It’s that time again when most of us are making New Year’s resolutions. Most are about weight, money, bad habits, unfulfilled dreams.

I think it’s safe to say this is the only one you’ll see about digital PR. But that’s what this Blog is all about, so try these on for size:

• Get very familiar with one lesser known social networking site and figure out how to make it work for your clients.
• Study three major blogs, get to know the writers and develop a strategy for placing stories with them and having them launch a viral wave.
• Build relationships with five digital journalists. Get inside their heads, determine what they love to write about and then race ahead of the curve by providing them with more than they expect.
• Stop thinking that you are focused on either traditional or digital media. You must be active in both, especially effective at fusing their combined power.
  
• Get your most traditional and hidebound clients active in a digi vehicle they would never consider launching on their own. For example, if you have a colorful client–one who moves in interesting circles or does innovative things–have them send reports on their initiatives, their comings and goings, on Twitter.
  
• Experiment with a video press release. One that makes a point in a roundabout way, telling a story or starting a trend without the use of prose. Let the picture, on the Web, tell the story.
  
• Convince that client that tells everyone, with pride, “I’m a dinosaur when it comes to the Internet. I don’t even use a computer,” to launch a personal website and a PR campaign structured to drive visitors to it

There is something captivating about being on the Web. There is something captivating squared about making it work for you and your clients

When I was 21 I started a syndicated column, Small Business. The idea for it struck me as I was working for Texaco, a bloated bureaucracy of a place that had long forgotten it was once a small business.

Anyway, I had endless free time on my hands -no one there really worked- so I approached Newsday about the column idea, they liked it and I was off to the races. And surprise, surprise, the column worked and it was, just like that, appearing in dozens of newspapers. In a small way to the world, but an important way to me, I was THE media.
Given my column’s appearance in all of those newspapers every week, PR people circled. They wanted me to quote their clients. To highlight their products. To provide a channel for their philosophies.

And I ignored most of them. Why? Their arrows failed to hit the bull’s eye. In that case, the bulls eye what I was interested in writing about.
In learning about.

Yes, I was a representative of traditional media. But that was the only kind of media there was at the time. And surprise again, it is still the only kind of media there is. Digital journalists are still journalists.
The good ones don’t care about your agenda. They are focused on their own.

So the more things change, the more they stay the same. In digpr, the fundamental rule survives: there are too many arrows and too few bulls’ eyes. The gifted PR people put down their goals for a minute and think of the digital journalists’. What do they want? Each one individually. That’s the key.

When I wrote Small Business, of the 500 PR people who pitched me weekly, about 10 appeared in my column over and over again. The only agenda I ever saw on their parts was to land their arrows where I wanted them. And they did the research to know precisely where that was. And it was straight line to bull’s eye time. And it still is!

Mark Stevens
CEO

I have to admit I did something a bit sketchy recently (for the first time, I swear….well maybe the second).

I met a woman at a party and the small talk turned to vocations and I (what a cliché) asked her what she does for a living.

Woman At The Party: I’m in PR.

MS: PR? (of course, I knew what she meant).

Woman: Public Relations.

MS: I have heard that term a hundred times but never really know what it means (I told you I was being sketchy, but hey, I have a blog to write).

Woman: Well, to make it simple (this is where she wanted to call me Rain Man), I place my clients’ stories in the media.

MS: stories? The media? Do you mean you spread viral messages on Facebook?

Woman: I have heard of Face Book, but what is it?

MS: It’s THE media.

Ok, so here’s the problem.

Well, I will leave the conversation now. Instead, I will tell you a brief story. A few weeks ago, USA Today ran a story about an issue I have had with the billboard ad giant Clear Channel. A big story. It was a PR dream. But in what would be a surprise to my party lady, the real dream occurred online. On http://www.usatoday.com/. That’s where a national debate ensued about the story. Where people left their real names. Where the passion lived. And the business opportunity thrived.

So, Murdoch is taking over the Wall Street Journal. And he promises he won’t change it. But he has to and he knows it and the family who used to own it knows it. Because it is yesterday’s fish. Dead and smelly and not edible. People cry about change–that it won’t be the same. That’s the point. People always say they don’t want to change, but in the end are better off for it. Civil rights in America, making Hawaii a state and yes, even changing the size of the WSJ –all were bemoaned at the outset, but made better by those changes in the end.

So party ladies and gentlemen, PR pros all, we have to know, we have to admit, what the people read. And what they will read tomorrow. And that’s the essence of digpr. Actually, soon, now, of PR.