Top PR Buzzwords Busted

Explaining what PR is and how it works to someone outside of the industry and with no prior knowledge is no mean feat – we actually wrote a blog about it in January. 

But even when you start to grasp what it entails, there will still be terms and phrases that probably go straight over your head because as with every industry, there’s a lot of jargon which can sometimes be difficult to understand. 

The great thing is that here at Motive we’re more than happy to talk you through what we do. If you engage with us will be in regular contact so you will get up to speed quickly. We’re also a fluff-free zone, meaning we’re committed to removing meaningless jargon wherever we can. 

PR Executive Charlotte has busted some terms to help you understand as much as you can. 

Here’s our PR jargon buster:

PR: Many people don’t understand exactly what PR is. It encompasses lots of things – many of which can be found on our services pages. Ultimately, we aim to increase your brand’s reputation whilst achieving links to your website which helps boost your Google rankings.

Reach-out: If you have a product or something interesting which isn’t quite enough for a story, we’ll pull together a quick reach-out. This is showing journalists exactly what you do, or what products you could offer. This allows us to be flexible and work alongside the journalists to mutual gain. 

Press release: A press release is a story which we send out to journalists, for them to use on their website or in the paper or magazine. We send these with links to your website or specific pages, in the hope that journalists will keep these in, helping to increase your websites backlink profile.

Angle: Every press release that we send out has a news-angle, sometimes also called a hook. This is something that will hook the journalist, and readers into reading the piece. The angle or hook is what makes the press release newsworthy – it answers the journalist's question “why should I publish their press release?”

Distribution: Once a press release has been approved by the client, we then distribute the release. To do this we use a specialist database to find the perfect journalists and publications for your company and story. We sometimes write press releases to target specific sectors of the press in order to improve your link profile.

Coverage: Coverage is how we describe the media that we have helped you achieve. This could be an article on an online news website, a feature in a magazine, an interview on the radio or a mention on television. Anything that we successfully achieve which includes or features your brand or website will then be logged for your records. An example of a piece of coverage is our client TheMoneyPig.com being featured on The Sun.

Logging: This is the process we go through when we start to see coverage come in. We will compile all your brand's mentions and links into a monthly report so that you can see exactly what we’ve achieved each month.

MAP: Your Motive Action Plan. When you engage with us we will work alongside you to create your plan and set the Key Performance Indicators for the campaign. This can be adapted and reviewed regularly as your business adapts and changes.

B2B/B2C: Depending on who you’re wanting to target with your campaign, it will either be B2B – business to business – or B2C – business to consumer. Some campaigns can have a focus on both B2C and B2B, or will just focus on one specifically. This depends on what you want to achieve from the campaign. An example of B2B coverage is client musclefood's mention on FoodNavigator.com.

Case study: If you have some great products or offerings which have the potential to change someone’s life – for the better – we will write up a case study of one of your customers. These do really well with national press as they put a real-life, human angle on the products you sell.

Exclusive: If we have a particularly strong story, which we know will do well with the press, we can offer this as an exclusive to one newspaper or magazine. This guarantees the story will kick-off with a great piece of coverage. Exclusives may also be offered with quotes or images which other outlets won’t receive when we pitch the story wider.

Embargo: This means that journalists who we send a press release to can’t publish it until the embargo has been lifted. The press release will give a date and time that the embargo ends, which means they can then publish. This lets journalists prepare articles based on the release meaning it can go live as quickly as possible.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation. We’ll help make sure your website and backlink profile mean that you’ll be as high up google ranking system as you can. We use relevant keywords and links through to your site to ensure everything we do, google loves.

Follow link: Google loves follow links, which means these are the links we try to get the most. This also means that they’re the hardest links to get from websites and news outlets.

No-follow link: No-follow links don’t hold as much weight withGoogle’s algorithms – but they’re still great. They help increase your backlink profile as well as making it easier for readers to click straight through to your website.

Want to find out more about PR and how we can get you those all-important follow links, get in touch here.

© MOTIVE