Free Publicity for Public Sector
Developing a Press Statement Strategy for the Public Service
Sep 14, 2008
Having a responsibility for publicising a service in the public sector is often a thankless task.
On the one hand, the budget is usually small and the service is always open to criticism of waste if it spends too much on publicity. On the other, the public often criticise the overall expense of public service because they have a poor understanding of what their expenditure provides.
A good press statement strategy can help address these twin problems; make the press statement interesting enough, and you can go some way to generate almost cost-free, low risk promotion for your service.
Here are eight tips to help you get the balance right.
Learn about Your Local Paper
Make sure you read your local paper and find out how they write and what types of stories interest them. Try to produce articles in the same style. Local press journalists are often poorly paid and overworked, so make their life easy. Produce articles that use plain common language, and between 300 and 600 words long, which journalists can use to slot into a blank space.
Work with Your Corporate PR Team
Most public sector organisations have a corporate PR team with responsibility for overall press content. Unfortunately, because they don’t work for your department, their stories are often bland, inaccurate and out of date.
Work with your corporate PR team to develop your strategy and find out if they have a set format for their statements. Give them confidence by working with them, and never attempt to bypass the central process.
Find out How Often Your Local Paper Publishes and When
This means you can target your story to meet deadlines. A daily local paper often has much of its content together by early the previous afternoon. A well-timed press statement can fill a problem gap. Weekly papers publishing for the weekend commonly need the copy by the end of Tuesday.
Find out Who Reads Your Local Paper and When
Is there a particular situation's vacant adverts day? If you want to reach an audience of unemployed people, time your press statement to hit that paper on that day.
Is there a particular house sellings/lettings adverts day? If you want to reach an audience of homeless and transient people, time your press statement to be published that day.
Try to avoid reaching the weekend paper; many local papers have poorer circulations for their Saturday editions.
Make Your Story Human and Readable
Public service procedures are often complex and hard to understand. Don’t try to tell the public the whole story, but give them a taster for what you do, and contact details where they can pick up the rest. Try to make the story human. Can you use an example where your service has changed someone’s life?
Anticipate a Bad Spin
Because you aren’t paying for the space, your local paper can choose to represent your story in the way they want. Will a “good news” story that £120 million of local tax has been collected, be turned into a “£2 million still uncollected shock” headline?
Try to anticipate how your local paper might spin your story, and make sure it contains enough context to help mitigate any bad news.
Have Your Customer Services Section Ready
There’s nothing worse than generating a buzz about your department, only to create a heap of complaints because your front line staff weren’t prepared for the influx of extra enquiries.
Make sure you work with your front line staff to agree the message, the actions the staff need to take, and agree the timing of the release of the press statement.
Cost up Your Achievements
Get ready to impress your line manager by working out how much those column inches would have cost you in paid advertising. Also, make sure your local radio stations get your statements; they might use them for local news, or even invite someone from your department for an interview.
It doesn’t take long to realise that your extra work generating extra cheap publicity is paying dividends.
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