Your PR Goodies on Halloween
The whole point of public relations and marketing is to make the public aware of the particular company, product, service or person that the marketeers are paid to promote. Increasingly these consultants are using the web as a tool to increase their clients business.
As a blogger you can take advantage of all the online, publicity material that is on offer from these people. Until you become a well-known and successful blogger few publicists are going to mind if you use their work within your blog.
The book market
Part of my role on a website I was working on was to write book reviews. I then had no problem with going to the publisher’s website or the publisher’s blurb on Amazon and cutting and pasting the text and images onto the site. After all the purpose of the site I was working on was to sell their books.
By playing around with the text I could very quickly produce around 80% of the required review. I could then quickly look through the book and then add my own personalised comments.
I would occasionally take a clip from someone’s personal review on Amazon. In this case I would always give the name, (their Amazon nickname), next to the quote, pointed out that this was an Amazon review and give a link to the Amazon page.
No sensible company will be unhappy if you are providing them with free publicity. Although I have heard some bizarre, heavy-handed behaviour from some companies. I can’t track down details but one publisher forced an eight-year-old girl to close her fan site to a popular series of children’s books, because she was using some of their copyrighted images.
But talking to a number of publishers at a book fair I find that they are more than happy for the average blogger to use their material provided, of course, that they don’t totally pan their books.
Linking up with the PR people
There are many PR sites and you should feel free to grab and use these materials. If you visit a company’s website there is usually a link to media or press and there you will find a list of their recent PR releases.
You can use this material any way you want. It’s out there for the press to use.
In the press section you will also see contact details, either we in within the company, or it will provide a link to a PR agency. Feel free to can contact them to request further details or images.
If your blog is likely to frequently mention their products then I would advise asking their PR people to put you on a mailing list. In the long-term this could be beneficial to you. A friend of mine, Faisal, who runs a motoring website, is frequently given free tickets plus a press pass to the leading UK motor shows.
It is useful if your blog is business or product orientated to be known in the business world. You can build your links, be aware of new developments, be granted perks and when your blog grows you may be on for direct advertising, one of the goals of a professional blogger.
Discussing products
In most cases downloading a few images, the technical specification, the features and the sales blurb are acceptable if you want to discuss their product. They are probably going to be OK with you doing a fair review of their products, where you show both the good points and bad points.
You are however taking a risk when you do an all out attack on the company. As a small blogger you will probably be safe, but some large corporations do overreact. Though not bloggers there was a ridiculous case where McDonald’s sued two protesters for libel . I believe this case was the longest in British legal history. A large corporation fighting two very poor people– made the company look very small.
A word of warning
When a business puts images and text on a screen they own the copyright and in many cases trademark rights of words and images. They have the right to protect these images and text and can in certain circumstances will sue the person who breaches these rights.
However, unless you do something to harm the company’s interest it is unlikely that they will really worry about you.
Legally though I am to warn you that if you use copyright material you do so at your own risk and I should not be held responsible for any problems that you may have.
What is important is that if a big company decides that they do not like you using their material on your site then I would advise removing it very quickly, as the hassle in most cases it’s not worth it. You could easily end up in an expensive legal case fighting someone with a lot more cash than you.
Links
Social Realist: Great list of PR sites
Avangate: List of 50 PR release sites
Over to you
Have you used PR materials on your website? Can you recommend any good sources of public relations materials? What are you thoughts?
Writers’ Block: Three techniques to generate ideas
Searching for writing ideas
Reading comments, tweets, from Twitter; or free article directories can easily spur ideas for excellent posts.
Comments and discussions on other blogs.
Read posts on blogs that are in, or close to your niche.
Read the comments.
Look at blogs in your niche or subjects that are close to your niche.
You will often find that the comments expand the topic or come up with unusual angles on the niche. You will find yourself agreeing with them and you can soon develop these into the outline of a post.
Other comments will make you mad, angry or you feel contempt for the writing. OK use these emotions to write a better post, a post that make sense or a post that explains the issue properly.
You can also combine ideas from two or three posts and make three or four points and - you’ve got a good post.
Twitter
Use a package, such as Tweetdeck, to monitor a set of keywords that are important to your blog.
Scan the tweets and you may get inspiration for a great post.
Alternatively follow the links to blogs – read a few posts, combine ideas from two or three and you then come up with an outline, with a twist, that will lead to you approaching the subject with yet a different angle.
Free article directories
Do a search on your topics relating to your blog.
Scan through the shorter, often badly written articles, often crude, marketing message. Combine the ideas from two or three articles and you have a great structure for a great new post.
Over to you
What other techniques do you use to beat the problem of writer’s block.