Algeria AgencyDigital marketing
Public relations: getting somebody else to say it
This whole pillar deals with what is already said about you. This page deals with the reverse: obtaining a third-party mention, and at what price.
The four previous pages in this group are about what gets written without you. This one is about the reverse: prompting a mention by a third party — a newsroom, a sector site, somebody with an audience — and it is a different act with a different failure mode.
The value of that mention comes entirely from its not being yours. A reader grants a sentence written by a third party a credit they do not grant your own page, and that is the whole point of the spending.
From which follows a consequence the local trade routinely goes around: if the mention is bought and that is not visible, you have not bought credit, you have bought a risk. On the day it becomes known, the effect is negative and it lasts.
This article describes what is actually offered in this market, what a newsroom needs in order to write about you without being paid, what a mention without a link is worth, and why we will publish no audience figure on this page.
Getting somebody else to say it
A successful public-relations result produces a sentence that is not yours, in a place that is not yours, about a fact that is yours. All three conditions count, and the third is the one most often missing.
The fact has to exist before the effort. A factory opening, a partnership signed, a product replacing an import, a figure nobody had published, a position on a rule changing in your sector. With no fact there is nothing to relay, and the work becomes convincing somebody to write about nothing.
That is this page’s sorting point, and it eliminates most of the enquiries we receive. "We would like to be in the press" is not a project; "we are opening a thirty-person workshop in Sétif in March" is one.
The second condition is availability. A mention happens in a short window, often the same day, and a business unreachable between eleven and two loses an opportunity it will never know it had.
The third is accepting that you do not control the wording. A third party writing about you writes what they want, cuts what they want, and chooses an angle that is not yours. A business that cannot accept that should buy advertising, which is legitimate and gets declared.
The paid article that is not labelled
Here is what will actually be offered to you, and it belongs in the second section rather than at the end: an article published on a news site, written from your text, in exchange for payment, with no note saying it is commercial content.
The product exists, it is common, and it is sold by intermediaries who talk about "visibility" rather than advertising. The rate is quoted as a package, publication is guaranteed, and the guarantee of publication is precisely what gives the object away: an independent newsroom guarantees nothing.
The problem is practical before it is moral. An unlabelled article is recognisable: it uses your vocabulary, it contains no question, it appears in a section where nothing else resembles it, and it does not survive attentive reading.
The risk is twofold. With your customers, discovering a paid placement cancels the credit obtained and takes more away with it. With the site itself, a repeated practice eventually damages the outlet’s credibility, and therefore the value of what you bought.
The position we hold is simple: paid content is acceptable, even useful, provided it is presented as such. A declared partnership is honest advertising; a hidden one is a risk bought at the price of a service.
The audience figure comes from the seller
You will receive figures to justify a rate: monthly visitors, readers, the reach of a post. We will publish none of them on this page, and the reason differs from the ones given elsewhere in this series.
Elsewhere we set a figure aside because it comes from another market or carries no date. Here the figure exists, it is dated, it is local — and it is produced by the party selling you the space. It is a sales document, not a measurement.
There is, so far as we know, no independent audited audience measurement for Algerian news sites that is published and verifiable. Absent a third-party measurer, a media kit is an assertion, and an assertion has no place in a chart.
That does not make the spending impossible; it changes how the decision is made. What can be checked without the seller: the real publishing frequency, the existence of a section matching your subject, the presence of genuine bylined articles, and the number of visible comments or shares on recent posts.
Add one check that costs five minutes and that nobody does: search the site’s name together with the word used for sponsored content. You will see immediately whether the outlet labels its partnerships, and that answer is worth more than any figure in its media kit.
What a newsroom actually needs
An unpaid mention is obtained by making somebody else’s work easier. It is a prosaic definition and the only one that works: a journalist writes what they can verify and illustrate in the time available.
They need a dated, quantified fact. Not an adjective: an amount, a date, a number of jobs, a capacity, a share. A release with no figure is a request for a favour; one with a checkable figure is raw material.
They need a reachable person authorised to speak, with a direct number that answers. Section 6 handles that because it decides more often than the subject does.
They need usable images: high resolution, uncropped, with no logo burnt in, with the names of visible people and the corresponding permission. It is the process described in the content-creation article, applied to a different recipient.
And they need time. Information sent on the day it happens is information; sent three weeks later it is a request for advertising. Businesses nearly always lose on that point rather than on substance.
The release nobody reads
The standard press-release format is a one-page document that opens with the company name, quotes the director on their pride, and reaches the fact in the third paragraph. It is sent as an attachment and it is not opened.
What does get opened is a short email whose subject line contains the fact. "30-person workshop opening in Sétif on 14 March" is a subject line; "Press release — Company X" is not.
The body runs to five lines and follows the order set out in the copywriting article: the fact, the figure, the date, the name of the reachable person and their number. Detail goes lower, and images go as links rather than attachments.
The director’s quotation is useful on one condition: that it says something not available elsewhere. A quotation restating the fact with adjectives gets cut by everybody, and its uselessness is the clearest sign of a mailing written without knowing who it is for.
Send to people rather than generic addresses, and to few of them. Twenty personalised approaches to journalists who genuinely cover your subject beat two hundred group mailings, which mostly produce a spam classification.
The best slot is not an article about you
Businesses ask for an article devoted to them. It is the hardest slot to obtain, the most suspect when obtained, and often the least useful.
The most accessible and most credible slot is a quotation in an article about something else: your sector, a regulation changing, a shortage, a season, a price moving. You appear as a source rather than as a subject.
To get that slot you have to be known as somebody who answers. A journalist writing about car-parts imports calls back the person who answered quickly last time, not the one who sent a media pack.
Building that position takes months and costs little: three or four journalists identified in your sector, a message when you have data that interests them rather than when you want something, and a fast answer when they call.
It is also the position that serves on the day of an incident. The article on comments and crisis response describes what happens then; already knowing the people who will call changes the first hour entirely.
The spokesperson: one person, reachable
A business that names nobody loses half its opportunities, and does so without knowing. The rule is to name one person, only one, with a number that answers during working hours.
That person has to be allowed to say three things without asking permission: a verified fact, a figure already published, and an appointment. Everything else can go up, but if they have to ask for every sentence they will be too slow to be useful.
They also have to be allowed to say they do not know and will call back. That is an acceptable answer in this trade, provided the call back happens — its absence is what removes you from an address book permanently.
Choosing the person matters less than their availability. The director is often the best spokesperson on substance and the worst in practice, because they are in a meeting. A reachable technical manager beats an unreachable director.
Finally, prepare three written answers to the three questions that come back whatever the subject: what the company does, since when, and how many people work there. They are asked every time, and improvising them produces three different figures in three months.
Creators: a partnership is advertising
Working with people who have an audience belongs on this page for a precise reason: what is bought there is also a sentence said by somebody else. The whole argument of section 1 applies, including the part about labelling.
A paid partnership — in money, in products, in services — is commercial communication and has to be presented as such. The disclosure has to be readable in the post itself, not in a comment or at the end of a folded caption.
The question of choice is handled badly everywhere: people look at follower counts, which is the least informative measure. Look at the comments instead — their number relative to the audience, and above all their content, which tells you whether the audience is real and whether it is where you are.
The local question is the area. Somebody followed nationally, for a shop in one wilaya, reproduces exactly the problem described in the article on short-form advertising: real attention, directed at people who cannot buy.
Our method requirement: a written brief with one fact to state and one thing not to say, complete freedom on form, and image usage rights obtained in writing. Without those three, you pay for a post and keep nothing from it.
The mention with no link, and what it is still worth
One local particularity is worth stating because it changes the calculation: many Algerian news sites name a business without linking to its site. The mention exists, the link does not.
For conventional search, that removes part of the value: it is the link that carries a signal, and the article on the subject says so. A mention with no link does not move you up a ranking.
For citation by answer engines, though, the mention counts. Those systems read names, facts and the associations between them, and the article devoted to that explains why a company name attached to a checkable fact across several sources is what produces a citation.
A third channel remains, the most direct and the most neglected: people type your name after reading the article. That traffic does not appear as coming from the site that named you, which is why most businesses conclude a mention produced nothing.
Hence the measure recommended in section 10: it is not the link that has to be counted, it is searches for your name and enquiries that name the source.
Events, and the sponsorship that produces nothing
Trade fairs, forums and sector meetings are sold with sponsorship tiers, and the best-selling tier is the one that produces least: a logo on a board, in a list of logos, seen by people looking at a stage.
What does produce something at these events is of three kinds. Speaking on a technical subject, which puts you in the source position described in section 5. Showing an object people can handle, which gives photographers and visitors a reason to stop.
And the third, the most profitable and the least glorious: obtaining the participant list and meeting eight specific people. A fair is a place where people you cannot otherwise reach are available for two days, and that is all it is.
Sponsorship is justified when it buys one of those three. It is not justified when it buys a logo position, and the test is direct: ask what the tier below contains. If the only difference is the size of the logo, take the tier below.
One follow-up note that applies to all of the above: contacts obtained at an event expire within a week. Without a message sent inside three days, the event produced an expense and some photographs.
Measuring: enquiries that name the source
The standard measure of this activity is the number of mentions, and it is as unhelpful as the view count is for a video. It counts appearances, not effects.
The honest measure fits in one question asked of every new enquiry: how did you hear about us? It takes five seconds, it goes into a file, and within three months it produces information no tool provides.
The second measure is searches for your name. An effective mention produces a rise in searches on the company name in the days that follow, and that rise is visible in the free tools the article on search describes.
The third is qualitative and counts more than the other two: is the sentence written about you picked up elsewhere? A formulation that travels — a figure you published, an expression you used — is the only proof the mention was read by people who write.
And one counter-measure to watch: the number of sales approaches you receive after an appearance. A mention in an outlet followed by ad-space sellers earns you thirty agency calls, which is a sign of real audience and a nuisance to budget for.
What we do, and what we will refuse to do
What we will refuse: buying an article published with no note saying it was paid for. It is this market’s commonest product, it is asked for every week, and it buys a risk at the price of a service.
We will also refuse to arrange a partnership with somebody who has an audience unless the commercial nature is readable in the post itself. The rule is the previous one and it holds for the same reasons.
We will refuse to guarantee an appearance. Nobody can guarantee one without paying for it, and an announced guarantee is the best proof that the slot is bought — including when the intermediary does not say so.
What we do: sorting the fact before any approach; the short list of journalists who genuinely cover your subject; the named spokesperson with their three margins and their number; usable images prepared in advance; partnerships labelled and framed by a written brief; and measurement through the question asked of every incoming enquiry.
And what you can do this week without us: note the three dated, quantified facts your business will produce in the next six months. If there are none, no public relations will work, and the budget is better placed elsewhere — which is a useful and free answer.
Frequently asked questions
Can an article in the online press be bought?
Technically yes, and it is offered everywhere. We do not do it when the paid nature is not disclosed: a hidden placement is recognisable, it cancels the credit obtained, and it takes more away on the day it becomes known.
How do we tell whether an outlet is serious?
Check what does not come from the seller: real publishing frequency, bylined articles, a section matching your subject, visible comments. And search whether the outlet labels its sponsored content — that answer beats its media kit.
What should a release contain?
A subject line carrying the fact, then five lines: the fact, the figure, the date, the reachable person and their number. Images as links rather than attachments, and sent to few people who genuinely cover the subject.
Is an article about us better than a quotation?
A quotation in an article about something else: it is more accessible, more credible, and it places you as a source rather than a subject. It is earned by answering quickly, several times, before you have anything to ask for.
Is a mention with no link worth anything?
Not for ranking, which depends on the link. But it counts for citation by answer engines, which read names and facts, and it produces direct searches on your name — traffic that never appears as coming from the outlet.
How do we measure public relations?
Ask "how did you hear about us?" of every incoming enquiry and write it down. Then look at searches on your name, and whether your formulations are picked up elsewhere. The number of mentions measures nothing.
Where we come in
You may have three true things with a date and a number in them. What the list does not say is whether any of them interests somebody other than you.
- We sort your facts against what local newsrooms genuinely cover.
- We cut the distribution list to five names who write about your sector.
- We write the fact onto one page, with the checkable figures attached.
If none of your three facts is dated or quantified, spend nothing here: there is no information yet, and nobody publishes an intention.
Read next
Being reachable: what happens when somebody finally wants to quote you
The useful work in press relations is not pitching, it is readiness. The file that has to exist, the five contacts, and the hour that decides.The week of an incident: what to do hour by hour
An incident is handled in time, not by channel. The first hour, the holding line, the third day, and what actually changes afterwards.Comments and crisis: the first hour decides
Past a certain threshold the ordinary method becomes harmful. What matters then is one voice, one place, and three sentences written quickly.
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