The right period to create a fact sheet is any epoch you compulsion to ... a reporter on a obscure ... dont mind ... they just dont want to think too hard. They simply dont have t
The right epoch to make a fact sheet is any grow old you craving to spoon-feed a reporter on a mysterious subject.
Reporters dont mind thinking, they just dont desire to think too hard. They usefully dont have the time. They are writing archives in a hurry. The accent is upon hurry.
PR Rainmakers tolerate this and use it to their advantage.
Creating a fact sheet gives you more control higher than the relation that you will have without it. A reporter in a hurry is very likely to put up with your fact sheet and covert at least allocation of it into a section of the story.
The fact sheet offers the reporter a short-cut that few can refuse. suitably find the money for it.
There are four steps to creating a powerful fact sheet. They are:
Step 1: accumulate content.
Bring together every recent document your company has produced upon the topic you desire the reporter to cover. consider widening your net to total documents produced by amalgamated associations, colleges, think tanks and even competitors.
Talk to the folks in your company who in point of fact know the subject. Focus not unaccompanied upon the executives, but then on the grunts who in fact develop the statute and hence know it inside out. acknowledge cautious notes.
Think in the manner of a reporter. What would a journalist craving to know? But afterward see for the surprising, the engaging or the unusual: things the reporter might not expect. combine these ideas as well.
Step 2: Organize and outline
Sort your counsel by subject. Some PR Rainmakers use binders or folders. Others use computer software. Go behind whatever works best for you.
Lets tell you represent a drug manufacturer who is issuing a additional pill that instantly cures hives caused by consumption of MSG. Your content might enhance the pills formula, the team that created the pill, the size of the companys investment, the potential publicize for the pill, the supple ingredients, the chemical tribute to MSG in allergic humans, and upon and on.
You want to acknowledge each bit of useful guidance and put it considering combined information. have the funds for each box of information a name: team, market, ingredients, and correspondingly on.
Your mean is sort out your content until it makes suitability to you.
Next, on a sheet of paper or upon a computer screen, you desire to write a master list of the names of each box.
This will find the money for the basic outline for your fact sheet. improve the outline until the structure makes sense.
Step 3: Prune, include and simplify.
The purpose is, in few pages as possible, to manufacture a fact sheet that hits the topics you desire to look in the reporters story.
Rule of thumb: At least five boxes, and no more than 10. Prune away until you achieve a number amid those two.
Look for opportunities to adjoin boxes. For example, if you have some content sorted as executive team and substitute as research team, find combining these into one box labeled team.
Also, you obsession to locate ways to simplify profound ideas. Search for comparisons and analogies that will tune complicated processes. Transform jargon into English. Focus on benefits, not features.
Trim, trim and trim some more. (When I started this article, there were eight steps. Now there are just four. Thats where you desire to go following this allocation of the process.)
If the subject is just too rarefied to condense to a single page, believe to be creating more than one fact sheet. Just create determined each fact sheet focuses on a single aspect of the overall topic.
Step 4: Format and produce
There are as many ways to design fact sheets as there are topics. You will infatuation to use your experience, creativity and common prudence to pick the one that best organized your material.
Try to save the fact sheet to one page. enormously no more than three.
Use a readable typeface, such as Arial, in a 10 to 12 tapering off typeface. Double spacing isnt necessary, but use a blank pedigree together with paragraphs.
The page should begin with the word Fact Sheet, followed by a utterly brief headline that explains the topic of the page.
From that reduction on, show subsequent to your outline. Use a little header to introduce each box. deem using a bullet to entrance each paragraph.
Insert lonely the most interesting, most indispensable or most relevant opinion you have to offer. Remember: Your job is to create it easy for the reporter to write the story.
Finally: Dont be afraid to steal a format you find attractive. If you want to examination the designs of 10 fact sheets that might take effect for you, visit http://www.prrainmaker.com/factsheets.html.
Copyright 2003 by W.O. Cawley Jr.
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