PR is a hard job. You get rejected almost as often as actors looking for their big break. Journalists loudly, and often rudely, call PR people flacks, hacks and worse.
To management, you’re only as good as the last story you placed. As pundit Sean Dugan wrote recently in InfoWorld, “. . . you must understand the delicate relationship between journalists and PR. It’s a dance roughly akin to that between the cobra and the mongoose, but with less goodwill and mutual respect.”
If you want media coverage you need to learn what journalists want from you. The best way to do that is to learn the system we call Reality PR
The Eleven Tenets of Reality PR:
I. The public is the Lord thy God Ultimately you can only succeed if your communications produce results, which shall be known as return on investment, by reaching the greater public. This can only be achieved with the support and the consent of the media. And they will only publish what they believe their readers and viewers want to read and see.
The media is empowered to pick which firms supply comment. This creates opportunities for lesser-known firms. Your job is to get onto their Rolodexes and into their Palms and Blackberries.
Verily, the vast majority of profile articles are confined to the three or four major players in a market. If you’re not one of them, then you don’t stand much of a chance of getting ink. But if you can become a useful source for a content provider, then they will come to you every time they cover your sector-because they need insight from players both large and small. To do this you need to follow the tenets of Reality PR.
II. Thou shalt covet all media There is more to the media than newspapers and magazines. Today media is a collective term for the producers of content for mass production. To communicate with them successfully you must approach them from the right perspective.
Many firms fail in their PR efforts because they do not recognize the vast array of media that exist. Pitching material to the New York Times, the Daily News or Business Week is generally a waste of time because they are inundated with publicity detritus and probably only run a limited number of stories covering your market segment.
If you pitch big-time media you need to have big-time story ideas. However, despair not because these days everyone with a web site, newsletter, blog, e-zine, Mail List or forum is a journalist.
New media outlets abound. Many journalists at major media are accessible through their personal blog sites. Major web sites have content managers whom you can pitch. Find them by writing to or calling the company and asking their names. Seek out the newsletters and e-zines written by various Internet pundits and pitch information to them.
Become familiar with, and participate in, forums, mail lists and discussion groups that pertain to your segment. Provide information of value and your reputation will grow. Thou wilt not be sorry thou has done this extra work.
Electronic media, of all kinds, is virgin territory for the intrepid flack. Popular sites such as Wired News, Yahoo!, AOL, CNET and Feed are also awash with press releases, but pitching to publications that focus vertically on your industry is an excellent idea. Although their readership is smaller, they are more likely to be interested in your products and strategy, because as the mantra of Reality PR makes clear, publishers will only publish what readers want to read.
III. Thou shalt think globally and speak in tongues. Many perceive that a global marketing strategy is only suitable for giants such as Proctor & Gamble and Microsoft, who have big budgets to spend, and big brands to promote. But the advent of the Internet is the final stage in a process of globalization that gives firms of all sizes the opportunity to sell their products and services to the world. However, nobody is going to buy them if they don’t know about them. While it may cost vast sums of money to run an advertising campaign in another country, it’s cheaper to extend your PR strategy to markets abroad.
It is only worth pursuing foreign journalists if you’re doing something that affects their country and will be of particular interest to their readers. Bother to hire a qualified translator rather than relying on machine translations which can make you looketh like the village idiot.
Be careful to make your pitch with simple words, avoiding idioms and complex sentence structures. Do offer to supply a translator if they want one present in a telephone interview.
IV. Thy press releases must pass the “who cares?” test. The diversity of potential outlets, both at home and abroad, means that what is the right pitch for one publication isn’t necessarily the right angle or story for another. Discerning journalists hate press releases that are long-winded, formulaic, boring as hell and lost amidst superlatives and marketing babble.
Unless your business or product is truly the first of its kind, the fact that it exists simply doesn’t qualify as news. Any time your service or product can help someone, it might have a life in the media.
Before you send out a press release make sure it can pass the “who cares?” test. Write down your story idea in one sentence. Then ask yourself, and answer honestly, “Who cares?” If it still sounds like a good idea, proceed to re-write it over and over until it has not one extra word.
As long as the topic relates to a lot of people, is timely and genuinely helpful, you’re likely to get a good response when you e-mail or call the appropriate editor (assignment, financial, home editor, etc.) at an online or traditional print or broadcast medium.
V. Thou shalt learn to create artful e-mail pitches. Yes, yes, yes, companies must issue press releases to satisfy SEC requirements, their bosses, shareholders and lawyers. But when it comes to placing stories, e-mail pitches to individual journalists are far more valuable.
Pitches should take the form of a one-paragraph e-mail, with a short summary of the story that adopts an angle appropriate to the publication, and an explanation of why this story is of interest to their readers.
Dispense with all excessive exaggeration. The subject line should make clear what the story is about. Providith contact details for PR representatives and interviewees.
VI. Thou shalt not spam. Gargantuan mailing lists are not the answer. One well-constructed story suggestion will do the work of a dozen press releases.
While it’s perfectly acceptable for pitches to be unsolicited, you should observe a number of courtesies. You certainly shouldn’t bombard all the e-mail addresses on the masthead. Relevance is key to keeping editors happy.
Buy the best database thou can afford that includes the different beats of the editors, staff writers and freelancers who cover your sector. See our e-book, “Secrets of Effective Press Release Distributuon” http://www.whatsnextonline.com/release/index.html for detailed information on media databases, mailing lists and wire services.
VII. Thou shalt not talk shit. No one in the media likes like bluff or bluster. They dislike anyone who takes forever to make a point. They particularly don’t like flacks or interviewees who try to make simple concepts unnecessarily complex by burdening them with excessive technical jargon or MBA-speak.
Media interviews are not an opportunity for executives to make themselves sound smart, but a situation in which they can communicate facts and insight pertaining to your company, its strategy and its products.
The flack bears much of the responsibility for making interviews productive. Thou should find out in advance exactly what the journalist is interested in, pick an appropriate interviewee from among their firm’s executives and then brief them so that they have the necessary information and statistics to provide meaningful answers.
The executive should at least make the pretence of maintaining some sort of impartial perspective. In addition, the spokesperson should try to provide the interviewer with original information that isn’t available from the press materials or other sources, together with prescient analysis. The media want spicy opinions and fascinating facts, not hooey.
VIII. Thou shalt not pretend to be a writer. One of the most effective ways to get your point across is to write articles for the hundreds of online newsletters and e-zines who accept contributed content. Writing of these articles is best left to professionals. Being professionals, they will not covet your byline but will gladly put your name in place of their own. No one need ever know.
Similarly, do not write press releases unless you have had at least a basic course in journalism. Just as thou would not ask a plumber to fix thy car or a dentist to fix thy toilet, flacks should not ask an executive to write his or her own articles for publication. Never, never let a lawyer write a press release as all they talk is useless double-speak.
IX. Thou shalt not refuse to comment. “No comment” is a fine phrase for royalty, criminals and celebrities, but not so great for corporations who have a responsibility to shareholders, clients and consumers.
Unfortunately, in difficult situations it may be impossible for representatives to tell the media the whole truth. You should always try to be honest about which subjects you will be able to talk frankly about and which you may find difficult to comment upon.
You should always try to say something about any question that journalists may pose, although if it is a particularly sensitive matter, and you don’t want to get grief from your boss for saying too much, a written statement may provide a more considered answer. However, in accordance with the sixth commandment, it’s better to give a concise response that is straight to the point, than one that is evasive, lengthy and obviously spun.
X. Concern thyself with thy overall marketing strategy. Integrating thy PR efforts with thy overall marketing strategy is an arduous task that requires constant vigilance. Courting the public through traditional media is only one facet of a holistic marketing strategy. To be successful you must practice true multi-channel marketing in which you synergize your advertising, PR, Internet and sponsorship efforts to project a unified image.
PR, advertising, your web site and every communication you have with the public shalt have a unified message and a pleasing appearance.
XI. Remember: thou must keep holy the Internet. The Internet has changed the nature of PR irrevocably in two distinct regards. It has changed the way that flacks communicate with the press. With 98% of journalists in America and Europe having access to e-mail, it has become the de facto method for providing journalists with the information they need.
Forget thee not that thou must learn to attract and deal with site maintainers, newsgroup moderators and forum hosts, not just professional writers. Thou must understand the needs and perspectives of all of these neo-journalists because they all have the ability to communicate with the public. All require thy attention.
B.L. Ochman BLOchman@whatsnextonline.com Marketing strategist,
journalist, speaker 212.369.8312 http://www.whatsnextonline.com Moderator, I-PR, the world’s largest interactive community of public
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