I was asked to write some tips for PR professionals in the ski business for the newsletter of the Eastern Ski Writers Association. Since I put these tips together, I decided to share them with you, my wonderful blog readers. Let me know what you think.

•  Just like snowflakes, people who work in the media are all unique and different. It is important that you take the time to get to know them as individuals so you can provide information that is targeted to their interests and niche publications.
• Pick up the telephone and call media people when you have a good story or when you read a good story they’ve written. E-mails are great but you cannot totally rely on them for building relationships. Telephone calls and face-to-face time are what it takes for long-term relationships.
• The best PR professionals develop real relationships with journalists. You don’t necessarily have to be best friends, but it’s important that you know them as people, and that they know you. That’s the foundation of trust. They’ll call you for information only if they trust you. If you lose their trust by being dishonest, you will never be successful in this business.

• Always return phone calls from the media promptly, even if you don’t have an answer to their question. Find out what their deadline is for the information and tell them you’ll get back to them before their deadline. Then follow through. Again, this all comes back to trust. If you don’t follow through, they won’t trust you. 
• News releases are the heartbeat of your organization. You’ve got to keep putting out releases in order to assure journalists that your resort is alive and well. They might not use every one of your releases, but they’ll see your resort’s name, and your name, and will be reminded that you exist. Even if they’re not interested in that particular release, they might be more inclined to think of you as a resource the next time they are working on a story.
• As for determining whether to provide discounts or comps, you need to look at what the journalist has produced in the past, and if they’re freelancers, what they are doing to promote themselves now. With media outlets shrinking, freelancers now are like one-person sales and marketing organizations. Talk to the journalist about their outlets, ask for their website address or their blog address, review their clips, and decide whether their outlets align with your resort’s targeted media. They might only write for one small weekly newspaper, but if that newspaper is in your target market, then it’s probably a good idea to host them or provide a media rate.

•  How do you assess journalists who write for websites?  You can ask for number of unique visitors to the site. They should have that kind of information, and if they don’t, you should encourage them to get it. Don’t use the term ‘hits,’ as that is irrelevant. (It’s a red flag if they tell you about the number of hits!) One page on a website could represent hundreds of hits, because a hit means that a person moused over a graphic image. Unique visitors is the critical number.  Compare that to circulation of a newspaper or magazine. Ask the journalist for trends in visitation on the site. Is it increasing? Is the site professional looking? You need to learn to evaluate websites as more writers are shifting their writing online. Again, if the demographic of the website’s visitors aligns with your targeted market, then you should consider extending courtesies to the journalists writing for that site.

• You should have a profile of your target market and a list of the publications in that target market. You should be proactively going after journalists from those publications (or websites or TV shows or radio shows).  PR is PRoactive, as well as reactive. It’s important to react to calls from the media, but it’s also important to reach out and make contacts at media outlets that appeal to your targeted demographic.

• If a journalist gets the story wrong, do not reprimand them, but it is a good idea to contact them to straighten the record. Journalists want to tell the truth, so it’s important to follow up and correct erroneous information. In the interest in preserving a relationship, however, you need to reach out in a courteous and professional manner.

• Say thank you to journalists who provide coverage about your resort. A written thank you note and/or a phone call are the best ways to say thank you. An email is OK, but does not show the extent of effort on your part that a phone call or a written note does. Written thank you notes are so rare in this day and age, that if you take the time to do it, you’ll really stand out in the crowd.

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