Media Relations

With the explosion of consumer-generated media, opinion research has become one of the pillars of communications strategy. To explore the ins and outs of external surveys as a media relations tool, PR News asked corporate PR heads who often field surveys and an online research firm executive about the benefits, options, challenges and possible pitfalls in conducting meaningful research.

Most brand stories take a little more than 140 characters to tell, but we pitch media via Twitter. Then we wonder why our messages become confused with competitors, our products seem undifferentiated and our brand stories are often forgotten. Maybe we need to start fresh, with a simple story.

While the contributed article has been a part of PR outreach for decades, another related practice has stolen its thunder—self publishing.

PR professionals who follow the media relations rules are growing increasingly frustrated by PR spam complaints in the blogosphere. The good news is there are things you can do to clearly signal your commitment to respect journalists’ traditional boundaries.

Three expert panelists weigh in on the hot topics, trends and tools of media relations. What shouldd PR pros be doing to optimize media outreach? What should PR executives be thinking about for the rest of 2010?

Financial journalists polled in the second annual BackBay-Marketwire Financial Services Reputation Survey said that the finance industry’s reputation has declined over the last year, and financial services firms need to overcome a credibility gap.

In a country where both business and government keep the press at arm’s length, here’s how good relationships with foreign journalists can be a win-win situation.

A study by Outsell revealed that digital media will take a higher share of advertising revenues than print this year for the first time in the U.S. Digital media will grow to a market share of 32.5%, compared with 30.3% for print.

It wasn’t just the fact that Republican Scott Brown once posed for Cosmo that vaulted him to the office of U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Mobile communications also played a big part in the win, but what has gained the most attention from political strategists is a new application for smartphones that was used during the race.

A recent study by PR agency Ruder Finn finds that Americans now spend an average of 2.7 hours per day on the mobile Internet. Now is the time to begin formulating a mobile PR strategy and to start on the path toward integration.