Mike’s Points

The below is a cross post of a recent Very PR column I authored for TalentZoo. It’s a bit long, but hopefully still offers some good comparison between traditional media relations and outreach in social media. As always, I welcome your feedback.

There are a lot of tactics that fall under the public relations umbrella, but media relations more often than not first comes to mind when you talk PR. Similarly, when you talk social media marketing, blogs are one of the first things that come to mind — though social media marketing is so very much more.

A lot of focus during my nearly 15 years in PR has been in media relations. Similarly, a lot of the focus of my social media marketing experience during the past four years has been in blogger relations. While media relations and blogger relations are similar, there are nuances in each approach to make them different enough.

Let’s compare and contrast the main components of each – and, hopefully, help ensure your next outreach is successful.

Developing your targeted media

Ideally, you should regularly be reading and listening or watching the media you regularly pitch. You need to be familiar with their audience, what they use, how they like to be contacted, etc. However, for a new client or new market, there are times when you’re starting from scratch. In both activities, you want media read by your audience and with good “reach” (circulation, viewership, traffic).

• Media relations: Use a service like Cision, Contacts on Tap or a similar paid service to develop your media list. To supplement those services or if you can’t afford them now, ask sales people what media customers and prospects read, watch, listen to. And, as always, Google is your friend. Search for your subject and see what media outlets cover it. While selecting your media outlets, find out who covers what beat, and how he or she wants to receive news – call him or her if you can to inquire. It’ll show your interest in being a real resource and get your materials more top-of-mind when you send them.

• Blogger relations: Use a paid service like Techrigy (which I use), Radian6 or Scout Labs, or one of other many free ones. These include Google Blog Search, Social Mention and even Technorati. Use any of these tools to search for your subject or brand to determine who already is blogging about it. Also, as you find blogs that look like good targets, check their blogrolls for other strong potentials. Factors to consider when choosing your blog list include if the blog covers your topic, is open to pitches, traffic stats, if it’s posts seem to get a good number of comments, and inbound links.

As you find these blogs, be sure to also get to know the blogger or bloggers behind them. Find out if he or she uses PR materials at all.

Know your targeted media & determine right contact

Once you’ve selected your media, now what? Whether online or offline, you need to read, research and be familiar with your targeted outlets.

• Media relations: Use tools like Cision to get profiles on the media and review their editorial calendars. Also, get and read past issues, read, review and search the media outlets’ Websites to become familiar with them and find out who specifically you need to reach.

• Blogger relations: Read the blog for a least a couple weeks – more if you can. If you don’t have time, search the blog for posts related to your subject. There are no quality, comprehensive directories of blogs like there are for traditional media. You just have to read and study them. DO NOT SKIM ON THIS PART. More so than traditional media, successful suggesting of your subject to blogs relies on how much you know them. As you learn about the blog, you’ll learn about the blogger, if he or she uses PR materials, how best to contact him or her, and how you can connect your subject to the bloggers and their audiences.

Pitching

No matter the type, the pitch needs to be short and clearly show some connection between the media outlet and your subject. If there is not a connection you can establish – DO NOT USE that particular media outlet. If you do so, you’ll start ruining that relationship before it even starts. Also, do not over promise or assume your subject is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Be humble. Real media relations pros know they are only suggesting topics – not “placing” them.

• Media relations: In traditional media relations, media tend to be much more comfortable dealing with PR pros than bloggers (though that gap is narrowing as more bloggers are pitched). With traditional media, you are more a provider of information than offering information. Make sure you have enough information that reporters can use for a good story: content, images, graphics and graphs if necessary, etc. Depending on your relationship with the reporters, include these items in the email, give them a link to where they can access it, or offer to send it later if they’re interested.

• Blogger relations: While more and more bloggers receive pitches (even I do), you are much more offering information than giving it. Even the bloggers who make a living out of their blogs take a more hands-on approach with their content than traditional reporters do. Bloggers not only deal with content, but they do “design and layout” too. Reporters don’t. While still offering to send bloggers information, be ready with links for them to go and get it. Give bloggers the chance to truly make the content their own. I’m mostly talking places where they can go and pull down images and video. Think Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Monitoring

Once you have your media list, you should automatically subscribe to them, either via mail or email, or their RSS feed. Whether traditional or social, set up a Google Alert for your subject to help track success from your efforts.

• Media relations: As you possibly did when you developed and researched your media, use a paid service like BurrellesLuce, Cision and TVEyes. These services will give you reports, plus data on the circulation, Nielsen rating other common metric.

• Blogger relations: Some of the tools you used to first select your list can play into the monitoring. The services like Techrigy, et al, are great for seeing who’s blogging about your subject, as well as commenting, tweeting and other ways to reference it in social media. If you can’t use the paid services, there are plenty of free ones, like Social Mention and Google Blog Search mentioned above. Other free social media search tools include Twitter Search, Boardreader and even Yahoo! Pipes. While these are free, you will spend much more time monitoring and reporting your results than you will with a paid service. Weigh the costs-benefit tradeoffs.

While ultimately seeking to achieve the same results – third party writing about your subject – the process of traditional media relations and social media relations is different enough that you cannot apply the same old, same old to new media. Each media has its one nuances and benefits in coverage received. Don’t treat traditional and social media the same.

Value is an interesting concept, and has many sides to it. Among other factors like price and quality, social media plays a role in determining the level of perceived value in business, an organization, etc. Whatever it is or how you define it, ultimately, nothing is purchased unless high enough value is perceived in that product or service.

And, in relationships, you’ll really get no where — or you won’t get far — without contributing value to the personal and professional relationships you have.

So, being inspired by Charlie Wollborg’s own thought-provoking and inspiring videos, I offer up my own brief commentary on value and its connection to business and relationships. I am no way comparing my video thoughts to his — Charlie’s are more inspiring, more fluid, more entertaing and more informative.

As always, I welcome — and really want — your feedback. Thank you for stopping by.
-Mike

Maybe it’s because of my journalism roots, but I never did like rags. In my POV, rags are newspapers and magazines that run every news release you’d send them, mostly verbatim.

Yeah, sure they were easy “hits” and helped make me look good to clients (not that I needed help — hardee har-har ).

But, I figured they did not provide quality coverage, and their circulation numbers were not really “real” (though I did include them in client reports).

Solid media coverage comes from media outlets that take their journalism* responsibility seriously. They don’t publish everything you send — and you don’t send them everything you have.

A real PR pro has solid news judgment, knows his employer or clients’ objectives, knows or can find the appropriate media outlets needed to meet those objectives, and knows those media outlets.

That goes whether you’re talking traditional offline media, online media or social media.

So, I was thrilled to read about MomDot’s call for for mommy bloggers to get back to their roots for one week in August:

MomDot is challenging bloggers to participate for one week in August in a PR BLACKOUT challenge where you do not blog ANY giveaways, ANY reviews, and Zero press releases. In fact, we dont want you to talk to PR at ALL that whole week.  We want to see your blog naked, raw, and back to basics. Talk about your kids, your marriage, your college, your hopes, your dreams, your house and whatever you can come up with for one week.

I’ve been involved in numerous blogger outreach efforts, including some sampling outreach where I’ve sought permission to send products to and sought feedback from bloggers on those products. In any type of outreach a PR pro does — whether with traditional or social media — there has to be value for both parties.

The PR pro has to give content, access, information, etc., — something that the blogger finds of value for his or her readers. Yes, in sampling, the blogger receives a product that he/she likely won’t return, but that’s fine. That’s not payola and should not dramatically influence the objective, pure blog post PR pros and their clients or employer should seek.

I’ve never paid — NOR WILL I EVER PAY — a blogger to post about a client’s product. If you do, that’s fine. That’s an ad. That IS NOT PR.

I will never tell a blogger what to write — or that he/she should even write at all.

I will never get upset if a blogger expresses interest in and says he/she will write a post, but doesn’t. Most bloggers still have jobs, lives, family, etc. You’re a PR pro. Bloggers very likely are not professional bloggers.

Now, I also realize that power moms — including mom bloggers — are hot. I definitely don’t begrudge a blogger — whether the person’s a mom or not — to earn a living and get some type of compensation to post on his or her blog. If the blogger has the talent and following, great. Get benefit from it.

But as a word of caution, as Trisha at MomDot seemed to say in her post, don’t forget your roots and the qualities that made you so darn popular. There are plenty of commercialized old and new media entities.

So,to all of you sought-after bloggers — as well as traditional media — please don’t loose your purity.

-Mike

Image of Rosie the Riveter. Also see Google search.

*I realize that, with few exceptions, bloggers are not journalists, and I don’t view them that way. Still, they do “report,” and usually it’s their opinion. That’s fine. Blogs are still media.

The generally free availability of information on the Internet and the technology that makes a lot of it so useful and efficient is both very positive and deceiving.

Yes, there are a lot of great time-saving tools and a wealth of information to make many aspects of your life better.

But don’t think that, just because they’re free there is no cost. There’s always a cost. And, when there is no charge to use something, then you pay with your time.

Your time is not free. There’s always an opportunity cost.

In a LinkedIn question I answered, John Ettore also answered and seemed to go on a rant when he questioned why would anyone spend money on a service that develops a media list for you.

I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would have to use a paid service for this task in 2009, 15 years into the Internet era. All of this material is free online. You may have to spend a little time assembling it, but paying $2K for a list that someone laboriously compiled? That strikes me as bizarre.

While I understand his point, Mr. Ettore seems to contradict himself:

“You may have to spend a little time assembling it….for a list that someone laboriously compiled?”

Little time and laboriously are not related. In fact, they are opposites. But, let’s get out of technicalities, and look into practicalities.

Okay, so let’s say I need to develop a media list. Let’s keep it relatively focused and say the general consumer media for the Cleveland metropolitan area. Dailies. Weeklies. Radio. TV.

Sure, go ahead and search for just the media outlets in those categories for the Cleveland DMA. Make sure you get general contact information, and at least circulation or audience for each outlet.

Then, try to find the editor or reporter who covers your topic at each outlet.

Then, try to find his or her contact information — telephone number and email at least — for each outlet.

Then look for a bio or profile on that person to see if there is anything that can help you better connect with him or her at each outlet.

There’s more information you’ll need to develop a solid media list, but the above is a great starting point.

How long do you think it’ll take you?

In using Cision’s MediaListsOnline (pay-as-you-need), there are 183 media outlets I found in dailies (20), weeklies (46), TV/Cable (17) and radio stations with a news-talk format (100). I won’t need all of those, but the information that Cision and similar services provide is a huge time-saver compared to if I’d have to track down the above information myself.

I’ll pay $2000+ per year to have some company do the groundwork to get me the basic information for media list development. It’ll save me way more than that in productivity and efficiency so I can use my valuable time elsewhere.

My time is worth a lot. What about yours?

-Mike

During the past several months, I’ve been professionally and personally involved in and have watched online contests and events that one way or another involve social media. During that time, I’ve learned a thing or two about what to do to help make them successful.

Before

Contests: As with any outreach project, plan how to promote your contest to help others spread the word. Include promoting the contest on your own online locations (blog, Twitter, Facebook Fan Page, etc.). Research those bloggers who have a passion and blog about the subject or geography connected to your contest. Also, there are A LOT of contest blogs — some bloggers I’ve gotten to know a bit include ContestforMoms (@PetiteMommy) and AContestBlog (@Valmg). As with any other blogger you engage, be sure that you know their audience, know them and DON’T OFFER THEM JUNK PR.

Also, if Twitter is any part of your contest promotion, decide on and promote the hashtag.

Finally, as you start to develop and promote a contest, if the actual contest process changes from the initial process you promoted — tell people about the change.

Events: Facebook and LinkedIn are two social networks that come to mind with easy event tools. If your event is a Tweetup or related to Twitter, check out Twtvite. If it might have news value, don’t forget to draft up a news release and send it to the appropriate contacts at the media that would be be interested in it.

Also, if the event is tied to a geographic community, many have event listing sites, like this one in Toledo.

Again, as with a contest, if Twitter will play any role, develop and promote a set hashtag for the event.

During

Contest: If it’s news worthy, give updates via the previously-researched outreach channels. If you have a Twitter account, give updates there (but still mix in plenty of community-oriented info.). Blog updates. Communicate with those who have entered. Still, reinforce your hashtag if you’re using Twitter in any way.

Events: Encourage attendees to send Twitpics or other Twitter-related picture and video tools. If possible, consider broadcasting it via a service like Livestream or UStream. Also, check out Twubs (a neat event-aggregator I’m also checking out).

After

Contests: Reconnect with those media outlets who expressed interest in or mentioned your contest (either the first announcement or any updates). Promote the contest on your own online media (blog, Twitter, Facebook Fan Page, etc.).

Event: Post a recap — blog, Flickr, etc. — of who attended, amount raised (if it was a charity event), thank your sponsors, attendees and others involved. Depending on the type and size of the event, the previous will vary. Definitely publicly thank others who do any recap or Tweet a congrats on a well-run event.

So, any other to-dos if you’re organizing a contest or event?

And, of course, if I can be of any assistance in brainstorming or helping to develop, organize and promote your event or contest, please don’t hesitate to ask.

-Mike

Image: Courtesy of Janeile Cudjoe. It’s of Mark Pannell recording during the first ever Tattooleetup that he and Sara Lopez organized. See more of Janeile’s images from the event on Facebook.