Monday, February 5, 2007

How to leave a message--PR style

As bright and shining students eager learn the ways of public relations, we must learn the pratical ways of the business. PR News Online has some advice when calling other practioners. The essence of the phone message is important. "How to leave a message after the beep" posted on PR News has some pointers on how to leaving an impressive message that will get your call returned.

The advice from the newsletter states that leaving brief messages with our main point may capture your listener attention. You should invite your party to join you in your next public relations event (in hopes that they will help cover your event and spread the word). An example given on the PR website includes calling your potential client -- and instead of plainly telling them about your event that will promote a clean air awareness -- you can simply say; "hey come have lunch with the mayor as we celebrate our successful clean air awareness competition that we are launching this weekend. Call me back (input your name and number here). End of phone message.

This reminded me of our class lecture about persuasion. Stating a simple phone message in a persuasive manner can leave people wanting more....and by more I mean calling you back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A good example, but you need to clean up some typos in this post: "how to leaving...??" and "a listeners attention" should be possessive, not plural.

Also, do you really want to refer to someone you hope to enlist in your cause as your "victim," even jokingly? I think that's the wrong mindset for interactive PR. You need to find allies, not try to trick people.

Here's why: Once people figure out they've been had, they'll never help you out again...and they may even go out of their way to speak or work against you...and that's not good PR.