Not too long ago a reader approached me with a question about sending a photo with a media advisory. She had a professional speaking engagement to announce and had two potential photos she could use. The first was a headshot or studio photograph of the speaker, and the second was a candid photo of the speaker in front of an audience. She wanted to know which photo would work better with her release.

Before I get into my response, I’ll take a moment to discuss each style. The biggest difference between the two styles is that a headshot is a formal image and a candid is not. Studio images show viewers what a person looks like, and candids give readers a feel for what they do.

Headshots

Headshots or portraits are high-quality official images. They appear in press releases, marketing materials, on websites, and in portfolios everywhere. They promote one person by giving the reader a professional photo of them from the shoulders up.

We know these portraits well. Every yearbook we've ever owned is loaded with them. These photographs appear in press releases frequently. They draw attention to an individual spotlighted in a news release.

Think of a newspaper or online article. Many regular columns include a headshot of the author. Over time, readers will begin to associate the content of the column with the face they see in their newspaper or on their computer screen.

Use headshots to create a brand around a person. Include a headshot when your CEO, commissioner, or president issues a statement to the press in the form of a news release. Use the same image every time he or she makes a statement. Your audience will hopefully learn to associate their portrait with content from your organization.

Here are some examples of releases with headshots:

• Champlain College

• SUNY Cortland

• New York State Bar Association

Candids

Candid photos are images of people in a natural setting. Instead of just showing you what the person looks like, they show you the person in action. Unlike headshots, candids are not staged.

They give readers a feel for a situation, instead of a person. A candid photograph paints a picture and summarizes of an event. Use them to evoke feelings or elicit an emotional response from your audience. For example, if your organization regularly volunteers in the community, provide your readers with photographs of your coworkers helping others.

Candids, however, are not a good method of branding your news. They capture events happening in a specific place at a specific time. Use them to help tell the full story of what happened at the event in your press release.

Here are some examples of releases with candid photographs:

• New York State Office for Technology

• Michael Arnone’s 20th Annual Crawfish Fest

• American Lung Association of the Midland States

Headshots Vs. Candids

Now that I’ve discussed candid photos and headshots individually, I want to get back to the original question from one of our readers: “Should I use a portrait or candid with my media advisory?”

I would recommend including a professional headshot along with most media advisories. Draw attention to the speaker, not the speaking engagement. Try to build a brand around the speaker and help the audience recognize them as an important source of news.

It can’t hurt to also include a candid photograph of the professional speaker in action along with a media advisory. News outlets have different layouts, and some may prefer action-oriented photographs. However, if you do decide to send multiple photos with a release, always make your headshot the first one they see. Remember that this image will brand your news over time.

After distributing a media advisory with a headshot, I would send a follow up release after the event with a candid photo accompanying it. Not only will you make a bigger splash in the media, you will showcase two different sides of the same person/organization. Use a photograph taken at that specific event and make the audience part of the story.

While it’s obvious that photographs enhance news releases, it isn’t always clear what type of photo to use in a given situation. Both candid photos and portraits offer distinct advantages. Use the style that suits your needs.

If you have a question about press releases, public relations or social media that you’d like to see us answer on Newsworthy, use the Ask a PR Question link on the left hand toolbar.

At Newsworthy, we talk about multimedia attachments quite a bit. Photos, videos, audio files, PDFs, and other documents will enhance the material in your news stories. However, even though we call these files “attachments,” you shouldn’t “attach” them to the press releases you distribute by email.

Attaching files directly to emails can cause deliverability problems. So how do you deliver this valuable content to the media? The answer is to include hyperlinks to your extra content in your emails rather than attaching the files themselves. This can be a little trickier than simply attaching a file, but even if you don’t have your own website, there are plenty of online options for hosting files, and most newswires will provide this service for you.

Let’s take a closer look at why email attachments create problems and how the use of hyperlinks can help solve them.

Spam

If you aren’t recognized as a “safe sender” by a recipient, emails with files attached will be more likely to get caught in that individual’s spam filter than emails without attachments. This started a couple years ago when marketers realized that anti-spam software at the time was only scanning the text in their email messages, and not the content of their attachments. They quickly began sending marketing material as PDFs, spreadsheets and photos.

Since that time, anti-spam software makers have cracked down on attachments. Most programs now examine the contents of incoming documents. If they find anything suspicious in your material, your message will be diverted to a spam filter. In other words, everything you add to your emailed press release essentially increases the chance of it appearing as spam.

It’s important to be recognized as a “safe sender” in newsrooms. Reach out to the individual news outlets you’re targeting and ask them to whitelist your email address. This means a lot of initial legwork and plenty of maintenance over time if you aren’t using a newswire, but it’s worth the effort.

Space

The files you send along with your emails take up extra space in your recipients’ mailboxes. If your file is large (as many audio and video files are), there’s a chance your message may be denied. This could happen for one of two reasons:

First, your recipient’s mailbox could be full. Most email servers have upper limits of storage space associated with every email address. If your recipient isn’t cleaning out their inbox regularly, large emails may not fit in their overcrowded mailbox. Even though most commercial email clients have set the bar pretty high regarding available storage space (Gmail accounts allow between 7 GB and 25 GB) many corporate email accounts have a much smaller capacity.

Second, most email providers set limitations on the overall size of each outgoing and incoming message. These size restrictions will vary from one email client to the next. Unfortunately there’s no way to know a recipient’s limit before sending an email. If a file exceeds the account’s limits, you will receive an “undeliverable” message. While these size restrictions shouldn’t affect most press releases, they could affect emails with large audio or video files attached.

Links

Most of the scenarios I mentioned above are unlikely to happen with traditional press releases. As I mentioned before, the upper limits on email sizes are very high. However, just to be safe, here’s what you should do:

Send a barebones (text only) press release to your email recipients. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting to avoid distributing multimedia files with your press releases. Photos, audio and video are the frosting on the cake that is your press release. And we all love frosting, right?

Instead of “attaching” files to the press releases you send by email, host your files online and link to them in the text of your release. If possible, host the files on your website and direct traffic there. Check with your webmaster. He or she can insert codes to track the traffic on these pages. You’ll get a feel for the level of exposure your releases are getting.

If you don’t have the resources to host files on your website, there are plenty of tools available online for file hosting. Here are a few popular options:

• Flickr
• ImageShack
• YouTube
• Dropbox
• SmugMug

Make it one of your goals to get the people reading your press releases onto your website. This means, creating an online archive of press releases and related multimedia files and linking to the information in every news piece you send by email. Every click will bring you one step closer to your audience.