I wanted to take this opportunity to write an advice piece and share with you the single most important aspect of PR and what we here at Angels Media have found important when planning public relations (PR) activity in the property trade media.

I'm trying to write this article, leaving in some of my workings, to show you not only what you need to talk about in your content, but the way to look at laying out the articles. For example, my title makes you think: what is this? I want to read it.

PR is one of the oldest and most successful methods of getting your message out to a marketplace and you can incorporate this into what you do by following some simple steps if you don’t want to use a PR agency.

The ‘make you want to read on’ opening statement:

If you read nothing else from this PR article other than the below sentence, it will be of worth to you:

Always have your news angle as the primary and what you do as a secondary
- Lee Dahill.  

This news-first approach will generate between three to eight property trade placements in the press per article.

What I'm going to be talking about

In this article, I want to explain why PR shouldn’t be overlooked.

Here are some of the topics that will be covered:

• Why everyone should use PR in their strategy
• The tools you need if you want to DIY
• What you need to think about when writing content
• The way you should always position your articles

Why should everyone use PR?

If you set aside time in your working day or cut out one evening of TV time, you can work on an article that will be good for the industry. I sit here writing this article for you, as a dyslexic communications manager (thank goodness for spell check!), on the weekend. I'm not a content writer, nor have I studied to be one, but you can feel the passion through the page, of me talking about something I love to do: marketing and PR.

The reason I want to share this with you is because if I can put something together, anyone can, which means there should be no barrier to entry or reason not to try at the very least.

Over the next few sections I will give you the tools we use for our property trade PR to get great coverage in the industry.

The tools you need if you want to DIY:

We can list all the standard things everyone says - passion, knowledge, writing skills, personality, industry leader, etc.

The thing you need to think about before you do any of those things is what is the angle of your article based on from a news perspective that your target audience will find interesting. Put those shoes on the feet of your intended audience – wear those size 10s with pride.

What you need to think about when writing content

PR should be used to provide newsworthy content to your target audience. Creating you as a spokesperson in the industry and a brand that people can trust for their knowledge and expertise.

PR is all about providing valued content that helps the industry based on what is happening right now in the property marketplace. It needs a news-first approach, rather than focusing too much on your new ‘xyz’ product.

PR has major advantages for your target audience in helping them to understand you in a totally different light, as this is not an advert. With PR, a person finds you as opposed to you finding them with advertising.

The way you should always position your articles

The single best advice I can give you when putting together a PR strategy is: always write the content from a news perspective and think long and hard about whether what you are saying is interesting, useful and relevant to the intended audience. 

To summarise:

In this article, I specifically wanted to keep the piece short whilst focusing on the primary most important area of PR which often gets lost – the news-first approach. If you take nothing else away from my 880 words, just remember that and I guarantee this will improve your content and efforts.

PR has so much worth and is often overlooked in a marketing strategy as it can be seen as a waste of money/resource with no guarantee of placements. If you follow the above principles as an agency or an individual working on your own PR efforts, you can't go far wrong.

I hope this has inspired you to look at writing something yourself or look at employing a PR agency to help raise your profile further. If you would like some more advice or tips you can read more here about choosing a spokesperson, different approaches and their benefits.

If you want any more advice or ideas, I'm more than happy to help and set up a video call to discuss further. 

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this. I do appreciate it and wish you the best with any PR efforts.