The Public Relations Blog

The travel/tourism industry offers numerous opportunities for businesses to gain traction. Axia Public Relations offered up a few key tips on the subject in Part I, and we’ve got even more for your consideration here:

Do you own a hotel or resort destination, or are you perhaps a member of a local chamber of commerce seeking to attract more visitors? A consistent flow of tourists and travelers can make all the difference, and travel industry veterans understand how much time, money and effort it takes to build and maintain that consistency. In fact, many travel and tourism-focused outfits earmark large marketing budgets to further establish brand or locale identity. Looking ahead to the busiest domestic travel season of the year, summer, it’s clear that to be competitive, travel and tourism-oriented businesses can achieve more with expanded marketing programs that include public relations. But what are the best tactics to deploy in such a highly competitive industry?

By Wendy Bulawa Agudelo

Lately, Starbucks has been earning headlines for its Race Together campaign, designed to stimulate dialogue about the controversial topic of race relations. Americans immediately took to social media with unrest, questioning why a coffee behemoth would take on the dialogue – and, more importantly, why it would use handwritten #racetogether scribbles on disposable coffee cups to engage customers on a topic so controversial.

Create mutually beneficial relationships using social media

Already this month, our team has blogged about social media and its role within an overall marketing communications program. To that end, comments have come in inquiring about how businesses can establish stronger ties with the local media through social media.

If you use Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook regularly, you immediately gain access to a large and varied population of journalists and news media outlets. Even a quick review of local media websites highlights that most news professionals maintain social media presences – with Twitter handles (@name) stashed within team bios, beneath photos or in news blog posts. Of course, if you aren’t yet comfortable with Twitter as a social media platform, you’ll first want to brush up on basic functionality and terms including “retweet” (RT), “hashtag” (#), “favorite,” “newsfeed,” “tweet,” etc. before proceeding.

In our experience, if businesses or individuals truly want to establish relationships using Twitter, they’ll want to consider these best practice tips:

This underutilized PR asset could give you the boost you need.

Since most businesses are acutely attuned to fast-paced digital news derivatives and television, many don’t consider that a simple editorial calendar could lead to a magazine cover story. That’s where they’re mistaken.

Editorial calendars are a tool used predominantly by a print or digital publication’s advertising department to plan out significant features, focuses, or areas of interest throughout the year. Using that guide, advertising sales teams approach businesses about purchasing ad space, since most companies will advertise in issues that focus on a topic or feature critical to their primary demographics or industries.

Toward the end of every calendar year, publications begin to post their editorial calendars. Savvy public relations veterans use these tools to map the types of stories or businesses a publication plans to cover. They can then determine appropriate editions for which to pitch their clients.

Kick off 2015 and boost your business with great PR

Before the turn of the new year, we published an earlypredictions piece on public relations. Certainly some more skeptical readers may view our predictions as more strategic in nature, so let’s reel it in a little: What are the steps that an organization should take if it’s just now considering a PR program? Using the handful of expert tips below, any business looking to advance its brand reputation or extend its product marketing can immediately initiate its own public relations program.

PR insiders tell when the best day is to send press releases

Many organizations get hung up on the same quandary: When do you send out your most important news to the media to ensure that it doesn’t get lost amid the noise? For years, public relations veterans have debated this topic, suggesting that, for example, poor earnings news should go out after market close on Friday in an effort to decrease the potential of the news getting reported. Others maintain that Wednesdays are a slower-than-average news day during which the press trolls for good news items to scoop.

So, what day is the best day to announce your latest whiz-bang gizmo that will change the world? Any business day you pick will be a fine day, and here’s why