Public Relations Kit for Dummies [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ (Author), Robert Bly (Author) "Strategic planning: Define each target audience, your marketing objectives for that group, and the messages you must communicate in support of those marketing objectives..." (more)
Key Phrases: personal contact list, key message points, single press release, New York, Bob Bly, The Wall Street Journal (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

When it comes to marketing, nothing beats good word of mouth. But how do you get your customers talking? This friendly guide shows you step-by-step how to create and implement an effective public relations strategy for pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of advertising. Public Relations Kit For Dummies gives you all the tools you need to spread the word about your product or service, without a PR agency. All it takes is effort and the straightforward guidelines you’ll find in this helpful guide.

If you’re a small business owner or manager or an entrepreneur, good PR will give you an advantage over your competition. If you’re a corporate manager or executive, you need an effective public relations program to communicate with your target market without increasing ad spending. In Public Relations Kit For Dummies, you’ll discover how to:

• Map a winning PR strategy
• Grab attention with press releases, interviews, and events
• Cultivate good media relations
• Get print, TV, radio, and Internet coverage
• Manage crises

This book is packed with successful ideas, techniques, and campaigns that really worked – and you can customize them to fit your clientele, product, or service. This friendly guide shows you how PR works, how to brainstorm for creative ideas, how to deliver your message to the media, and how to create buzz. And there’s more:

• Developing and stick to a budget
• Building an in-house PR department
• Specific PR tactics like contests, surveys, and tie-ins
• Company newsletters
• Writing query letters and pitch letters
• Handling yourself in interviews
• Turning bad press into good publicity
• Developing a contact list
• Specific strategies for radio, TV, newspapers, and new media
• Handling crises
• Measuring PR results

The book also includes a CD-ROM full of helpful PR forms, checklists, and templates; lists of resources like PR firms and media outlets; and software programs that makes PR simple. If you want people to notice your product or service, Public Relations Kit For Dummies is the only resource you need.

From the Back Cover

Proven techniques that maximize media exposure and generate buzz

Let a PR pro show you how to get people talking When it comes to marketing, nothing beats good word of mouth. But how do you get your customers talking? This friendly guide shows you step-by-step how to come up with a compelling company story, sell it to the media, and follow through with a full-throttle campaign that'll generate buzz — and build your bottom line. all this on the CD-ROM Videos, public relations forms, checklists, and templates, plus lists of PR firms, media outlets, and other useful contacts PR software tools, including a Start Right Marketing demo, ecBuilder, and Maximizer trial versions, and TeleMagic evaluation version Links to PR Web resources PC running Windows 95 or later, Windows NT 4 or later, or a 60840 Mac running Os 7.5.5 or later. See About the CD Appendix for further requirements and details.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies (January 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764552775
• ISBN-13: 978-0764552779
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #477,679 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save Your Money, July 29, 2004

By	T. Goodman "TheGoddessTeresa" (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Public Relations Kit For Dummies by Eric Yaverbaum and Bob Bly should be called The Public Relations Kit For Blooming Idiots. I cannot think of one thing I learnt from this book. If you have a basic ideal of how to create a press release and grammar skills above a forth grade level you do not need this book. Here are a few items the authors did not cover in this book:

1. How to organize a press kit for any occupation such as an actor/actress, an author, ........... There should be AT LEAST A BARE BONES BASICS OF AN ORGANIZED PRESS KIT IN THIS BOOK, OR ON THE WORTHLESS CD AND THERE IS NOT.

2. There is VERY LITTLE INTERNET RESOURCES IN THIS BOOK. Shame on you two for that!

Save your $20.00. There is NOTHING in this book you cannot find on the internet in one evening of research.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It Could Be Better, December 11, 2002

By	M. Lambiri - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book because of the great reviews I read about it and with the hope that it will give me some realistic and clear-cut advice on how to practise PR and what exactly PR is all about. Despite the fact that this book provides a very easy reading with real-life examples (limited to the authors company), there is a lot of simplicity and repetition to the extend that the reader may skip entire sentenses in order to spare himself the trouble of reading the same stuff again. Furthermore, the information given is neither new nor enlightening for any reader who has some basic Business Administration knowledge. I enjoyed very much a couple of the author's tips and examples but other than that I would recommend this book only to true beginners, i.e. college students or people from totally irrelevant disciplines (e.g. architects).

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complicated PR: A thing of the past, April 6, 2005

By	Thomas Murrell "Speaker, author" (Perth, Western Australia, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a fantastic do-it-yourself guide to public relations. I didn't see myself as the "for dummies" kind of person until i read this book. The book covers topics including change management, communication, marketing and issues management and makes them look easy. A must have for anyone wanting to know more about PR.