To wage an successful, active media relations campaign, you need three essential tools:

A traditional press kit is a folder, binder, or envelope containing all the information about you and/or your firm that the media need to know at a particular moment, for a particular purpose. Notice we did not say it contains everything the media will ever need to know.

What does "flexible" mean?
Your press kit (also known as a media kit) should be flexible — which means you should be able to customize it easily for different purposes, circumstances, and media outlets. You should also be able to update it as needed, perhaps often.

To whom should you send the kit, and when?
You do not need to distribute a press kit every time you distribute a press release, pitch a story, or contact a media outlet for the first time. The circumstances in which you should distribute a kit include the following:

What do reporters do with your kit?
Assuming the press welcomes your press kit, they may use the information in it to write a story, file it away as reference material for future stories, or keep the kit in their source files. Reporters define "sources" as subject-matter experts whom they can call for quotes or comments on certain topics. (Although lawyers in many states avoid calling themselves experts, reporters almost always refer to them, and to others, as expert sources.)

Most reporters organize their source files by topic. Therefore, if you include information about more than one topic, practice area, or industry group in your press kit, it will probably get split up and allocated to various source files. Depending on the media outlet and the circumstances, you may want to distribute a distinct press kit for each subject, practice area, or industry group. Also, there's no point in distributing the materials in a manila file folder with the name of your firm on the tab — the reporter will file the kit according to his or her interests and filing systems, not yours. If you have a fancy folder or binder manufactured to contain your press kit and it doesn't fit in the typical reporter's file cabinet, it will be summarily discarded — unless, perhaps, the reporter is working on a feature story about your firm now.

Substance is king
In fact, some reporters scoff at fancy packages printed with the firm's logo and other "branding" images and messages. They want substance: background information, salient facts and statistics, new survey and research data, creative story ideas, credentials that demonstrate your authoritativeness as a source, reference photos or maps, etc. It's okay to mail it all in a plain envelope with a cover letter. A beautifully art-directed folder or binder without substance inside is worthless to a reporter.

Depending on the circumstances, the media outlet you are targeting, and your media relations goals, you may want to include some of the following items in your press kit (we're still talking about the traditional hard-copy press kit; we'll talk about the electronic version later in this section):

Some marketing gurus suggest that you give press kits to people other than the press, such as potential clients (with a brochure inserted), seminar attendees, and visitors to your booth at a conference or trade show. Some suggest that you leave a stack of them in your lobby or waiting area. We strongly advise against that practice. Press kits are for the press. Clients, seminar attendees, and visitors will be much more impressed with a package of information that is tailored specially for them.

In the old days, some wire services could fax your press kit to thousands of media outlets for you; now they can e-mail electronic press-kit files. Unless you are a huge international firm, or have extremely exciting news to disseminate, broad distribution is neither necessary nor effective.

Electronic press kit
As time goes by, more journalists want and expect to receive electronic press kits via e-mail. You can transmit either word processing documents (most commonly in Microsoft Word or rich text format) or PDF versions as attachment to selected media outlets if they give you prior approval — but do not send attachments unless you are invited to do so. Most reporters are suspicious of attachments of any kind because they can contain malware (viruses, adware, and spyware, for example) — and some e-mail client software filters out certain kinds and sizes of attachments. Even if you are cleared to send an attachment, in your e-mail message tell reporters exactly what is contained in the attachment and remind them that they invited you to attach it.

If your kit contains more than two or three elements, either combine them into one file or zip the files together (which also condenses the files so that they occupy much less storage space, which gives it a better chance of slipping through e-mail filters), using one of the popular zip/unzip programs. Name the file "Washington Adams & Jefferson press kit," using your firm or individual name, of course.

The advantages of electronic press kits are speed and cost. By e-mail you can deliver them in seconds, compared to days for snail mail. You also save the cost of printing and postage, as well as photo processing and packaging. The disadvantage is that your electronic press kit might sit in some reporter's inbox for days or weeks and perhaps be forgotten or accidentally (or not accidentally) deleted. Sure, hard-copy press kits can be tossed out as well, but probably not accidentally, and they more likely to be noticed in the first place.

The advantage of sending PDF versions of your documents is that PDF preserves all the formatting of your text documents. If you send a document created in Microsoft Word 2000, and the recipient uses Word 2003, or the recipient reads the document on a Mac, there is a good chance the formatting will get distorted — especially if the documents contain tables, bullet lists, varying margins, etc. PDF documents look the same on all platforms, assuming the recipient has Adobe Reader (which you can safely assume these days).

On the other hand, some reporters prefer that you send Word or rich-text documents, so they can cut-and-paste portions of the text into their story or notes. If you are unsure whether to send PDF or Word files, ask recipients which they prefer.

Online press kit
Many reporters prefer, if they have the opportunity, to visit your website and download your press kit, rather than receive it by e-mail. That way, they can read it online first and print out only the elements that they might need.

This requires that you have a website. If you want to do aggressive media relations successfully, you need an online press kit.

From a reporter's point of view, the best thing you could possibly do is to place the following information at the top of your website's home page, in large, bold type:

But you probably don't want to do that, because your website must appeal to other audiences besides the press. The next best thing, from the reporter's point of view, would be to have a prominent "Media Contact Info" link in your main navigation bar at the top (or left side) of the Home page. Clicking on that link would take a reporter to the Media Contact Info page, which is actually the start (and in some cases the whole) of your online press kit. This second-tier page would feature the following:

In terms of website architecture, Media Contact Info should be a second-tier or third-tier page — in other words, reporters should have to drill down only one or two levels to find it.

You can generate your own industry newsfeeds, by the way, so that visitors don't have to leave your site to find one. You can gather and write the news internally, use a third-party newsfeed plug-in, or pay a service to aggregate industry new for your feed. Ask your webmaster or website developer about newsfeeds, or contact the following service providers: FeedDirect, Feedster, Moreover, NewsGator, NewsIsFree, and others.

Paula Levis Suita is a partner in Smith & Suita, Inc. (www.smithandsuita.com), a public relations and marketing firm in Boston. She has more than 20 years of experience generating positive press results in national, trade, and web-based outlets. Smith & Suita was recognized by PR News with two Legal PR Awards in 2004. Paula began her career as a news reporter for the Eagle Tribune (North Andover, MA) daily newspaper. She is a coauthor of The GET GOOD PRESS Series for Lawyers.