3 Ways Freelancers and Small PR Agencies Can Punch Above Their Weight

PR has come a long way over the last few decades.

While some agencies are still able to spend huge budgets on campaigns for their clients, an increase in the number of PR freelancers and small agencies has highlighted the need to provide big results on tight budgets.

These pressures often mean being more efficient with time and budgets, so that they can punch above their weight and deliver for their clients.

Here are three ways that small agencies can do just that.

Promoting your clients' press release content and all their PR collateral in one place

In our experience of working with journalists, they often speak about a big source of frustration being the lack of relevant collateral alongside a press release.

Many businesses fail to include relevant images for example, and this can be a real issue for journalists as many are on strict deadlines to publish their articles.

Images are just part of the story though.

Many businesses send press releases without relevant information about the company, including a spokesperson to contact for more information.

For your agency to stand out, even amongst the larger agencies, you should seek to keep all your clients' collateral in one place.

We recommend that you aim to keep the following pieces of your PR collateral in one easy-to-manage place that is easily accessible for journalists:

• Business information:What is your clients' website and other information you want to get across to the journalist.
• High-resolution images:These should ideally be a mix of images of your clients' products or services, along with images of their teams.
• Press contact information:Who is the best person for journalists to contact for further comment or quotes.
• Previous press releases:Showcasing previous press releases allows you to show that your client has a consistent PR strategy and profile.

Ensuring you're aware of upcoming industry-related news and forward features

Any PR agency owner and freelancer knows that timing is key when it comes to PR. You are looking to ensure your clients' story is relevant for their target publications, so the more you can predict what is coming up on the news agenda the better.

It is likely that many of the larger agencies will have expensive subscriptions to industry-related calendars, but the cost of these can often be out-of-reach for smaller agencies.

Forward features are a great resource to use in this regard. If you know what publications, and their journalists, are going to be writing about in the weeks and months ahead, you can plan your press release distribution and media relations activities ahead of time to synch with what your target media will be publishing.

Additionally, having at least a general understanding of the industry topics coming up, which you can predict if you have organised even an outline of a content calendar, will help you plan your clients' media strategy.

Of course, there can always be last minute news, even industry crises that arise, so it is important to plan as far ahead as possible, ideally around 6 months ahead. For example, if breaking news does take over the news agenda, you might need to delay a specific release until you have a better angle for the story and conditions to make it relevant.

The more you can plan, and the more you can cover in your PR plan, the more you will stand out to potential clients and be seen on a par with your larger agency competitors.

Offering professional copywriting services with a speedy turnaround

It is one thing to be able to plan your clients' PR and distribute your press releases to the right journalists at the right time. It is another to be able to provide professional copywriting services with a quick turnaround.

Larger agencies tend to have the in-house team, and budget to hire externally if needed, to ensure they can turn around a professionally written press release at short notice. But smaller agencies tend to operate with smaller overheads and therefore smaller teams, which are often unable to respond to last minute, unexpected demand.

Consider this. A piece of trending news presents a great opportunity for your client, but because you are overstretched you are unable to get a press release written quickly enough.

To solve this potential issue, and therefore compete with the large agencies, you could use a trusted team of outsourced professional copywriters that have the ability to have your press release written at short notice.

Its with all these needs in mind that the Journolink Agency Platform has been created on JournoLink to enable freelancers and small agencies to punch above their weight while providing an excellent time and cost-effective service on a tight budget. The Agency platform has a Business Calendar with upcoming event notifications by sector, professional press release writing service with rapid turnaround, the prompts in our template for press release collateral like pictures. It also has the analytics to help you guide your clients' PR strategy. In short it's designed to satisfy the need to do a lot on very little budget.