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By Joan Stewart
If you’re pitching stories about your company, but photos are an
afterthought, you could be missing fabulous opportunities for publicity.
A good-quality photo is often the first thing that attracts a reader’s
attention. It serves as an anchor on the page. And often, a photo can
tell its own story, without being accompanied by an article.
Journalists say a good photo can move your article from the back of a
magazine to the front. Photos can be the deciding factor when you’re
pitching a story idea. An editor who knows that you can provide photos,
or that their own photographer can take photos of something interesting,
might be encouraged to say “yes” to your story idea.
Here are 13 tips for using photos and graphics for publicity:
1. Make sure you have good-quality, above-the-shoulders photos of all
your experts who are likely to be interviewed by the media.
2. Consider asking your photographer to shoot “environmental portraits”
of your experts. An architect, for example, might be shown holding
several rolled up architect’s renderings under her arm. A construction
executive can be shown holding a hard hat or other tools of his trade.
Weekly newspapers that don’t have big photo staffs would probably
welcome these photos.
3. Have interior and exterior shots of your company available for the
media. The interior shots can show people at work.
4. Submit photos with news releases about routine announcements such as
new hires, promotions, retirements, awards, etc.
5. Pie charts, bar charts and other graphics can often help readers
understand complicated issues such as budgets. Offer to supply
information to media outlets so they can create their own graphics to
accompany the article they’re writing about.
6. If you’re sponsoring an event that doesn’t necessarily warrant a
story, call the photo desk at your local newspaper and let photographers
know what’s happening.
7. If a photographer from a newspaper or magazine takes photos at your
company, never demand to see the negatives, or dictate what photo they
should use with the article, or ask for free copies of prints. The
negatives are the property of the media outlet, and the media maintain
full control over their use. If you want prints, expect to pay for them.
8. When sending prints to the media, be sure correct identification is
on a sticker on the back of each photo. When sending several photos,
slip a piece of paper between each one so the ink from the back of one
photo doesn’t bleed onto the front of the photo behind it.
9. Avoid using big clunky photos at your website because they slow down
the time it takes a page to load.
10. Never, ever ask a newspaper or magazine to take photos of a
check-passing, ground-breaking or ribbon-cutting ceremony. The media
hate these staged events. And please, don’t wimp out by uploading these
cheesy-looking photos to your expensive website.
11. Offer an architect’s rendering instead of a ground-breaking shot. In
place of a check-passing photo, take a photo that illustrates what the
money will be used for. Instead of a ribbon-cutting photo, how about a
photo of a business person with a customer on the first day of business?
12. Make sure you offer all your images as digital photos that the media
can access at your website, perhaps in a password protected area that
the public can’t access.
13. If you’re sponsoring an annual event, take lots of photos yourself
and offer them to the media the following year to be used for pre-event
publicity.
Are you starting to get the picture? Photos and graphics can be a
powerful publicity tool—but only if you use them.
Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, is author of the ebooks
“How to Use Photos & Graphics in Your Publicity Campaign and
How to
be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound
Direct comments or questions about this article, including requests
for reprint rights, to:
Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound
3434 County KK
Port Washington, WI 53074
Phone: 262-284-7451
JStewart@PublicityHound.com
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