No, your business is not too small to do PR

As far as journalists are concerned, small is beautiful. The simple fact, when you look at regional newspapers, is that the pages are full of local small business stories, and the reason is simple. Local journalists just love both promoting their high street good news stories, and also breaking local news revelations.

So, no, your business is not too small to do PR.

Your bigger issue is knowing how to do it, when to do it and then doing it without it costing you too much money.

You have three options: 

• You can do everything yourself but this will be time consuming and may well be a shot in the dark if you don’t know what you are doing. You will have to identify the right time, the right story, and know who and how to contact the journalists you want to engage. The question you have to ask yourself here is whether you think you have the skill set and what the ‘cost’ of your time is.

• You can employ a local PR Agency, which depending on what you want doing, will cost you anything from £500 per month upwards. An agency will usually look for a 12 month minimum contract, and will do the basics of holding your hand and try to push your story to their local contacts. Taking this approach will take much of the hassle out of the exercise, and will provide the handholding reassurance.  But it won’t come cheap.

• You can use one of the online models, which in effect provide you with a ‘virtual’ PR Agency at a fraction of the cost of a human one, but gives you all the tools you need to do it effectively. These split into those that provide a full service including when to do it, what to say, how to say it and then undertake the distribution for you, and those that provide elements of what you need such as simply providing media lists. These services can be very inexpensive and are very effective hand holders without taking up too much time.

Timing, what to write and who to send it to are the keys to getting coverage. 

Written by: Peter Ibbetson, Company Director

As one of the co-founders of JournoLink PR, Peter is passionate about giving small businesses a voice in the press by providing them with the support and advice to do just that.