Feel Good Friday 2013 Press Release
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easy to follow step by step guides
easy to follow step by step guides
Samaritans are very grateful to all WebHealer clients who supported Feel Good Friday in 2013, and have approved a press release that YOU can send to announce your activities to your local community and also raise the profile of your therapy business. Here's how to use it.
Samaritans' PR department has given special permission for you to announce your contribution to Feel Good Friday 2013 via your local newspaper and other media, using a press release which they have approved and which includes quotes from Samaritans' Director Rachel Kirby-Rider. This is a great opportunity for you to raise your profile in the local community and attract new clients, but if you aren't familiar with how to do it, here's a quick summary with more detail to follow.
It's as simple as that. You may wish to follow up with a call, just to encourage them a little more, but its not essential, and don't forget you can also use social media, so we've added a few suggestions for that at the end.
Finally, don't worry if you didn't raise much money or even none at all. You still took part, and raised the profile of this important campaign, and there could very well have been people who saw the logo on your website, visited the Samaritans website and sent a quick contribution directly... so you're still entitled to use this press release.
This is an activity that's well worth doing anyway, as anytime you have something interesting to say about your business, its handy to have a contact list of places that may announce it. Google is your friend these days in finding places to announce your news. Let's say you're a reflexologist in Guildford, Surrey. Google "guildford newspaper", "guildford online local", "guildford radio" and in this case also "guildford samaritans". Remember counties as well as towns, so search for Surrey too.
In addition there are online directories of local newspapers, such as www.mediauk.com/newspapers. You'll quickly come up with a short list, so in this case one example would be www.guildford-dragon.com You can also take a visit to your local newsagent and see what newspapers and local newsletters are stocked.
Find the website for each media outlet, and look for the Contact Us page, often in the footer. Most print media show the name of the news editor or someone on the editorial team with a link to their email address. So for the Guildford Dragon, the editor is Martin Giles with email address mgilesdragon@gmail.com.
By now you should have a 3 column list of media outlets, contact names and emails, and you're ready to distribute your press release. Ideally you'll have at least half a dozen in your list, so that hopefully one or two will pick up on your story.
If the press release is online, such as our ready made Feel Good Friday press release, all you need is a couple of sentences that include a link to it.
Here's an example of what you may write. Feel free to use it yourself.
Subject: Local therapist helps raise £3,000 for Samaritans
Message: Dear Mr Giles,
Please find attached a press release about our recent participation in Samaritans’ Feel Good Friday fundraising campaign, which collectively raised almost £3,000 for the charity.
We're very proud of our contribution, and the personal thank you received from Rachel Kirkby Rider, Samaritans’ Director of Fundraising.
Find the press release here: http://www.webhealer.net/press/....[change this to the one we emailed you]
I am happy to be interviewed – please contact me on: [add your details]
Best wishes
[your name]If you want to make small modifications to the press release, open the link in your browser and copy and paste it into Word, then you can make and save small changes, and include the press release as an attachment, instead of a link.
Some media, especially online only, invite you to submit a comment on a form on the site, rather than by email. Just cut and paste the email copy into the form and include the link to the press release.
Although not essential, newspapers do get a lot of submissions, so if you make the effort to follow up by phone or email, you might be able to raise your press release to the top of their pile. You may be lucky enough to be invited to give an interview. A tip here is to choose live rather than recorded, as you'll sound much more natural, even if you make a slip-up. Listeners are just people interested in other people, so it’s a great opportunity to talk about what you did and why - and slip in a bit of publicity for your business, too.
Finally, if you do get some coverage, we'd love to hear about it. Please send a link or a copy to phil@webhealer.net
We thought it might be helpful to provide some copy for you to use on your social media sites.
Samaritans were really delighted with the contribution I made this year for their Feel Good Friday fundraiser. With other therapists and matched funding by WebHealer, who maintain my website, our total was enough to fund nearly 36 hours of Samaritans’ life-saving service! Check out webhealer.tumblr.com for all the stories.
You may have used Twitter in the run up to this year’s event – keep tweeting!
You could share what you did to raise funds, or celebrate the amount we collectively raised this year (£2,962).
Therapists smash last year’s total for Samaritans’ Feel Good Friday 2013 by donating an amazing £2,962 webhealer.tumblr.com @samaritans
Remember to include the WebHealer blog site whenever you post or Tweet (webhealer.tumblr.com) so people can read the background story and also copy in Samaritans (@samaritans).