This is the second post in a series profiling how Jennifer Jones of the Staunton, Va. Parks and Recreation Department uses readMedia as part of her PR strategy.

In just three months, Jennifer Jones brought the Staunton Parks and Recreation Department out of obscurity and into the local spotlight. With a few adjustments to her PR strategy, she has strengthened her organization’s brand throughout the community. Here are a few secrets to her success:

1. What’s ordinary to you is news to your community

It’s easy to take the programs and events you see everyday for granted. From within an organization, it can be hard to see the news value in events that seem commonplace to insiders. “Our horticulturist’s recycling program is a regular occurrence, but we turned it into a story about an environmental effort,” said Jones. Look at things from a fresh perspective and turn the ordinary into story opportunities. You’re exposed to these happenings on a regular basis but your audience is not. Engage them by sharing these important events and programs.

2. Don’t crowd your news releases

Tackle one topic at a time — focus on a single program or event. Centering a press release around one newsworthy item helps drive home the importance of your news and gives it the context it needs. The old method of writing press releases in the Staunton Parks and Recreation Department was to cram information about 20+ programs, classes, leagues and events into a single release every two weeks. At best, some of the programs would find their way to the newspaper calendar listings. “Now, we elaborate on one specific program,” said Jones. Their stories no longer get lost in the shuffle and are featured in the media much more often and more prominently than before.

3. Get your news online

In addition to getting noticed in newsrooms, ensuring that your news gets into Google and can be found in search is crucial. “Before, our news only made it into Google if our press releases were picked up by the local paper and published as stories on their Web site,” said Jones. Now, every release is published online, whether it’s picked up in the media or not (though most of Staunton’s releases are). This makes it easy for people to find news about the department and share news releases on sites like Facebook and Twitter. “From our Web Stats, we can tell that people are reading the press releases online and clicking through to them from Facebook.” Staunton also auto-publishes an RSS feed of their news to the department’s home page.

4. Make your news release headlines sizzle

Most reporters receive press releases as eMails today, so drawing them in with an intriguing subject line is key to getting their attention. “Knowing that our press release title will arrive as a subject line in an eMail, we try to entice the receiver into opening the eMail,” Jones said. “Our goal is to get them to open the eMail and then wow the reader with our content.” The information that’s compelling, interesting and relevant is what gets picked up and turned into news, but it’s important to draw people in with a strong headline.

5. Measure the results that matter

While Jones and her department have seen great results in terms of media hits (several front page news stories, multiple television interviews, and feature articles in local newspapers), the most important measure of success is whether those stories help the organization meet its goals. So far, they are. “Several press releases resulted in stories that led to sell-out registrations for certain classes or programs,” Jones said.

Through a proactive public relations strategy, Jones has increased community awareness about the benefits her department offers to the community and raised its profile at a time when many parks and recreation departments are struggling to survive. “Being proactive and having a way to do something for ourselves, our coworkers and everything we have built in this department over the years has been extremely empowering.”

Read the first post in this series: How Staunton’s one-woman PR team conquered local media

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