Helpful Tips for Getting Local Media Coverage

Creating Buzz for World Usability Day 2008 – November 13, 2008

        World Usability Day 2008 (WUD) is focused on TRANSPORTATION. This year’s theme could not be timelier and we are positioned to attract press coverage worldwide. With the challenge of rising gas prices, security issues, aging infrastructures and much more, globally, the transportation industry is facing ongoing change. With those changes come many usability opportunities and challenges.

World Usability Day 2008 will feature over 225 events occurring simultaneously in over 175 cities worldwide. Our goal is to have media coverage of each of these events. UPA and the WUD Planning Committee in collaboration with PR firms worldwide will be working on achieving this goal. As part of our team, we need your help on the ground to ensure strong coverage of World Usability Day and create awareness of the importance of user-centered design and engineering and our right to have things that works better!

In order to accomplish this, we need all local event organizers and participants to reach out to their local media and inform them of their scheduled WUD events and activities as far in advance as possible. We hope your events this year will be related to our theme and that it is front and center in your communications.

We’ve created some helpful tips and hope that you share your best practices with the WUD 2008 team.

Strategies for Developing Media Coverage

Start at home.
Be sure to have news items in your own organizations’ newsletters, intranet, website and other channels of communication. This includes the newsletters of your employer, as well as professional chapters.

Go for calendar listings.
Chances are, if you are a regular reader of a calendar of events, your information will be useful to its editor. Most calendar sections make it easy to send in your listing. Be sure to respect the length and style of your target calendar Understand the people who want your story.

In your regular reading, watch for reporters who are writing about similar topics, and send a brief item to them, if possible, referencing that story. Reporters’ e-mail contacts are often attached to the story. If not, you can usually find contacts on the publication’s website. You will find that information, on most sites, by going to “About” at the very bottom of the home page, then, “Contact Us,” and then “Editorial Staff.”

If you need help finding contact information for a reporter whose work seems appropriate for your story, your employer’s own public relations staff may be the easiest place to look. See more tips on finding contacts at the end of this item. Please send e-mails only to individuals, not to a list. Do not send to more than one recipient, or with bcc addresses. Most publications have very rigorous spam filters.

Send the release as imbedded text, not as an attachment. Most publications have spam filters that will remove attachments. Always provide a local point of contact, particularly for local news sources.

Please don’t call to follow-up unless you are personally acquainted with or (friendly) with the reporter or editor.

Reporters and editors are very busy, especially at major publications. Most will not acknowledge receipt of information, they will just use it – or not. Unwanted follow-up phone calls sometimes have an undesirable effect.

Exceptions to the “Don’t call us” rule often include suburban weekly newspapers and morning news shows. If you have a spokesman willing to make a personal appearance on short notice, most morning show producers will be receptive to a few voice mails or follow-up faxes.

It can be a good idea for media contacts to get the same information from more than one source. If you are sending a press release to a specific individual, you can send a copy to Caryn Saitz at: caryn@worldusabilityday.org and the same press release will arrive a few days later from Creative Strategic Solutions and the WUD 2008 planning committee.

There is a conventional press release, with logos and the format you have probably seen before, suitable for distribution at conferences and other situations where a hard copy is appropriate.  You can also use the World Usability Day press release template.

Finding great contacts can happen in many ways.
You can use resources close to home, in your company’s, organizations, local directories and more. Or, there are many different contact databases available – Bacon’s which is the most expensive and mondomedia.com. You can usually find a copy of Bacon’s in a main library in any major city. The online version is much more user-friendly. Many companies have access to Bacon’s quality-online databases through their PR departments. It’s usually better to use these types of databases to get contact information for a reporter you’ve already identified in your regular reading.

Lexis-Nexis by Credit Card gives you a keyword search for free.
After registering with your credit card, you can do a free keyword search. You’ll get a listing of search results with article title, publication name, date, often the name of the reporter, and a line or two of description. You can get the full text of any article listed for $3 plus sales tax.

If you need help with any of these approaches, send a request to: csaitz@creativestrategicsolutions.com. Please be sure to include the reporter’s name, publication name, and a title or subject of the recent story in your request.

Copy of WUD 2008 initial press release.
A copy of the initial press release for WUD 2008 can be found in your packets, on the website in the tools section. Feel free to forward the press release and use it as a guide. If you have questions or need help, please email or call Executive Director, Caryn Saitz, caryn@worldusabilityday.org 617.905.5691.

We’re here to make your life easy!

You may also download the flier below.