Pro Bono Public Relations for Nonprofits: 7 Questions Agencies Ask (Part 2)

These are some of the questions a public relations agency will consider in accepting a pro bono client. Other questions were in last week’s blog.

5. Do the nonprofit respect my skills? For example, if I tell them that I need specific information for a press release or to pitch a story, will they believe me? Placing stories is not a matter of calling up a reporter and saying, “I have a good story; come on over tomorrow at 3.” A reporter or editor needs facts. No PR firm wants to issue press releases that don’t meet professional standards, even for a very deserving charity. Questions from people trying to understand the process and suggestions are always welcome. But when a nonprofit seeks my help and then declines to follow my advice, it’s time for a change. A city council member I know said it best: “There are all sorts of people who want my advice for free. Why should I keep meeting with people who never take it?”

6. Does the nonprofit have a staff member or volunteer who will coordinate requests for services and approvals and mediate between different opinions on what the press release should say and what press releases are needed? This is a necessity to keep costs under control (for paying clients, too).

7. Are the nonprofit’s board members and major donors likely to refer paying clients to me? If they develop a larger budget, are they going to start paying me or will they give the account to the vice president’s brother, who was too busy to do it pro bono? The first question should never be the main criteria, but referrals of paying clients definitely help cement a relationship. And my firm and many of my colleagues can tell stories of times that we’ve been competent enough to do the work when a nonprofit that needed free help, but not competent enough once they developed a budget.

You may be surprised that I have not focused on whether the agency supports the cause. That’s a given, but I’ve rarely met a charity I didn’t like. The more important question usually becomes where donated time can do the most good, and the working relationship is often the biggest factor in determining that.

Finally, the question is whether the agency can afford the time. Almost all public relations agencies, including mine, believe in donating some professional help. But there is a cost. We all know that if we go overboard on pro bono work, we’re likely to end up with an unsuccessful business and the ability to help no one. So please remember that if you ask for help, you are almost always asking for a four- or five-figure donation – and treat the prospective donor accordingly.

What are the best practices for writing a SEO-friendly press release?

I use a service from Newsforce, available through Business Wire (www.businesswire.com), the electronic press distribution service now owned by Warren Buffet. It costs $20 a press release, and it’s worth every penny in the amount of time saved versus using the “free” services that I have explored. In addition, Business Wire and Newsforce assign staff members to keep up with what is going on in search engine optimization. It’s much more cost-effective that trying to develop the expertise myself.

This is a short explanation of what I think works best. First, write a press release as if you were writing it exclusively for humans, keeping keywords in the back of your mind. Then go to the $20 online tool. Enter the keywords, or the terms on which you think people would be searching. The tool then comes back with an analysis of the number of searches on these words in the past month and suggests other keywords as well. Once you have selected the keywords, it tells you how many times each keyword needs to be used in the headline, in the first 100 words and in the body of the press release.

It’s up to the user, of course, to make certain the press release still makes sense to humans as well as to search engines. (I have to brag a little here. The first time I used this process for one client, he said it was a wonderful tool because the press release still read just as well as it did before optimization. I told him those compliments should be directed at me, not the computerized tool. ☺)

For those who are not familiar with search engine optimization, this is a process that makes your press release more likely to show up on Google and other Internet searches. It’s a critical part of public relations today.

Thanks to Sun Valley Online’s Dave Chase for this question.

How do you see Twitter fitting into a firm’s PR plans?

Twitter is the best thing for public relations since sliced bread. What a minute – did I use such a trite expression? I suppose I should come up with something more elegant, but then again…. “best thing since sliced bread” was my immediate reaction. Usually, the immediate reaction is the best.

Why is Twitter so great? In the old (pre-Internet days), we had to rely on mass media to get our stories to clients and prospective clients. If an editor didn’t like a your story, there wasn’t much you could do. Thanks to Twitter, you can spread the word yourself. It’s even legitimate to tweet the same thing, preferably stressing slightly different aspects of the topic, multiple times over several days.

You can post a press release on your Web sites, and then go to Twitter and “tweet” about it as much as you like. I like to think of Twitter as the new-fashioned town crier, walking up and down the street shouting out the latest news. You won’t hear every word he says, but the news will get to you sooner or later.

I’ll admit I was one of the initial skeptics. I thought Twitter was for teen-agers telling each other what they had for lunch. If it ever was that, it isn’t any more. Twitter users are primarily working adults, not teens or college students. Nielsen earlier this year found that 62 percent of Twitter users access the site only from work. (See a newsletter article I researched and wrote for a client, now posted on my Web site at http://www.jomurray.com/newsletter.html.)

The American Contract Bridge League, where 98 percent of the membership is over 40 years old and 78 percent over 60 years old, added a Twitter account this month, @ACBL bridge. I set up a Twitter account recently for the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley. (@WRAnimalShelter) By the end of the first day, two people –neither of whom I know -- had retweeted the message. Astonishing!

Twitter is the new viral marketing. If you don’t tweet your press releases, you’re stuck in the 20th century. If what you have to say is of interest to anyone, someone will see your tweet and “retweet” it. I could go on, but I think that’s enough for now.

If you have more questions, send me a tweet @JoMurrayPR. If you aren’t up to Twitter, I even answer old-fashioned e-mail (jo@jomurray.com).

Thanks to Dave Chase of Sun Valley Online for this question.

Getting Back to Blogging

Some of my earlier posts were deleted during a changeover in blog hosts. So I've reposted some of the more popular ones.