Increase Your Media Coverage with these Two Basic PR Tips

In 2009, we saw a lot of “innovative”, cost-cutting PR strategies — however, many companies may have cut corners to the point of potentially compromising the basics of a sound program. As stated by Naylor Gray, Frost and Sullivan Director of Global Marketing, in a recent Businessweek article, ”with recovery expected to take hold in 2010, marketing teams need to review their basic blocking and tackling to ensure that the fundamentals of their programs are on strong footing.”

Getting “back to the basics” of proven PR tactics can help provide a consistent stream of media coverage resulting in increased industry credibility and more interest from potential customers.

A real opportunity exists for companies that can consistently position their company in front of key issues and trends that truly concern the media. In doing so, companies become an invaluable resource to the media.

Here we’ll discuss two basic but proven PR tactics that can be utilized to help companies build credibility, trust and interest with key media and bloggers by fostering these relationships based on an industry-centric vs. product centric approach. Future-focused companies that provide meaningful insight and guidance to support buying decisions (vs. just marketing fluff) are often rewarded with more press coverage, better lead generation results, and a shortened sales cycle.

#1. Editorial Calendar Tracking

As much as social media can be a great avenue for starting and generating conversational trends, traditional main stream media (MSM) continues to have a huge influence on major topics of interest. Because MSM outlets operate on an advertising budget, they must secure ad sponsorship and leverage editorial calendars to attract potential advertisers. Most often, these editorial calendars are published a year in advance and can be a great way for your company to start the buzz about a topic.

TIP: Go get the editorial calendars from your top industry trade publications to find out what they are planning to publish in print. Then you can start blogging and writing articles for online syndication a month or two in advance of the print publication issue. This gives search engines the time to index your content providing high visibility for the topic once the publication hits the street.

#2. Rapid Response Program

“Rapid response” PR campaigns are a proactive strategy used to build relationships with media and bloggers by establishing a company’s spokespeople as industry experts and good news sources. It’s designed to keep your company on the cutting-edge of interesting news trends and is one of the ways to help elevate your company into a broader industry category with more press appeal.

TIP: After selecting 4-5 hot topics your company can speak to, begin to monitor news feeds and blogs. Every time a story about one of the selected topics is written and does not mention your company, contact the editor or blogger with positive feedback on their story and a gracious introduction to your company with an offer to help with future articles. Over time, you’ll build great relationships with key influencers and can work your company into the pages of high profile stories on a consistent basis.

While implementing fundamental PR strategies may take more planning, resources and budget, ultimately this approach can yield better results. Going beyond a “knee jerk” or “cookie cutter” approach to PR can help transform your company from an upstart technology player to an industry leader.

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B2B Marketing Trends: The Rise of Consumers as the New Influencers

Traditionally the media and industry analysts have been revered as major market influencers (the people your target audience – those you’re trying to sell to – listen to). A leader position in an analyst report or positive product review was the holy grail of PR efforts. While these influencers continue to wield power, the collective influence of consumers is widening.

An increasing number of people are participating in online conversations – sharing opinions and influencing purchasing decisions (explicitly or implicitly) – as part of their daily routine. At the same time trust in consumer opinions posted online is growing, as social networks become dynamic ecosystems that develop and nurture relationships between people and the content they share.

As social media adoption goes mainstream, we cannot ignore the growing influence consumers have on brand affinity and purchasing decisions.

Here are some interesting tidbits for you to consider as you create your 2010 marketing plan:

  1. Social networks are gaining in popularity. Facebook has over 300 million active users and Twitter was declared the top word of 2009 by the Global Language Monitor. Need I say more?
  2. Online consumer opinions are becoming more trusted. An April 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey found that people trust consumer opinions posted online as much as editorial content and more than traditional newspapers and magazines.
  3. Social media content influences buying decisions. A study by SNCR Research concludes that traditional influence cycles are being disrupted by social media as decision makers utilize social networks to inform and validate decisions.
  4. People find products through social network sites. According a study released by Performics on how consumers use social networks to discover products 30% of respondents admitted to learning about a product, service or brand on a social network site, 44% recommended a product on Twitter and 39% have discussed a product on Twitter. 48% of people who saw a brand’s name on Twitter went to a search engine to look for the product.
  5. The volume of user generated content is growing. According to MarketingVox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics, “25% of search results for the world’s Top 20 brands link to user generated content.” If this trend holds, it is possible that user generated content will dominate search results as customers far outnumber the number of employees of even the largest brands.

As people embrace and exercise their ability to share their opinions through social networks, we as marketers must take note, listen to the conversations and evolve how we engage with our consumers.

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PR Strategy: The Importance of Blogger Relations

As I reported back in August, “Traditional PR is Not Dead”, by any means, but the influence of bloggers is certainly gaining ground and should not be ignored as you develop your 2010 public relations strategy.

According to a blog post entitled, “Statistics Show Social Media is Bigger Than you Think” by Erik Qualman there are over 200,000,000 blogs and a reported 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

With over 1.5 million new blog posts every day and 77% of active Internet users reading blogs, coverage in the blogosphere can greatly increase your potential brand exposure and drive interest from target audiences.

Another upside is the fact that today’s journalists increasingly rely upon blogs and microblogs to find story ideas and conduct research. According to a new survey from Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), 66 percent of journalists use blogs and 48 percent use Twitter and other microblogging sites to assist them with reporting.

These findings shouldn’t surprise any of us considering the growing lists of journalists using Twitter and other social networks.

To engage this new audience of influencers, you will first need to find the bloggers that cover your space. Free tools like blog search engine Technorati or Google can help you build and research your list. As a starting point, I would recommend that you identify no more than 20 targets.

Next subscribe to the RSS feeds and get in the habit of reading the posts and comments daily. This will help you monitor target blogs for topics that merit commentary or present possible opportunities to engage — but don’t jump in just yet. Blogger relations require different tactics than traditional PR because most bloggers don’t get paid to cover a specific beat.

Technorati’s 2009 State for the Blogosphere report claims over 70% of bloggers are hobbyists and self-expression and sharing expertise are the primary motivations for these bloggers.

According to our social media maven, Susan Getgood, the success of your blogger relations program depends upon how well you translate PR and marketing messages into stories that will resonate with your target bloggers on some personal level. Unlike the news media, bloggers don’t necessarily require the story to be new. Relevant is often more important, although this space will have a tendency toward wanting the latest news.

First and foremost, make sure that you understand your target blogger’s motivation for blogging and personal interests before you attempt to post a comment or pitch a story. With all the noise in the blogosphere, you must provide real value in order to be worth a post or better yet a longer-term relationship.

Finally, make a commitment to be in this for the long haul because blogger relations are very personal and an ongoing program is more effective than a campaign approach.

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Crisis Media Relations: the Tiger Woods Edition

Robert Mullins is a freelance technology writer in Silicon Valley. His writing can be found at his Robert Mullins blog.

As of this writing, the celebrity gossip scandal involving golfer Tiger Woods is still unfolding, but enough is known to serve as a teachable moment in PR crisis management both for individuals and businesses.

Woods has parceled out information about the circumstances of his car crash in morsels just small enough to create an appetite for more. He has tried to balance the need to answer the media’s questions — not to mention those of the police — with his desire to protect his privacy.

Businesses sometimes find themselves in a similar dilemma when news comes out that makes them look bad and they try to respond to it while at the same time protecting their privacy. The best plan is to get out as much information as one can as soon as possible in order to prevent speculation from taking the place of known facts in the story.

The bare-bones facts in the Woods case are these, according to news reports. Woods left his Florida home at 2:25 a.m. Nov. 27 in his 2009 Cadillac Escalade and promptly ran off the road, knocked over a fire hydrant and hit a tree. Woods’s wife, Elin Nordegren, appeared on the scene soon after and reportedly used a golf club to break the rear windows on the car to free him.

Woods was taken to the hospital, treated for facial cuts and bruises and released.

After holding off Florida Highway Patrol investigators’ requests to interview the couple for three days, Woods’s silence created a vacuum filled by media speculation and gossip, including mention of a previous report in the National Enquirer that Woods may have been involved with another woman. The snickerers online found an alternative reason why his wife was wailing on the Escalade with a golf club.

Sunday, Woods issued a statement that prompted more questions than it answered. It read, in part: “This situation is my fault. I’m human and I’m not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Those with cynical motives can take off and run with “I’m human and I’m not perfect,” in any number of directions, and they probably have.

In his statement, Woods asked the public to respect his own and his family’s privacy. While even as a celebrity he is entitled to a certain amount of that, playing the privacy card has its downside. Deliver a carefully worded statement but offer no opportunity for questions and you only invite more criticism.

Monday, Woods spurred the next news cycle by revealing he wouldn’t be playing at a charity golf tournament in California this week that is to benefit his Tiger Woods Foundation.

An Associated Press story, published Saturday, laid out the public relations crisis management dilemma he faces:

“Assuming Woods has crisis management advisers, he had better get them on the phone. Assuming they answer, he had better listen to their advice. Say something, and say it soon,” wrote the AP’s Tim Dahlberg. “’I was always a believer that you should come out and say what happened, apologize if need be and take it from there,’ said John Rowady, president of rEvolution, a Chicago-based sports marketing agency.”

Say something and say it soon could be good advice for a business faced with a crisis to manage, too, be it a lawsuit, a high level executive departure or a product recall. Public relations experts advise convening a crisis management team to draft a response plan and carry it out.

In the article, “A startup roadmap for crisis communications,” Wendy Lane, founder of the PR and marketing firm Lane PR, lays out a well thought out crisis response plan.

In brief, Lane advises a company set up a response team ahead of time that includes one or two top executives and representatives of the public relations department. Any public statement, or statement to employees, should be drafted by group consensus within the crisis team. While company officials should reach out to key constituencies affected by the news – such as board members, key clients or vendors – information should not be distributed piecemeal. If someone hears a tidbit of news from a colleague rather than a supervisor, that prompts rumors.

Communicating to those outside the company, including the news media, should also be similarly well-coordinated. In October, I covered a story in which T-Mobile, a wireless carrier, had to notify users of its Danger Sidekick smartphone that, due to a server failure, backup information on their phones, like contacts, calendar entries and e-mail addresses, had been erased.

T-Mobile and Sidekick (a company owned by Microsoft) quickly acknowledged the problem, apologized profusely, temporarily pulled the Sidekick off the market, disclosed as much as they knew and gave disgruntled customers gift cards as compensation for their loss. Within a few weeks, lost data had been restored for most subscribers. The company made the best of a bad situation with a coordinated plan.

It remains to be seen how the Tiger Woods situation will play out. While crisis management professionals advise a more proactive stance than Woods seems to have taken, he still retains strong “brand equity.” He’s a successful golfer, both on the course and at the bank and is a positive role model for all kinds of people. He may have some reputational capital in reserve to survive whatever additional bad publicity lies ahead.

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Is it Time to Place an Embargo on PR Embargoes?

Robert Mullins is a freelance technology writer in Silicon Valley. His writing can be found at his Robert Mullins blog.

Under the heading of things that can be both a blessing and a curse, journalists and the PR people we work with are in agreement on one: embargoes. They can be a simple and fair way for a PR client to disseminate news about themselves to the media, or they can be a way to manipulate journalists into doing a story because they know everyone else is.

All sides of the debate about embargoes were aired one recent evening at a panel discussion in San Francisco that featured journalists from old and new media and an audience of more than 50 media and public relations professionals. The organizer of the event was Waggener Edstrom, the huge PR agency whose most famous client is Microsoft.

First, here’s a primer on embargoes, just so we’re all on the same page. When a company wants to get the word out about something it thinks is newsworthy it reaches out to reporters with whom it wants to share the news. In order for all media to get the story at the same time, the company imposes an embargo that the news can’t be reported until, say, 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Monday.

The reporters who agree to the embargo are then entitled to an interview with key people from the company a few days ahead of time, called a prebrief. They may also be referred to industry analysts who’ve also been briefed who can provide some independent perspective on the news. Then the reporter can take his or her time writing the story with perhaps a little more thought, detail and insight than if they quickly rewrote the press release once it came out at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

Sometimes, though, the embargo process fails.

“Embargo is from a Latin phrase which means ‘[to heck with] you,’” blurted Dylan Tweney, senior editor of Wired.com, the Web site of the high-tech magazine. (Use your imagination to fill in the real word in the brackets.) Tweney resents being forced to agree to embargoes in order to get the news.
Embargoes work — to get news out to readers in a timely fashion – except when they don’t work, Tweney said, and then provided examples of instances where he agreed to an embargo only to learn some other media outlet broke it and got the story out first. It happened twice within a few weeks on different stories handled by the same PR agency.

“I recognize both the utility and the anxiety and danger of embargoes,” added David Darlin, technology editor for the New York Times. While it can be a convenient way to report news, he also feels manipulated by the process.

“[The embargo] is a tool for PR people to co-opt the media to turn them into part of the PR apparatus,” said Darlin.

But the alternative to embargoes, which would be just putting the release on PR Newswire and only responding to reporters seeking interviews is impractical for the companies making the news, said Doug Free, public relations director for Microsoft’s operations in Silicon Valley.

“I can’t have my staff scrambling to take calls from 30 reporters,” said Free, from his seat in the audience. Using the embargo system sets up a more orderly process for arranging interviews ahead of time.

As the discussion continued, it became apparent that there remains some suspicion among reporters, PR people and their clients about who’s responsible for broken embargoes.

Sam Whitmore, founder of Media Survey, a consulting practice for tech PR people, and moderator of the discussion, listed what he thought were bogus “excuses” media gave for breaking embargoes, such as the story was posted by mistake, the embargoed story was mistaken for a non-embargoed story, there was time zone confusion about when the embargo lifts and the all purpose “I forgot.”

But Wired’s Tweney said embargoes are also broken by the client who, despite the PR agency’s efforts to control the embargo, leaks the news to a favored blogger or someone else who gets the jump on reporters who agreed to the embargo.

The debate ended 45 minutes later with no real consensus on how to fix the embargo dilemma, which with the expanding universe of media bloggers, corporate bloggers, PR bloggers, Twitterers and other new media sources, isn’t going away.

But both journalists and PR people agreed on one essential element for a fair embargo system: Trust.

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Top 10 PR No-nos, Part II

Robert Mullins is a freelance technology writer in Silicon Valley. You can find him online at his Robert Mullins blog.
In my last post, I ticked off five ways PR people can tick off journalists. Now here are the other five, as collected by the Bad Pitch Blog:

5. You’ll be sorry. This hasn’t happened to me but I’ve heard it from other reporters that PR people have implied that they’re missing a great story by ignoring their pitch. Somehow, the theory goes, the reporter will be pulled into their editor’s or news director’s office the next day who’ll ask, “You HEARD about this story and didn’t follow up?” Bad Pitch says, “Good luck with that approach.”

4. One Bad Pitch poster bundled a number of miscellaneous no-nos, including “I told you I’d get the CEO, but…” The advice: never overpromise what you can deliver to the reporter. Another no-no, “I already pitched the Wall Street Journal but they said no.” This would be like Dick asking Jane out for dinner by explaining, “I really wanted to go out with Linda, but she turned me down.”

3. Can I review or edit this before it gets published? I still get this one. Here’s why reporters and editors don’t let sources see the story ahead of time. We don’t want them to see what we’ve attributed to them, have second thoughts about what they said and then try to change it. If the source said it, it stays in the story. There are a few instances in which I’ve shared portions of a story in which highly technical material is included to make sure I am explaining it right, but never the whole story. If the source is paying for words about them in the publication, then they can edit them beforehand. That’s called advertising.

2. We’re a big advertiser. Does that count for anything? Wince! Even if there is no intention to imply that because you’re an advertiser, therefore I should write about your company, the comment colors the whole rest of the conversation. When I worked for a business newspaper a few years ago, I trained myself to not even look at the ads because I didn’t want to know who was an advertiser. Sadly, some editors perk up when someone mentions they’re an advertiser, but none that I’ve ever worked for.

1. The unintended putdown. A variation on “I really wanted to go out with Linda,” this one covers the instance in which the PR person is trying to interest the publication but ends up insulting them. “We’ll give you a local exclusive on this. The Wall Street Journal is doing a piece, but we don’t view you as competitive.” Ouch. Also, “Sorry, we’re only briefing top tier media on this news.” Then why are you calling me?

Hope this helps. Again, most of the PR people I’ve worked with over the years have been far more professional than to commit these foot-in-mouth blunders, but the advice bears repeating. Call me any time with a pitch, but have these tips pinned up on your cubicle wall for reference.

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Five Big Don’ts for PR People Pitching the Media

Robert Mullins is a freelance writer in Silicon Valley. His work can be found at his Robert Mullins blog.

I’ve often been invited to speak to people at PR firms on how to deal with the media. In preparation for one recent visit I did a little online research and came across a post to the “Bad Pitch Blog.”

It was titled “Top 10 things you should NEVER say to the media.” I intended it as a fun icebreaker for my presentation to the people at this agency, assuming they already knew this stuff. Surprisingly, or dismayingly, many of them expressed appreciation at my sharing with them this eye-opening guidance. This I take to mean that these guidelines bear repeating.

I’m going to discuss my take on the first five this week and the rest next week.

10. Never say “This is off the record.” “If you don’t want to see it published, you shouldn’t say it in the first place. Does your source know this?” Bad Pitch Blog stated. I got a tip that a famous steakhouse was opening an outlet near a busy shopping mall in San Jose. I called an executive of the restaurant chain who confirmed that for me. Later I heard from the real estate agent who was trying to secure a lease for the restaurant told me that my story killed the deal. Again, tell your client that. To this I would add that you cannot apply “This is off the record” retroactively. Many have tried. While I might retroactively place something off the record, it would depend on the news value of the information versus the value of the source for a bigger story.

9. That isn’t a story. I love this one. Nothing increases the resolve of a reporter to continue pursuing a story than to have someone who’d rather you not do the story tell you it’s not a story. The reporter and editor – and ultimately the readers – determine whether it’s a story.

8. You should do this because your competition did this story in their last issue. When I was a reporter at the Milwaukee Business Journal, a weekly, I received more than a few press kits with clippings of articles from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the local daily, as proof that the client company is worth writing about. Knowing that our readers also likely read the local daily, evidence that the daily already did the story would mitigate against our doing it.

7. Did you get my e-mail, voice mail, etc.? Unless your e-mail to me bounced back to you, I got it. To be sure, there are times when your message gets buried in 100 messages just that morning to the reporter and there have been times when a call prompts me to dig for it and I may be interested. But Bad Pitch Blog suggests you call with something new added to the pitch, like “The CEO is available on Thursday” that freshens it.

6. You don’t cover this beat? Can you forward my pitch to the person who does? Bad Pitch considers it bad form and says the PR person needs to do their homework. It does relate to what I consider the most important thing a PR person should do: Know the publication you’re pitching to. These days, many publications have pages on their Web sites that reveal which beats reporters cover. Check that page to guide your pitch.

Next week: “Top five things you should never tell the media.”

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Traditional PR is Not Dead

The fat lady has yet to sing.

In the PR industry we’ve been hearing rumblings of the great shift from the reign of mainstream media to the rule of citizen journalists and social media channels. While we happen to believe that social media has forever changed the landscape of media relations (BTW, a great read is “Putting the Public back in Public Relations” by Brian Solis and Dierdre Breckenridge), we think the death knell may be more hype than reality.

Through a market research project, Attain Marketing has been in the trenches with senior IT buyers from a wide range of companies, including BofA, Phillips and First Data talking turkey about the IT buying process.

When asked how they first become aware of products and services, 95% of IT buyers interviewed said that trade publications were their number #1 resource. Although many did say they turn to IT peers to hear more about new products on the market, none acknowledged the use of social networking tools or communities as part of this process – right now. Analyst reports also topped the list of influencers, but mainly as part of the validation process.

So, here are some “old school” PR tips that never die:

  • Leverage key relationships with influential analysts and media. Schedule press and analyst “tours” in a 3-6 month cadence around company milestones.
  • Position your company/products around hot current events and submit articles to trade pubs for placement. Here are some good examples: PC World and Wireless Week contributed editorial
  • Always let your customers tell the story: editors are much more willing to write about a customer deployment than your product. Example: SC Magazine
  • Content is king. Journalists are looking for good stories. Period. See previous blog posts: Content is King and Some of My Best Friends are PR Weasels
  • PR campaigns should be integrated with marketing and lead generation efforts for maximum impact

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Every company should evaluate the unique landscape in the market it serves, but usually a blend of the old and new PR strategies is the best recipe for success.

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Some of My Best Friends are PR Weasels

We’ve asked Robert Mullins, a veteran technology journalist who has written for high-profile publications like Silicon Valley Business Journal and Network World to be a guest contributor for the Attain Marketing blog. We think there’s real value for our readers to hear about PR trends and “in the trenches” stories from the media’s perspective. And, really, Lorraine did not ask for the shameless plug – but of course will take it (we are in the PR business). Enjoy!

I was happy to accept Lorraine Kauffman-Hall’s invitation to write for Attain Marketing’s blog about media relations. I’ve been a journalist for over 30 years including the last nine covering the technology industry in Silicon Valley. A lot’s changed, of course, for both PR and marketing firms and the media, but not the basic relationship.

Some journalists regard public relations people as a nuisance they have to suffer. One of my editors at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal refused to take calls from PR people. “We can do that?” I asked facetiously. But seriously, I understand the symbiotic relationship at work: PR people want media attention for their clients and the reporter needs access to the right people to make a good story. It’s up to the reporter to determine whether the story pitched to him is worthy of coverage or not.

After working with a PR person for a while, I get to know what kind of stories I can expect them to pitch and they understand what kind of stories I’m looking for. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way. In the late 1980s, I was the news director of the NPR station in my hometown of Milwaukee. A PR person for one of the big hospitals was in my office asking what kind of stories I’d be interested in. I explained to him that being public radio, we specialize in “issue pieces,” in-depth reporting on weighty subjects like health care for the poor, cancer treatments or health care costs. He nodded in agreement and then promptly pitched a story about the hospital’s program to give free Teddy bears to kids injured and in the emergency room! It went in one ear and out the other.

No Teddy bears pitches in Silicon Valley where I worked with Lorraine when she did PR for network security firm Certicom Corp. and I covered the network security beat for the Business Journal. Lorraine was a consummate PR professional, knowledgeable about the company and its products and able to provide access to key executives on stories that were legit.

Some of my best friends are PR people and some of them say some of their best friends are reporters. Some PR buddies will go so far as to pitch a story or pass on a news tip that isn’t even about one of their clients.

Don’t get me wrong. We reporters still have to sort through the spin, tests claims, voice skepticism and ask the tough questions. And we have to be straight with PR people and tell them the Teddy bear giveaway is very thoughtful, but not a story.

I look forward to writing more for Attain Marketing’s blog about media relations in the age of the Internet and social media, dos and don’ts for PR professionals and the changing media landscape.

Robert Mullins is a freelance technology writer in Silicon Valley.

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