Don’t Use Pop-Ups For Your Press Releases

The whole idea of posting press releases on your web site is so that the press can read them. Easily. And quickly. If a reporter is on deadline — or is doing a topical article, where one of your competitors would be just as acceptable as your company — you don’t want to inject unnecessary obstacles.

So I’m trying to look at press releases for this site — it doesn’t matter which — and while I’ve found the web page that has a list of them, and when I click on the links, nothing happens.

Right-clicking suggests this is some Flash-based thingie. I can zoom the view of the list. But I can’t actually get any of the press releases.

I notice that FireFox has prevented a popup window from opening.

I could tell Firefox it’s OK to allow pop-ups for this site, et cetera. But it’s not worth it, at least this time.

Bzzt! Time’s up. Off to find a company who wants me to be able to access their news information quickly and easily.

Steenkin’ Badges, We Don’t Need No

Event badges, like street signs for yard sales, have two essential requirements.

1) (Font) Size Matters.

Essential badge information needs to be readable at the appropriate distance, meaning in big enough font.

For a yard sale sign, that means someone driving by, possibly one lane over. For an event, that means several feet away — certainly big enough that somebody standing at hand-shake distance can (assuming good enough vision/glasses/contact lenses) can read your name and title/organization without having to lean forward and squint.

Even for those who don’t have aging eyes, tiny fonts force us to get intrusively close, and make it hard to “scan the crowd” rather than having to be hand-shake-close, just to determine whether this is someone you’re looking to talk to.

Pick a decent font size — 36 or bigger. Pick a readable font, for that matter. Make a few test badges and see if you can read them on somebody six feet away.

(This is why, on my business cards, my name is in a large font — it means I always have a readable name badge with me.)

2) Include Essential Information.

For a yard sale, that’s the date, hours, address, and a directional arrow. For event attendees, essential information means first and last name, title, organization.

So if you’re doing an event where you’re inviting the press (and in general, for that matter, but this is about how to work well with the press), take a minute to check how you’re doing badges. It’s a small thing — but how you do it will make a big difference in how easy/hard it is for the press to find the people they want to talk to, and vice versa… and equally, for sales people to determine who isn’t a prospect.

And here’s some additional advice:

3) Tie a Colored Ribbon!

Make it easy to tell whether somebody’s with the press even before their name can be read. Use color — colored ribbons, labeled PRESS (or MEDIA) — or colored strips at the bottom of badge holders if need be.

And you should also have differently colored ones for speakers, judges, staff or other honored guests. Don’t simply include “PRESS,” “ATTENDEE,” et cetera in same-color all-caps at the bottom of the badge. Make it obvious, like bird plumage.

Again, you’re trying to make it easy for people to spot and sort who’s who even before they read the badge.

4) Wear ‘Em High

Provide clips, pins or whatever to make it easy for people — especially women — to wear their badge as close to neck/shoulder height as possible.

5) Make Sure Your Badge-Readers/Scanners Work

If you’re providing badge readers/scanners, make sure they work — and easily, not after five or six tries.

I’ve been to too many events lately where they didn’t — leading to a lot of grumbling exhibitors, not just because they’d shelled out hundreds of dollars for the device rental, but because this meant they weren’t capturing visitor information reliably.

You should have badges. But they shouldn’t be steenkin’ badges.

Welcome to Dern’s PR Tips, my PR (Public Relations, Press Relations) blog

Welcome to Dern’s PR Tips, my blog of tips for and about PR — how to work with the press (a.k.a. the media), and for members of the fourth estate on working with PR.

The primary intended audiences are:

• Vendors and agencies who want to learn more about what the press wants (and doesn’t want), and how to provide that better
• Editors and reporters who want to learn more about what vendors and agencies want, hope for, and think (including “what were they thinking!?”).
• Anybody who wants to get more/better media coverage, e.g. company owners, managers, network/system admins, end users, and sundry individuals (and why media exposure can be good — or bad — for your job and career).
• And anybody who’s interested in PR and the media, how it/they work (or don’t work).

What you’ll find here: tips (do/don’t do this, how to), blips, advice, Q&A’s, humor, horror stories and other instructive/entertaining items about PR. I may name-drop praiseworthy folks, acts, events, sites, products and services.

What you won’t find here: Don’t expect me any dissing or dishing, except maybe in cases where the name of the cat is already very publicly out of the bag.

Dern’s PR Tips is written from both the PR and press perspectives. (Changing hats accounts for the bald spot.)

Unlike many (but not all) of my fellow journalists/editors and PR folks, I’ve done, and continue to do both bylined journalism, and PR (and some things that are somewhere in between).

I’ve been an editor (Byte.com, Internet World) (see my editorial farewell to Byte.com), and do bylined tech journalism, writing for pubs and sites like ComputerWorld, eWeek, and Processor.

And I have also hi-tech PR experience. I’ve been a PR manager, handling editorial relations, speaker placement, freelancer writers, and customer case histories. I’ve been PR writer at a vendor, and have done and still do PR freelancing, e.g. writing press releases, feature articles, case histories, FAQs, backgrounders, and more, for a range of companies on a range of technologies and topics.

I have spoken at, and moderated, panels at BusinessWire, PRSA, and other (usually technology-oriented) events, and also written a number of articles and columns about PR, and working with the press, including my still-popular The Well-tempered Press Release”, which includes a Mad Libs-style “fill-in-the- blanks” press release form you can use.

Some of the posts for Dern’s PR Tips will be based on email I’ve posted to lists I’m on, LinkedIn exchanges, email I’ve sent, or things I’ve written in the past. (I won’t be using names, or other people’s words, except with permission and where relevant). Some will be based on something that’s happened recently, phone or face-to-face schmoozing, or the random percolations of my brain. And some based on things I’ve found on the net, including meritorious items from other members of the press and the PR trade.

So: read, learn, enjoy.