With social media dominating the Web, many PR practitioners are anxious about how to satisfy their company’s or client’s desire to be a visible part of this engaging community and conversation online.
There is a multitude of webinars, blogs, audio conferences and expos available on the topic of “how to leverage social media.” Most of them list the how-to’s of social media development: how to build your own Facebook or Twitter following, what not to do, how to measure your efforts and more. What most of these resources do not mention, however, is the highly important fact that media relations really has not changed.
Whether it is a Brian Solis or a New York Times blog you are aiming to get your company or client into, the same media relations strategy will apply. You look at their particular audience and determine whether your product or service can meet the needs of their followers or readers. Is it an asset to their community or readership? If not, move on to other social/media outlets.
This is the single most common mistake that PR practitioners make—not researching the audience of the media outlet they are trying to pitch. You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.
In that light, here are the top five tips for successful media relations in the new era of the social Web:
â–¶ 1. If your sales staff loves your press release/pitch, throw it in the trash can. If you scan the Web, you will see how many bloggers and reporters write about how they do not want to receive “PR fluff.”
Corporate and agency PR pros should have one version of a press release for the sales and marketing staff to use, and another version to send to the social/media. The latter should contain accurate, compelling and engaging information about your product or services, including case studies and research that are relevant to the audience of the media outlet you are pitching.
â–¶ 2. Spend 50% of your time developing content or written materials (e.g. a blog or press release) and 50% of your time conducting media relations. Even the most perfectly written item might not get picked up by a blogger or media outlet if you cannot effectively communicate its benefits to their readership. For instance: “I thought your followers might find this item helpful…” or “This item might be of interest to your readers in light of the recent…” Before leading in with this type of intro, make sure you have tailored your news item/content to their specific audience. Tweak it a bit.
â–¶ 3. Determine what’s hot and what’s not. Twitter is great for this. You can search and see what trending topics are getting the most (Web) ink. How does your product or service fit in? What value add does it provide to the conversation? Now, go with this. Forget about what your marketing collateral says, and trying to regurgitate its verbiage to bloggers and the social/media. This is a wonderful opportunity for PR pros to assert their creativity to the benefit of their company or client.
â–¶ 4. Be selective in what you send to whom. You most likely will have many announcements to communicate to various audiences throughout the year. Don’t communicate them all to every audience out there. This will be a difficult feat for PR pros because it is their calling and training to secure the most reach and hits.
A typical PR report includes items such as “This announcement was distributed to 5,000 Web sites, 5,200 newspapers and magazines, etc.” When you barrage the media like this for every announcement, however, you dilute your messaging.
For a select few announcements, try carefully identifying the top five print media outlets and the top five social media outlets that you believe your particular product or service would benefit, and work within this more manageable framework. You will get better results, spend less money and begin to establish a reputation and gain respect from some of the key influencers in your industry.
Finding Key Influencers: Research is essential in finding the best online targets for your messaging. In this case, Access PR recently identified the most influential female-targeted blogs, which shows the line blurring between the “Mommy” and more general interest women’s blogs. Graphic courtesy of Access PR |
KEEP CURRENT
Social media is ever evolving, with new hot topics emerging daily. In all your media relations efforts, surround yourself with the experts to keep up-to-date on the latest issues and trends and align yourself with these thought leaders. Make sure to bookmark Hubspot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog (http://blog.hubspot.com/). Their book, Inbound Marketing, is still timely. So is Brian Solis’ Engage and David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Second Edition.
A final important item in the era of the new Web is visibility—getting found online. Inbound marketing (as outlined in the book Inbound Marketing) is increasingly important in this regard.
E-mail newsletters, blogs and social media should be a key part of your marketing mix. According to The Nielsen Company, global traffic to social networks grew 30% in the last year, with the U.S. boasting the largest unique social networking audience out of the 10 countries surveyed.
Outbound marketing, however, remains relevant and may provide your messaging with high visibility on the Web, attaining a broad reach and drawing readers back to your Web site. A single outbound marketing tactic that can accomplish this is the use of a newswire service to get your message out, such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire or PRWeb. These services let you upload your press release to their site and optimize it to be found by search engines on the Web. (Please refer to tip #4 in determining when to use a newswire service.)
According to Hitwise and Compete, PR Newswire ranks highest in terms of having more unique visitors and highest search engine referrals. Both PR Newswire and Business Wire have secured key partnerships within the news industry, so that within seconds of your press release being distributed over the newswire service, you will see it populate across the Internet on various Web sites and portals like Yahoo Finance, CBS News and CNET News, to name just a few.
Business Wire also boasts reach to the mobile market and provides apps for iPhone and BlackBerry users to receive news. Both PR Newswire and Business Wire offer cost-effective options to distribute your news item to online-only sources (versus in conjunction with print media outlets). PRWeb offers exclusively online reach and the lowest pricing. PRN
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This article was written by Heidi Hynes, president of Heidi Hynes Communications (www.hynespr.com). Her PR career spans two decades, including a stints as director of PR for the world’s largest technology media company, IDG.
( Editor’s Note: This article was excerpted from the recently published PR News’ Media Training Guidebook, Volume 3. To order this and other PR News guidebooks, go to www.prnewsonline.com/store/.)