1. What’s PressCom and what does it do?
PressCom is a team of experienced professionals who are responsible for managing, promoting and enhancing corporate reputation for its clients. We do this mainly through public relations with the press and the web as well as with clients’ stakeholders.
2. What’s the difference between PressCom and a PR agency?
A PR agency seeks out news and stories and sells them to newspapers. Newspapers are de-facto PR agencies’ clients.PressCom does not receive any form of payment from newspapers. What PressCom does is to define your story in the most newsworthy way so that it is published in news media.
3. What’s the difference between PressCom and an advertising agency?
An advertising agency buys advertising space and fills it with clients’ advertisements or advertising campaigns.
PressCom does not buy advertising space, but it strives to persuade editorial staff to devote a part of a page or broadcasting time to the news about their clients at no cost. What will be published is not an advertisement, but a genuine article, with all the authority of the journalist who signs it.
4. Can I publish what I want?
Not really. To ensure that newspapers will publish articles about you, it is necessary that the story content is noteworthy and relevant. An experienced professional at PressCom will interview managers or key members of staff within your organisation and assess your business to define your story in the most newsworthy way. After this first step, PressCom will assist you in deciding which information is the most important to communicate and how to communicate it to the media.
5. What’s a communication plan?
A communication plan defines the communication strategy and the individual steps that need to be taken in order to meet the objectives that have been set, within the deadlines. The communication plan is only set out after a full business assessment of the client’s company has been carried out to identify newsworthy stories in relation to the objectives the client wants to fulfill.
6. Do I really need a communication company to do PR activities for my company?
Helping businesses communicate effectively with their customers is what PR professionals do successfully and this is a skill that takes a long time to develop. Successful PR professionals need to have great writing skills but they also need to be able to identify newsworthy current issues promptly. They also need to be readily available to answer journalists’ questions. It takes years of experience to understand what news is noteworthy and what isn’t, how to create and submit editorial content in an appealing manner to the right journalists. Moreover, by doing PR incorrectly could lead to huge setbacks for the company, in some cases damaging its reputation. Having said all that, if clients still prefer to go it alone, that’s perfectly OK by us but we would strongly recommend taking proper training, perhaps with one of the training courses offered by PressCom.
7. Why does the cost of PR services vary so much?
It only takes a computer, good writing skills and the name of the right journalist, to write and send a press release to a newspaper, trade magazine etc. However, to carry out effective PR activities it is essential, more often than not, to go with a professional who knows how to recognise noteworthy news, how to exploit it and send the press release to the relevant medium’s editorial staff. Furthermore, being part of a network of professionals, which comes from years of working in public relations and journalism, often makes the difference.
8. In short, ‘PR activities’ means publishing news about a business or businessperson in various newspapers…
It means this and much more. Doing PR involves a combination of a variety of activities such as establishing, developing and maintaining relationships not only with journalists but also with institutions, businesses and consumers’ associations, in other words, with the full plethora of stakeholders.
9. Does PressCom pay for editorial space in newspapers, magazines etc.?
We do not pay anyone, but we manage to publish our clients stories by providing journalists with noteworthy news. Over the years we have established a trustworthy relationship with a large number of journalists.
10. When will I read the article about my business in the media? How long will the article be? What will the article say? Will it be on the front page, home page?
Unfortunately, we cannot provide clear answers to these questions. We have no power over the media with regards to these issues, we can only provide journalists with noteworthy news and if they deem it newsworthy, they will publish it as soon as possible accordingly to editorial space availability.
11. What is monitoring? What can monitoring do for me?
By monitoring, we refer to supplying clients with a periodic report that provides market insights and analysis whilst highlighting market strengths and weaknesses. This report is produced by scrutinising all the news linked to our clients. The news is selected and summarised accordingly to clients’ needs and presented in a easy to use format.
12. What other services can PressCom provide?
PressCom also provides training courses, in particular editorial training courses and social media training courses. For more information please refer to this page.