Help Starting Your Hand-making Business

If you're 18-30 years old and unemployed or working less than 16 hours a week, you could get help starting your hand-making business from the Prince's Trust.

I've just finished the training to become a Prince's Trust Business Mentor. I'll be supporting people starting businesses within the Trust's Business Programme. One-to-one mentorship is just one of the benefits of this scheme, which also extends loans to individuals most High Street banks would turn away.

The success rate of businesses started under the scheme is significantly higher than the average for all start-ups. Find out whether you qualify here: Prince's Trust Business Programme

Hand-making Heroes Competition Winner

This Silver, Onyx and Jade Handcrafted Necklace by Felicity Gail is winner of this year's Hand-making Heroes Handmade Gift Competition. After being short-listed by the judging panel in February, this UK handmade necklace went on to win the online vote, beating 7 other finalists.

Voting took place through March and April. In excess of 2000 valid votes were cast by visitors to competition sponsor, gift seller pressies4princesses. In what became a two contestant race, Felicity Gail's handmade necklace ultimately pipped Steph Littlechild's handcrafted collage portraits at the post.

Felicity Gail is not the name of the designer, but a brand name that Jackie Durrans and Debbie Brenner produce and sell their design-led handmade jewellery under. Taking style clues from modern art sculpture and furniture, their striking handcrafted jewellery is already sold at Tate galleries. In fact, the Tate has commissioned this talented duo to craft jewellery for several exhibitions, including Oiticica, Millais and Klimt.

Jackie and Debbie will receive £500 to invest in their hand-making business. They will also have the opportunity to supply pressies4princesses with their exciting handcrafted jewellery, which could be the start of a great business relationship.

Handmaking Heroes was conceived to encourage UK hand-making enterprise. All UK-based designer/hand-makers were eligible to enter. The competition was sponsored by pressies4princesses (where I am managing partner).

I and the rest of the team at pressies' were so encouraged by the first competition that we aim to bring it back next year, bigger and better. So, if you're thinking of entering next year, keep an eye on this blog for details of the launch.

Designer/ makers - how to use PR effectively part 1

Make your Press Release editorial-worthy

Put simply, you have to be or do something worth writing about. What's written falls broadly into two categories: news and editorial.

News is not, "We launched this great product"; that's advertising (or advertorial, if you prefer) and you have to pay for that. So, what's news? That's hard to define. Beneath the major events that are the real news, there's a softer under-belly that's just 'interesting'. You can notice this in stories run by newspapers (except maybe the broadsheets), regional TV news bulletins, radio, etc. Interesting means timely and relevant to current affairs. So, an interesting response by you to a bigger news event or hitting on a new trend that's bubbling up can be 'news', for example.

Some PR doesn't even pretend to be news. That's editorial, like when a magazine prints your tip sheet or covers a human interest story. And, editiorial like this can be an easier route to publication or broadcast than doing something genuinely 'news'.

Whether it's editorial or news coverage you seek, one thing above all will dictate how much you get: the angle. The angle is the twist on your story or editorial that anchors it firmly in the here and now, makes it relevant, and makes it timely for publication/ broadcast. What does all this mean?

To understand timely, consider good timing versus bad. Good: submitting a story with a romantic twist in the run up to Valentine's Day. Bad: offering a tip sheet about wrapping presents at any time other than the Christmas season.

Relevant PR is grounded in current events. Today, in the aftermath of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, consumer credit, house prices, money saving, banking or the economic downtown are obvious examples of current relevancy. Tack your story or editorial to these masts and you'll have a greater chance of success. And, sometimes a contrary twist, eg "proof the economy is not slowing down", is even better still.

Of course, these are obvious examples. You are probably going to have to think of more subtle trends, current affairs and news events that can be related to what you do - unless you're a chief economist, large bank or research group. And, whatever angle you choose, be sure that you can muster some credibility. Nobody cares if the bloke next door says the economy is slowing. You can't just jump on the bandwagon because it's popular. Likewise, you're unlikely to get published for saying black is white, if there's no reason for anyone to be interested in what you think anyway!

Perhaps a good exercise to do, is to list every single trend, event or issue from an entire newspaper or week's newspapers. Just write it down in two or three keywords. Then, try to link every single one back to your business in some way. It can be about you too. Say you ran up huge credit card debts and started making jewellery to pay them off and now it's a thriving business - that would be highly relevant to our indebted age. Wording the story so it introduces a topical, newsworthy element - that's the angle at work. Adding this background to your business start-up makes you so much more relevant and interesting - no matter how great your jewellery really is!

This may all seem complicated and a lot of trouble. And, guess what? It is! But, this is going to have the biggest single impact upon whether you get published or broadcast. And, think of the flip side: money can't buy publicity for free is your reward.

I hope that was useful, stay tuned for the next installment.

Hand-making Heroes voting closes

Voting in Hand-making Heroes - our new handmade gift competition - closed midnight last night.

On the face of it, it seems two finalists have run away with the vote, the Felicity Gail handcrafted necklace and Steph Littlechild's personalised collage portraits. The winner will not be announced, however, until all votes cast have been audited to ensure no cheating has taken place!

The response to the competition has been fantastic with almost 2500 votes cast by visitors to UK gift retailer pressies4princesses.

Check back soon to find out who's awarded the £1500 prize.