New Year’s Resolutions, eh?  You’re back in the daily routine after the festive jollities.  Clothes are feeling tighter after that Christmas blow-out.  The cold weather is biting hard.  So, understandably, you’re determined to keep fit, get warm and make 2012 the best year you’ve ever had.

There’s just the small matter of finding resolutions that you’re going to want to stick to.

Promoting your business is no different. Whether you are a multi-national consumer brand or a local business, PR is a vital means of getting your message into the media – but, for many, building and sustaining a successful public relations programme looks as daunting as any other New Year’s Resolution.

Fear not.  The following are a series of easy-to-follow public relations guidelines that should get you up and running and, more importantly, keep you in the PR race for the whole of the year ahead.

Plan Ahead – a lot of people join a gym in January with the best of intentions, only for their enthusiasm to wane sometime before Easter.  Same goes for public relations.  Take care to pace yourself with a consistent PR presence throughout the year.  A sudden burst of activity that quickly tails off can be detrimental to your brand image, especially when the Internet provides a handy record of when you last promoted your business – think how awful it would be if your gym publicised when you’d last made a visit!

Follow Your News – Keep ahead of the curve by monitoring trends in the market.  Set up Google alerts for key terms that might provide topical angles you can make PR capital from; even supposed stale stories can be made fresh by highlighting their relevance to the here-and-now. And check what competitors are doing; not only will it help you to evaluate your own public relations campaign, but it might spark new ideas you can emulate.

Contact Is Key – good public relations, as the name suggests, relies on communicating with your audience.  And that starts with knowing the relevant contacts at the newspapers, magazines and websites you want to be seen in.  Take the time to check which editor is responsible for covering news in your field. If you’re new to the game, pick up the phone and introduce yourself.  Even if you’ve sent material in the past, don’t assume your original contact is still there.  Otherwise your PR effort will be all pain and no gain.   

Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? – most editors have only one question when they see a PR release landing in their inbox: ‘Why should I read this?’ Really, though, they want the answers to the six questions listed above, preferably in the first paragraph or two of the story.  That way, they’ll be gripped enough to finish reading. Otherwise, sadly, your story is more likely to end up in the recycle bin than on the front page.  

Check Your Spelling And Grammar – It doesn’t matter who you are. A sloppily written or unintelligible PR story will be frowned upon.  We’re not talking about purple prose; there’s no need to be poetic in public relations.  Indeed, plain language is the best policy in terms of giving editors copy they can use.  Nonetheless, the basics matter in PR because your press release is the voice of your brand, so it pays to get it right. If you’re unsure where to put your apostrophes, or even if you want to make sure your message is clear, concise and interesting, ask somebody to check your work before sending it out. 

Follow all of the above tips, and you’re halfway there. All you need now is some news to turn into punchy, ‘must read’ PR.