Why do you do what you do? I started MediaHQ to help PR people solve the problems that were killing their day and keeping them away from the really important work. I started out my career in 1999 in a busy political press office and the spark to start MediaHQ happened there. I craved anything that took the grunt work off my desk and made my job easier. Running a busy press office on your own means that you’re swimming in grunt work. Every politician who called wanted their problem solved immediately and there was only one of me! If only I could master the PR version of the loaves and fish. I tried by embracing anything that made jobs faster and more automated. I realised that technology is my friend and is the closest thing to biblical magic we are ever going to get!
This experience motivated me to create MediaHQ and imbue it with the spirit of always working to make things better. In September, we decided to look at a few of the crucial jobs that can make or break PR and asked the question - “Can we make them easier?” We started with the most obvious and important job - how press releases and pitch emails are created and shared with the media. We like to think our current process is pretty slick, but everything can be improved, and we got really stuck into it to see if we could make it even better. After three months of work, today we pushed the live button on MediaHQ’s new press release creation software tools.
These tools make it easier to build, target and send great press releases:
- New formatting tools - Make it easier to build nice pitch and media release emails with logos, colours and tables. Pasting from Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other text editors is now a seamless process.
- Increased file size for attachments - We are upping the limit on attached files on emails to 10 mbs.
- New press release templates - Allow you to build and save your favorite templates. Templates will give you the freedom to inject some of your personality into a release by creating a consistent visual style which follows your formatting style, be it for a pitch, media invite or photocall. It saves time and you can share templates, or you can use some of the templates created by the MediaHQ team.
- A new sending experience - Sending releases can be tricky. You need to include everyone who needs to get a release and make sure it is formatted correctly with no mistakes. We’ve added a simpler step process that allows you to check your process and make any changes along the way. We take you on a guided step process through sending your release.
Watch this space - there are many more improvements coming in 2022. We are committed to continuing to build great tools that help PR and communications professionals be great at their job. We’ll be improving our media contacts database by adding new contacts and making it even easier to find your audience and we’ll be adding even more tools to make your media relations job even easier.
More about Jack
Jack is a media innovator with over 20 years of experience at the most senior level in the Irish communications industry. He has worked in marketing, journalism, and media relations. He is a former political spokesperson and government advisor, as well as an award-winning corporate PR practitioner.Connect With Jack
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