Step By Step Guide, How To Create A Public Relations Media Sheet

Hi there Newsletter fans and welcome to October's news extravaganza. As usual another one packed with free hints and tips aimed at helping you to get a bit more from your marketing, public relations and design efforts.

I’d just like to quickly mention that we refreshed our website this month in order to keep up to date with the direction we are heading with 10 Yetis, check it out if you have five minutes spare, we’re keen to hear thoughts on this so drop us a mail or give us a call to let us know what you think.

This months newsletter is about the benefits of putting together a media sheet, a step by step guide to doing it yourself and who you send it out to. So, hold on to your notepad, off we go...

A few weeks ago I was reading a post on one of my favourite free SME help websites, www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk, about a company that had somehow been convinced by a public relations agency to spend several hundred pounds for what was effectively a media-sheet.

I rubbed my eyes because it was late and I could not quite believe it. How did the agency in question have the kahoona's to ask for that kind of money? What’s more, their client was miffed because they had seen no direct coverage as a result of it being distributed to media. Shock horror!

"Hey Jill or Andy from 10 Yetis, just what the flip is a media sheet" I hear you ask? A good question dear newsletter reader.

In a nutshell, it is a very short, usually two page glossy A4 or A5 document about your business that gives details of your key spokesperson/people, company history, topical industry areas you feel confident talking to the media about and maybe a picture of you to show them you are a warm and friendly looking kinda person.

You post (yep, ditch email for this) your media sheet out to your target journalists, either regional, trade or national. Experience shows that this can be a very effective way of getting you media exposure as the journo keeps them on file and when something topical comes in it triggers a memory to speak to you for a comment.

At the end of the day it is a load of words, so the way you lay out those words and combine them with imagery becomes vital. This is where someone like Jilly comes into her own. Her groovy design skills could make sure it would stand out and catch the journalist’s eye.

Going back to the evil PR agency who charged hundreds for this, I still cannot believe that they would ask for such a large fee for this, especially as it turns out that they were also charging the same fee to write and distribute a press release. I know what you are thinking, "Tut tut, if only the client had visited a friendly company like 10 Yetis", I agree.

As a way of apologising on behalf of the PR industry for this incident I am going to dedicate this newsletter to showing you what a typical media sheet looks like and how to do one.

To be honest, the creation of a media sheet is not rocket-science, hell, I can even manage it. All it usually consists of is, as mentioned above, either a glossy A4 or A5 (I prefer A5) double sided sheet with a load of company blurb on, your logo and some nice pictures.

I have done a sample media sheet below for 10 Yetis, just to give you an idea of how ours would look. We’ve uploaded larger low res versions to the site if you want to see in more detail:

Click here to see the front in detail
Click here to see the back in detail

creative pr

The first thing to do is decide if you want a pro-designer to arrange the layout for you or if you fancy having a go yourself.

Once that low hurdle is out of the way you need to start looking at the text and getting it ready.

Talking of text, here’s what you need;

Your company name
public relations, media sheet, step by step guide Your spokespeople/persons name and title
the benifits of having a media sheet, email to journalists Your spokespeople/persons short biog, usually 2 paragraphs at most about their industry experience and maybe a throwaway line about hobbies (you know, like when you used to put “mountain biking” on your CV to make you sound exciting at job interviews).
media sheets, how to create your own A short biography about your company successes and history. This can either be in paragraph form (no longer than two), or maybe in a time-line. Up to you, I like them both.
what is a media sheet A table, or bullet points, with a list of the industry topics you are willing to talk about. If you have something particularly controversial going on in your industry and you can take an alternative view bang it in here.
how to get yourself in the press and raise your profile If you or spokespeople have any prior media interview experience then pop a note in here.
hints and tips, public relations free newsletter, creating a media sheet Make it very clear that high resolution pictures are available (300dpi – ask Jilly if this does not make sense).

Once you have prepared the text and if you have chosen to do the layout yourself you need to decide how to make it all look attractive. Packages such as Microsoft Publisher and even Microsoft Word would be sufficient to get you started.

Remember, if you are using packages like this and are printing it yourself as well, if you use a background colour your printer may well leave a border so could be an idea to keep it white, unless you trim it to size?

You could get them professionally printed, but if you are on a budget just pop to somewhere like Staples and get yourself some nice glossy thicker-than-normal-paper type card and print them that way.

Once the design and printing is out of the way you are ready to move on to the fun job of finding out who to send them to. Actually, I say it is tough as I am a bit of a drama queen, but in reality, it isn’t.

For your local media all you need do is grab the local rag in question for a few days to identify the names of the reporters of who write the types of stories that you feel you could comment on. This may be the business editor or a few of the general news reporters. Their address will definitely be in the paper so off you go. Pop in a cover note saying hello and introducing yourself and bish bosh bang, you are away.

You can also do this for national media along with trade press. Oh yeah, and don’t forget, your local BBC and commercial radio stations will be looking for experts on a range of subjects so get your media sheet over to them as well. Their websites will have details like addresses on and you can listen to the news to get the reporters names.

So there we have it, hopefully enough to give you an idea of how it works and empower you to go off and do something that all the big pr companies do.

As I said, I cannot emphasise the importance strongly enough of getting a pro designer to have a look at the layout for you. That one eye-catching design could lead to you being a media star.

And, when you get called up for an interview, get in touch and we can give you a few hints and tips on what to do and how it works. Hmm, there may even be a past newsletter subject on this?