PR, and its media relations aspects in particular, can be great for getting your name in the headlines, but you're missing a trick if you're not using your online assets to extend its reach.

The dawn of digital has made it easier than ever to connect with key audiences and in this guide, we'll illustrate some simple ways to complement your PR by making proper use of digital channels.

Whether in-house or agency – all PRs have been there. Your client or contact gets in touch to pitch what they think is a great story, a momentous milestone or provocative project, but it turns out to be a dead duck. 

Situations like this can leave us between a rock and hard place. Collaborations are vital to PR success, but selling in substandard stories can sour your relationships with key publications. 

So in this guide, we'll discuss diplomatic ways of knocking back a dead duck and offer some suggestions on constructive ways to feed back on staid stories. 

While not as popular as they once were, forward features remain a staple of PR and media relations. 

These resources, also referred to as 'editorial calendars' provides a glimpse into what publications plan to cover in the future – giving PR agencies and in-house teams time to plan, prepare and pitch contributions.

In this guide, we'll take you through the best practice of using these assets and offer some top tips on increasing your chances of gaining coverage with editorial contributions.

Press release writing is one of the most important disciplines within PR, but far too many newcomers fall afoul of common mistakes that can be easily avoided.

To help you get the most out of your releases, we've put together this handy infographic example - illustrating some of the most typical mistakes made by those producing their first press release. 

What is media relations?

Organisations' relationships with the media can be a somewhat contentious issue and PR agencies are often blamed for facilitating this skewed association.

For those of us in the industry, however, this everyday practice is far less controversial. And in this guide, we'll get to the bottom of what media relations is and how it works on a day-to-day basis.

Social media is one of the most popular marketing strategies of the 21st century. However, as many leading businesses have found, it's becoming ever-more difficult to protect your company's brand values when using social media platforms.

In this specially-themed guide, we'll help you take advantage of best practice, while preventing your profiles from becoming a social media horror story.

Writing a press release would seem on the surface to be a simple task and business owners can often be excused for thinking that it's something that can easily be produced without the use of a PR advisor (whether external or in-house), after all its just talking about your business, right?

The truth is, to write an effective business to business (B2B) press release that not only results in coverage but also helps to build relationships with journalists rather than hinder them is a skill and something which can take time to perfect.

In this guide, we'll examine the anatomy of the perfect release and give you some useful tips on how to structure and distribute a B2B press release for optimum results.

Ryanair seems to be subject to criticism on a weekly basis, however, recent revelations on Channel 4's Dispatches programme are amongst the most damaging yet.

PR for professional services – a “nice to have” or something you have to consider when either you or your client makes a faux-pas?  Although many firms have a retained PR agency on hand for any crisis, few engage with them, yet are surprised when they don’t get the column inches they expected.

With the latest statistics from the Solicitors Regulation Authority highlighting that 30 of the UK’s top 200 law firms are in serious financial difficulty, with reports of a further 160 firms at risk of failure,  ensuring that you are getting the best return on investment has never been more important.

So what can you do? We’ve identified some of the areas where many organisations struggle when making their first forays into collaborating with a PR agency: 

We're near-constantly inundated with applications for work experience placements at RDPR and have been blown away by the quality of interns we've taken on. To give a little back, and hopefully offer some insights into what it's like working at a busy Manchester PR agency, we've put together some top tips on getting the most out of a placement.