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Press releases are not going to go away, whichever new technologies come to the forefront. But there is a methodology to sending to them that will guarantee a higher chance of response and which should become a key part of your marketing strategy.
Firstly, you must build up an audience. This means getting in touch, via whichever means the journalist, publication or promoter prefers, and establishing a rapport. It is no good sending a PR out into the cold. And good relationships take time to establish.
Secondly, your PR must have substance. It needs to be newsworthy, timely and include links to further information to allow the author of any piece relating to that press release a chance to write a piece of value. Press releases should include links to video, audio, references, and if at all possible personalised and in-depth content. So, a Skype contact for a quick video conference, a Twitter handle with hashtag for a broad range of input on the subject matter or event, Youtube URLs, audioboos etc should all be included.
Top Tip: Add a QR code for a personalised page for that journalist. Relate some of your information back to previous pieces they have written to give a background or insight.
Thirdly, you must sell your story. The vast majority of press releases are simply puff pieces because the marcomms department thinks it is time there was a column inch or two about the company. Do not fall into that modus operandi. Only send out stories when there are meat and bones, when timely, and when you have a valid reason to see the company name in print.
But do not miss opportunities. This is where a great PR salesperson will come to the fore. A good marcomms person will be able to spot an opportunity eg when something is trending on Twitter, contact the people with whom they have established relationships, have a great piece that can be customised by the journo to suit their publication (without being yet another “Read similar stories” on Google) and who can push the whys and wherefores of this particular story to a specific publication.
Understanding how Online PR works in this fast moving environment where a story may die in a day is vital. And it requires fast action and slick processes in-house to work correctly, backed up by valuable content that is regularly added to your website. But get it right, and you could be viral for a few hours with a long tail audience for many months to come.
As we come to the end of Comic Relief, and in the midst of several global crises, it is time to look at what can and cannot work when businesses jump on ’cause-tied’ marketing. (A phrase I have plagiarised from the WSJ)
The Ugly
Previously, we have written about the mistakes made by those who have endeavoured to leap on the bandwagons created by ’causes’. Bing comes to mind as the most recent #fail. It did get ugly for a while on Twitter until the apology and donation made to Japan.
The Good
ClickThrough have tried to approach cause-tied marketing in a good way, by making the most of Red Nose Day and yet not tying our own contributions to those from others. Consumer influenced contributions can work for some issues e.g. some crisp manufacturers and supermarkets have tied their contribution to efforts from others, but usually for far less emotive issues – such as books, cookery, or sports equipment for schools. For those who don’t know, Red Nose Day, for many Brits, is one of the great causes, like BandAid, that we will all support in it’s quest to rid the world of poverty. Schools, companies, organisations, villages and individuals all get together to help Red Nose Day raise funds, and this year “On The Night” raised an astonishing £75million with its TV shows, phone-ins and online activity.
The Bad
This is a large category, as so many fall into the trap of trying to promote their companies whilst seemingly helping those at the heart of a cause. In fact, so many PR attempts fall into this category that it should ring a warning bell for any company when considering using a cause to promote their business.
The only way to ensure that you do not find that pitfall is to be honest and honourable when supporting a cause. Ask yourself not WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) but How Can We Help? This Ebay listing for a wetsuit being sold to raise money for Japan will undoubtedly be taken down shortly, but this is a prime example of how to do it right.
The horrendous events in Japan have created an unexpected problem for Microsoft and their search engine, Bing. Whilst trying to be generous and offering financial aid to Japan, someone in the marketing department thought it would be an idea to publicise the donation on Twitter, with a promise of a $1 donation per Retweet of the original message, up to a maximum of $100,000.
Whilst many Twitter users have been happy to RT, the inevitable has happened – the Twittersphere has erupted at the thought that Microsoft are attempting to cash in, and we are seeing a tsunami of bad PR.
Too many people feel that this is a somewhat crass moment to seek publicity, especially considering that the latest news appears to show that possibly many thousands of people have lost their lives. The growing feeling on Twitter is that Microsoft should just have donated the money, without seeking to promote the search engine at the same time as people are dying.
This is not the first time that a large company has attempted to cash in on a global crisis or breaking news story. It surely won’t be the last. But it should act as a salutory reminder to all marketing departments that it only takes 140 characters to create an unholy PR mess that could damage a brand reputation for a long time.
Ah, this old chestnut! PageRank used to be one of the sacred mantras you would hear SEOs chanting. Your PR was of huge import and anyone with a PR of 5 or above felt they had the right to look down upon you. Some people lost sleep whenever their PR dropped, or if they had tried everything and still had a PR of zero.
PageRank came into being to help Google assess pages for authority, backlinks etc. It is never quite clear if the mystery surrounding how PR was calculated was solved, but over the years, PR slid down the ranks in algorithmic importance.
Until, on Oct 14th, 2009, Google finally said very clearly and in a manner that was not up for further debate, that SEOs could all sleep soundly again and PageRank, just as they had been trying to tell anyone who would listen for quite some time, was really, really not important. In fact, it had been removed from Google webmaster tools.
So, when anyone tells you to look for sites with a high PR, or to spend time trying to increase/gain PR, you will know better!
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Imagine a large corporate, looking to increase links to their site and also raise brand awareness amongst potential customers, and demonstrate the expertise within their company.
Forum marketing is an ideal tool at this juncture, so let’s wheel out an in-house expert to post to a variety of fora and help out those communities with technical problems. Thus clearly exhibiting the knowledge within the business, plus reinforcing the image of a caring company.
However, due to company policy and a culture of fear about online damage to reputation, this expert can only post after getting permission from the PR department. Generally, most PR and Marcomms department are specialists in press releases, marketing communications, crisis management and so on.
Now, they are expected to be able to judge the value of a response made to a question in a forum on a subject in which the expert has spent 25 years becoming so knowledgeable. It may well be that they do not understand the question. After all, it is being asked for a reason ie the answer can’t readily be found elsewhere.
The expert then needs to educate the PR department as to why he has given said answer, and why the question is being asked, and how this fits into the overall marketing strategy of the company (not the expert’s forte, of course).
This all takes time, and therefore costs money. And is also utterly pointless.
If you employ your staff because they are GOOD at what they do, then trust them. Sure, monitor their excursions into fora to start with to ensure they are fully au fait with the brand and are on message, but don’t involve the PR department. Leave them to get press releases out, deal with the media, develop marketing strategies on and offline; don’t expect them to suddenly become experts in the minutiae of your technical department’s expertise.
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As Twitter and other social media tools are adopted en masse by those in the Web PR field, and keeping in touch with all that is happening with live PR campaigns becomes ever more important as the mainstream media begins to perish, MyPRGenie has launched a free white paper entitled PR 3.0: The new Public Relations Toolkit
This white paper covers the growing problems within mainstream media and how they will begin to affect those involved in traditional PR – adopt the web or die is a key message! It looks at PR 2.0 and the tools that have been used over the last 2-3 years to adapt to the ever-changing media world, as well as making some intelligent guesses at what will be required for both journalists and PR agencies in the months and years to come.
In order to survive the changes in the media world, many will need to completely change the way they work, accepting that those big breaks of front page and major news stories in the print press will become less frequent, and that the news consumer is now seeking their news fix online.
Keeping in contact with those who will break stories is going to become vital and phone calls and even e-mails are so last century. Maintaining a current database of contacts will mean understanding where to make real-time contact and monitoring what tools and applications – Twitter, facebook, etc – are the ones of choice for each of your contacts.
In order to be heard, PR agencies are going to need to be on top of all that is going on online, with stories reaching the widest number of eyeballs by ensuring that press releases and so on are distributed through the most effective mechanisms, and that will no longer be just your standard press releases distributors.
As a free white paper, this is worth a read to absorb some of what is written between the lines and the thoughts that will engender for your agency in future.
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