PR ADVICE

Prima Baby Editor
Elaine Griffiths

PR expert
Antonia Chitty

Q&A
Your PR questions answered:

Download your PR PLANNER to help you plan
Submit your PR evidence in this spreadsheet by
 OCTOBER 31st 2010
Winner will be announced: DECEMBER 2010
Forum thread here

Closing date for all entries
October 30th 2010

A CHALLENGE to generate PR for your own business
and be judged on how you do it.

2009 PR Challenge winner & finalists: Keira O’Mara - Mamascarf Sam Willoughby - What’s on 4 Joanne Dewberry - Charlie Moos Louise Prunty - Caledonian Therapy Nicky Chisholm - Mums in Biz

So how good’s your PR?

To kick start your business into the New Year, MumsClub has teamed up with Prima Baby, ACPR and The Business Mum’s Journal to offer you all a great new competition to get you thinking creatively about your PR, and the chance to win some fab, “money-can’t-buy” prizes.

MumsClub thanks the following companies for their continued support:

PRIZES:

• Editorial in Prima Baby & BabyExpert
• Feature in the next Business Mums Journal
• One-to-one consultation with Antonia Chitty of ACPR (over phone if distance is a problem) to help you improve your own PR.
• Profile on MumsClub
• Profile on Family Friendly Working

How do you market your business?
How can you get your story in the media?
What creative angle can you come up with that will make the editors and journalists notice you and want to run with your story?

PR is a great way to boost your business with minimal expenditure, but you need to put a small amount of time in every week.

The competition will reward your every PR success. We have a points table, so every time you’re mentioned you get points. You can start with one point for a mention in a playgroup newsletter, while top scores got to daytime TV coverage!

The competition will close at the end of the year, but that doesn’t mean you have plenty of time because you’ll need all the time to build up your score.

Build up a portfolio of clippings, video clips, press releases etc to demonstrate what you are achieving. This will look great on your website and help build customer confidence in your business.

Remember this is not for paid for advertising – this is for PR, and you’re not allowed to take on a PR company to do it for you either!

You have a PR & Marketing forum right here to chat to other mums in Marketing and we’ll put hints and tips on here from time to time so make sure you check back often.

POINTS TABLE:

ITEM Points Playgroup Newsletter Blog/website feature (with less than 1k readership per month) 1 Local Free paper or magazine Blog/website (with readership of 1-19k per month) 2 Running a competition on website with over 1k readership per month 3 Local Radio Local paid for press 4 Regional newspaper article or national mention Blog/website (with readership of 20k plus per month) 5 Local TV 6 National Newspaper or magazine feature 7 Winning a recognised business award 8 National Radio 9 National TV 10 Additional Points Allocation Recognised Award Nomination 1 Recognised Award finalist 4 Winning a recognised award 8 A video about you, produced by someone else 2 Your own video uploaded to eg; youtube 1

PLAN YOUR STRATEGY:

So before you start you need to work on your plan. You have a template waiting for you to download <PROMOTION PLANNER>. Adapt the planner and submit to us for a chance to win starter bonus points! Just submitting a plan will get you 5 points, and you can win up to 10 points if you have some really inspired ideas.

Browse PR Basics for inspiration and ideas. Anyone quoting mumsclubcomp can also order A Guide to Promoting Your Business for £9 for the duration of the competition.

Further bonus points will be awarded to inspired ideas when you put them into action. We will be watching out for stunts and off the wall ideas that generate PR that actually works for you!  Other members will be the judge of this though and we hear they can be a critical bunch!

HOW TO SUBMIT:

The challenge is in two parts. 1. To gain bonus points simply send your completed promotion plan (deadline end of MARCH) to admin@mumsclub.co.uk clearly stating PR COMP in the subject line.>> This deadline has now passed but you can still win! The planner is simply for bonus points...

2. Then keep track of all your media activity in the <spreadsheet download>, ensure you have a ‘In the Press’ page on your website to show all of your appearances - we’ll refer to this to verify your documented evidence - so make sure you include all scans of newspaper clippings, recordings of you on the radio, links to your tv appearance on you tube..

Then send your spreadsheet to us, so we can check it off and calculate your score.

Any problems contact admin@mumsclub.co.uk - marking PR COMP in the subject line! or join in the Forum thread here.

Have fun and Good luck!