4 PR Mistakes You Never Want to Make

PR can be a touchy subject – especially if you’re an outsourced PR company and not an employee within the company wanting publicity.

In either case, here are four mistakes that you’ll never want to make when working in PR.

1. Showing Up Late

Never be late. Let me repeat that: never be late. Whether it’s an appointment with a contact, a lunch date, a conference call, or an industry cocktail party, make sure you’re on time.

This isn’t a college party – showing up “casually late” doesn’t work. Every minute you’re late for your meeting will seem like ten to whoever is waiting for you.

If you are running late, make sure you call, text, email, Facebook, Twitter DM, or send a pigeon on your behalf to inform the waiting persons. Show them the courtesy you’d expect yourself.

Don’t be afraid to show up early, but don’t show up 45 minutes ahead of schedule. This will make things awkward for the people you’re waiting to see, and may make it seem like you have nothing better to do (or this is the only company that has given you the time of day).

2. Being a Textbook Talker

Scenario – you’re a waiter serving a bunch of tables at a middle-class restaurant and you have two tables. Table one is a group of four elderly women eating salads. Table two is a group of college guys ordering wings and beer.

Would you talk to these people with the same tone, mannerisms, and choice of words? Probably not.

The same applies when talking to other people and businesses. If you’re talking in person, it’s a bit easier to judge someone’s personality. If you don’t already know the person, it’s best to be professional. If you find out they’re a casual, humorous kind of person, be the same. If they’re something else, respond appropriately.

You can often pre-judge how someone will interact with you based on the company they work for – think of a Facebook employee vs. an employee of a law firm. But be very, very careful. Nobody has a one-dimensional personality. Someone can be a joker one moment and deadly serious another, depending on the circumstances.

Given today’s world of social networking, you can dig a bit (Twitter, Facebook if it’s public, LinkedIN, Flickr, etc.) to learn more about the person you’re going to contact. Have a common interest (i.e. cars), great! Bring it up in your first point of communication:

“Hey! Thought I’d reach out and contact you as a fellow sports car enthusiast, AND someone in the iPhone development community.”

This increases the chance of hearing back enormously. Even if they won’t be talking about your product or services, at least you can develop a relationship that may benefit you somewhere down the road.

3. Overtly Asking to Be Featured

Instead of saying:

“Hey, I was just wondering if you could review our product on your website”

Try something like:

“Have you heard about our product before? I’d be happy to send you some free stuff so that you can check it out.”

It’s generally best to avoid directly asking for coverage when reaching out to a media contact. First develop a relationship, find out if they’ve heard of or used your product/service, and then, and only then, see if they’re interested in writing a review.

It’s a bit of a touchy subject, but asking for a review can be made to seem less selfish (for lack of a better word) by doing things like:

• mentioning the benefit for them to review it (i.e. it’s something you and your audience would benefit from using)
• offer to include a giveaway (this helps the reviewer – contests generally increase web traffic and reader comments)
• point out similar media outlets that have already covered your product/service
• mention awards you’ve won or testimonials from other credible sources so that it seems like they’d be missing out if they didn’t cover you (i.e. if you’ve been on FOX then CNN would be missing out if they don’t talk about you)

4. Write Like a Kindergarten

When children start writing, their garbled spelling and mixed up sentences can be cute. It’s not cute, however, when you send a PR contact an email or letter full of typos and poor grammar.

The BIGGEST mistake you can make is to misspell the name of the person you’re contacting. Terrible. A close second is spelling the name of the company they work for incorrectly. With Google and Wikipedia at your fingertips, there are NO excuses.

Make sure to NEVER spell your own company name and product names, or services incorrectly, and never spell something two different ways in the same email. I’ve seen two and even three different spellings for things in the SAME email far more times than you’d imagine.

But What If I Screw up?

We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. The way you deal with your mistakes is what will leave a lasting impression with your contact.

A short apology and a bit of (humorous) self-bashing will usually do the trick.

Remember, when you’re doing PR, you’re not just representing your company – you’re representing yourself. You never know when you’ll run into old contacts in your future.