Fiona Brown is a PR Consultant and expert in her field. She has over 16 years experience in the PR industry working with brands such as Tourism NI, Visit Belfast, Jet 2, Forestside and many more. 

In 2017 Fiona Brown Communications was founded and Fiona launched with Hasting Hotels as her main client. Hastings is Northern Ireland's leading collection of hotels with seven hotels across the country. 

Since 2017 Fiona has worked with McKee's Law firm, Northern Ireland Social Media Awards, Holisitic Kidz, Aimee Connolly, Iconic Bronze, Digital Twenty Four, Linwoods, Field Day, Ooh and Ahh Cookies and lots more. 

On the podcast Fiona strips it right back and gets to the nitty gritty of what PR is and how to utilise it in the best way to grow your business and brand.

We have listed some key points below.

FIVE POINTERS TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES KICK START PR

1. WHAT IS YOUR STORY?

- Who are you?

- What do you offer?

- What makes you different?

- Company ethos

- Who is your audience?

- Brainstorm with your team.

This should provide lots of ideas / inspiration for PR activity and you never know what ideas might be sparked. Not all will be relevant, but all ideas are still good to chat through. - How has Covid impacted your business? What are the positives? Have you pivoted? Offered new services? Coming out of this challenging period provides the opportunity for local businesses to share their stories – as long as they are newsworthy.

2. CREATE A PLAN OF ACTIVITY

- Start crafting clear messaging

- Creative and engaging activity

- Attention grabbing ideas

- Look at ‘National Days’ linking in with your industry / business

- Plan what activity you are doing on a quarterly basis.

Think of:

Ø Milestones

Ø Investment

Ø Job creation

Ø New services

Ø New products

Ø Employee success

Ø Local supplier links?

Ø Corporate Social responsibility

Ø Awards

- PR activity doesn’t always have to have direction promotion of your business to have an impact. Advice led pieces / opinion based articles are an excellent way to keep your name out there.

3. HOW CAN YOU COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?

- What newspapers / magazines / websites do they read?

- What broadcast stations/programmes do they watch or listen to?

- What social media influencers are relevant to your business?

- Find out about the media outlets:

Ø Buy the newspapers every day (I have the apps on my phone)

Ø Get a feel for the media landscape. Familiarise yourself with the types of articles / features

4. START TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH RELEVANT MEDIA / SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS

- Find out about the journalists / influencers relevant to your business

- Follow them on social media. Twitter is particularly useful for this with journos. Be helpful, if they post asking for help within your field of expertise, interact. - When initially contacting journalists, give them the key information. Your email should be succinct. Don’t send pages of copy. You need to draw them in with the key facts. They get hundreds of emails a day, make sure yours is newsworthy. - Journalists look for good stories, not sales messaging.

- All journalists want a story that is of interest to their readers. Blatant sales press releases don’t work. Ever!

- Don’t BCC. Send personal emails.

- When you catch the eye of media, they are likely to look up your website / social media channels so make sure they are always up to date – especially with the activity you are contacting them about.

5. ULTILISE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

- As stated previously, engage with media

- Post your own engaging content

- Be wary of your own interaction – i.e be careful what you like / share / post – it’s all a reflection on your brand / business

If you would like to get in touch with Fiona to discuss PR opportunities then you can check out her website - Fiona Brown Communications

Follow her on social: 

Instagram: Fionabrowncommunications

Twitter: fionabrowncomms

To listen to the full podcast:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Youtube