (which will also directly influence your site’s SEO). We’ll incorporate the keywords people use to search for your business online and offer tips and advice to your audience to help grow your brand’s digital authority.

4. Pitch your story to the media – local, regional & national
Once we’ve drafted a press release, we use a bespoke pitching process to present your news to the media and liaise with the right editors to help you secure coverage, interviews and media features. Whether you’re looking for local, regional, national or industry press coverage, we can help you with everything from Huddersfield-based PR to national industry pitching.

5. Write catchy email marketing content
Email newsletters are important for letting your new and loyal customers know what’s going on behind the scenes and announcing new products, services or events. Let us tackle your email marketing content by writing unique newsletters that engage your audience and drive clicks through to your website.

6. Social media coaching
Do you want to get social but don’t know where to start? LIT Communication can provide social media coaching for the channels you want to use – and even come into your office to deliver the training to you and your staff; meaning you can be a Twitter-pro or a LinkedIn whizz in no time at all.

7. Write an impressive awards entry
Awards are a great way to get recognition for your brand and the hard work you put into growing it. We also know that they can be time-consuming and difficult to do if you’re not used to writing long awards applications. We’ve helped several businesses enter and win a plethora of industry and local awards and are ready to help you do the same. Contact us today to enquire about local PR services and awards entries and how we can support you with this.

8. Secure guest author opportunities
Building your brand’s authority is a challenge for many business owners, and authoring articles on industry blogs and news websites is an excellent way to help you achieve this. We’ll pitch bespoke topics to popular and relevant publications, and help you write or proof these to meet demanding editorial guidelines.

9. Create graphics and logos for your small business
One of our newest services – we can design the perfect graphics, business cards or logos for your small business, and even put you in touch with local printing experts to help see your project through from start to finish.

10. Build relevant, quality links pointing to your website
Does your SEO need a boost? LIT Communication has vast experience in off-site SEO and building quality, relevant links to your website (one of Google’s key performance indicators) and can help you start climbing the rankings and getting featured more online.

If you’re on the search for a PR and communications agency in Huddersfield, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us directly at hello@litcommunication.com

If there’s one thing we enjoy more than PR - it’s writing about cars. So, what better blog to write than one about some of our favourite, inspirational automotive PR and advertising campaigns in recent years? The great benefit of public relations for automotive manufacturers is that each one already has a collection of global fans, who are already anticipating the brand’s next move.

This means that when a new campaign’s released (as long as it’s impressive), it’s almost guaranteed to receive positive feedback and stick at the forefront of an audience's mind.

1. Lexus: driven by intuition
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Shot by Oscar-winning Director Kevin Macdonald, the Lexus Driven by Intuition uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to select the common elements required to make a script. From there, additional and unique data from the Lexus brand was added to keep things original and create an advert written entirely by AI.

The advert amassed nearly 100,000 views on YouTube and depicts the perfect collaboration between man and machine. The story seamlessly demonstrates how the new Lexus ES, self-charging hybrid model is designed to predict the driver’s intentions, as well as road and traffic conditions.

Watch it here:

2. Mustang: Speed Dating
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Perfectly timed for valentine’s day, Mustang released their Speed Dating video on YouTube to help address the outdated cliché that woman isn’t very good at driving.

Ford selected its pick of young actors who thought they were auditioning for a new dating show by meeting up with the show’s lead star. Unbeknown to them, she was a professional stunt driver who quickly invited them to play passenger in her Mustang. She starts by pretending she’s struggling to drive, then kicks into full stunt mode and shows them her high-speed skills.
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With millions of YouTube views, the video quickly went viral. Be warned, you can’t watch this video without a smile creeping across your face (watch it and see for yourself). 

3. Ford: Try More
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Advertised via social media and TV, Ford’s Canadian ‘Try More’ campaign was devised with an interactive, experience-led element in mind. The ultimate goal was to encourage potential customers to try new things, subtly alluding to the brand’s redesign of its core models.
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Ford hosted a series of live events with activities such as axe throwing, bull riding and MMA open for people to test out, all while showcasing its new models onsite to encourage attendees to test drive the models and experience the redesigned vehicles in action.

4. BMW: Road to Coachella
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As Coachella’s first-ever automotive sponsorship partner, BMW’s target audience for this campaign was millennials and Generation Z, perfect for those attending Festival. The BMW #RoadtoCoachella campaign hired singer Khalid to create several designs for a fleet of BMW i plug-in hybrid vehicles that were positioned at several ‘pit-stops’ on the road to Coachella, which featured competitions, concerts and food trucks.

Using ten influential celebrities to bolster and boost the campaign, these influencers documented their journey to Coachella, posting and sharing social media content to raise the campaign’s profile and encourage Coachella attendees to document their own #RoadtoCoachella using the hashtag.
The campaign also featured well-known Coachella performers, including Marshmello and Hans Zimmer’s all-star orchestra.

​For automotive PR services based in Huddersfield, get in touch with us via the contact button today for a free consultation.

 The number of social media users worldwide in 2018 was 3.196 billion, up 13 percent year-on-year.

This is why it’s so important to have a business presence on social media. The trick is to think carefully about the content you want to present, and who your audiences are for each channel. Once you’ve done some research and written your posts, scheduling them using one of many online tools is an excellent idea for saving time and resource.

There are several social media scheduling tools available for start-ups, small businesses and independent businesses to use, but in the spirit of keeping this simple, we’ll focus on Buffer and Hootsuite. These two tools are both key players that have been around the block and adapted with the market.

Buffer

The basics
Using Buffer, you can link your Instagram Business, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ and schedule social media posts in advance, directly to your chosen channels. You can also access insights and analytics for each of your channels within the app or desktop site.

Costs and packages
If you’re using Buffer to schedule posts for three social media channels or less, the free starter plan is ideal, allowing you to forward-schedule ten posts per channel. Add up to eight social media accounts with up to 100 posts per channel for $15.99/£12.43 per month on Buffer’s pro plan. Buffer also caters to bigger businesses, with larger business plans available, priced at $65 and $99 per month respectively. Each of these plans allows you to add extra team members and schedule up to 2,000 posts per channel.

How simple is Buffer to use?
Not as simple as we hoped. Users should allow a little extra time to get set up with Buffer. Most importantly, you’ll need to locate your on-screen keyboard to access emojis (worth noting that we’re using Windows here). Don’t read the how-to guides online, they’re overly confusing. Just search ‘on-screen keyboard’ on your Windows menu and it will pop up. Make sure you pin it to your taskbar for easy future access.

Another obstacle with Buffer is the extra steps involved in setting up Instagram posting. Now Instagram has altered its API to allow direct scheduling, this should be very simple. With Buffer the set up is overly complicated. You have to go through a verification process, make sure you have the app installed and then turn mobile notifications on. Unfortunately, the last step can’t be skipped, and the app didn’t allow us to set up notifications (even after reinstalling), so we’re still using the Buffer reminders to log in and post manually to Instagram. This isn’t the end of the world and does copy the message text and image across for you but can be risky business if you don’t have time to check your phone.

On a serious plus side, their overview page is very clear and simply shows how many posts are currently scheduled for each channel linked to Buffer.

Hootsuite

The basics
Hootsuite is a social media service which allows you to plan and schedule your social posts in advance. Using Hootsuite, you can link your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest accounts.

Costs and packages
Similar to Buffer, Hootsuite offers a free plan that allows you to link up to three social media channels and schedule up to 30 posts per month. For £25 per month, you can add 10 social media profiles and benefit from unlimited scheduling. The next package up is for marketing teams and costs £99 per month. This gives you the option to add up to 20 social media profiles, 3 users and unlimited scheduling.

How simple is Hootsuite to use?
There’s a lot to love about Hootsuite. It’s been LIT Communication’s go-to social media scheduling tool since we launched, and for good reason.

You can link your social media channels in a few simple steps. To check or edit posts once they’re scheduled, the publisher page conveniently displays each post along with the planned time and date in, also allowing you to filter by channel to quickly see the content you’ve scheduled for the week.

Once you’ve worked out what all the symbols mean, it’s simple to get started. There’s an emoji tool built into the scheduling section, so no need for any additional keyboards. You can also build reports, but we recommend getting to grips with the basics before you start analysing results.

Summary
Hootsuite is the clear winner in our opinion. It’s easier to set up (anything for less short-term frustration) and the free plan includes 30 posts to schedule, not limited to ten per channel like Buffer. For some reason, Instagram is 10x simpler to setup on Hootsuite, and because the photo-sharing channel is more popular than ever in influencing buying decisions, it’s important to make sure the right posts go out at the right times.

Whichever scheduling tool you use, both have multiple how-to videos and guides to follow to help you get started, so no matter which you pick, this will inevitably simplify your social media posting and ensure you spend less time worrying about individually posting on each account.
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If you have any questions on social media management, LIT Communication is more than happy to help. Simply read our other blog posts for more handy social media tips or send us an email to hello@litcommunication.com

At LIT Communication, we always recommend that our clients share regular content on their business blogs. You’ll be surprised how many people actually read the blog on your website, and the positive results that news stories and industry updates can generate.

SEO boosting
Updating the blog or news section on your business website is a simple way to help with online visibility and business growth. Particularly when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO). By strategically selecting the keywords you choose to use (based on what your customers search for to find your website/service), you can help boost your position on Google and appear higher in the search results.
For example, if your potential customers are searching for the term ‘PR in Huddersfield’ and you include these specific keywords within your blog post, you’re immediately helping strengthen your appearance in the search results for that search term. Each time you post a blog post, you add an extra page to your website for search engines to index, which in turn, means more opportunity to drive new traffic to your website.

Lead generation
Posting regular company or industry news updates/blog posts goes a long way to help with lead generation. It may take valuable time to pen an engaging blog post, but the pay-off is long-lasting. Once your blog posts are ranking in search engines, they’ll continue to gain traffic, which will eventually convert to leads as the content becomes increasingly visible online.

If your potential audience is already considering using your services or buying your products, reading a great blog post might be the very thing that encourages them to go for it.

Building brand awareness
Blogging is an excellent way to increase the awareness of your brand via digital search and social media (especially important if your website is new). The more expertise you share, the more chance your brand has to be seen by a new audience, and the more they’ll recognise your brand’s name when it pops up, taking them further on your customer journey. During this time, you’re also building up important ‘owned’ content which you can use on your other marketing channels, including social media and newsletters.  

Showcasing expertise
Creating content that’s helpful to your audience, also helps attract new interest in your product/service and impress existing customers. This will cement your industry expertise and help grow the authority of your business.

On the LIT Communication blog for example, we share lots of industry insights and tips to help customers get on top of their business marketing. The topics we write about are inspired by real-life problems our potential customers experience. We also see people missing out on opportunities to market their business effectively, from small things such as using hashtags incorrectly to bigger fish like missing out on maximising their company news and achievements.
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You can view all the latest LIT Communication blog posts here. If you need specific advice on what to blog about or would like support with writing content for your website or blog, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll be more than happy to help you create some engaging content – hello@litcommunication.com