Unspinning a PR Web

Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times wrote a profile piece about how public relations has evolved with the advent of the World Wide Web and cleverly titled her article “Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley” to underscore that point. Lots of PR folks have blogged, posted and opined about the piece and I’m not going to belabor any points made elsewhere or jump on any bandwagons.

My issue with the article, and it’s based on a common misconception by journalists, is that PR starts when you engage with a member of the media. Of course, that’s Ms. Miller’s entire experience so it’s natural that she would assume that a briefing with her is the sum total goal of the public relations profession.

I disagree. What Ms. Cain experienced was the end game for Media Relations – the stage of Public Relations when a company decides to communicate to its target audiences through the media. Don’t forget, the reporter is the conduit through which a company can tell its customers, partners, investors and any other stake holder what the company is doing. It’s a way to benchmark progress and show market relevance. Don’t misunderstand my point. The reporter is a key audience for the PR person but for the company itself, they are a channel.

Ms. Miller’s article does a great job of articulating that for some companies, using traditional media might not always be the best path to reach a company’s target market. The example of Wordnik’s success with the influencer community underscores this point that the goal is reaching the right target market with the right message. In Wordnik’s case, traditional reporters were not the right channel.

My belief is that 90% of the work in PR is completed before a company ever gets in front of a reporter. We work with our clients to understand their business and market objectives, as well as where they want to be in the next 12 – 18 months overall. Based on this understanding, we help create a messaging timeline and announcement schedule that combines company, product, technology, partner and customer announcements that all help tell that broader story. Once the plan is in place, the announcements are set and we reach out to specific reporters whose readers might find this aspect of the company’s business interesting.

Having a great rolodex of reporters, analysts, bloggers, influencers, conference organizers, publishers and other PR people is a huge advantage and, as the article illustrates, can open doors to reporters that are willing to listen because you have strong, market relevant connections. The value of the PR person is to know who to call and when because reporters receive hundreds of pitches a day, mostly from PR people that don’t take the time to understand the beat or what the reporter is currently writing about on a topic.

Like the folks mentioned in the article, I was involved in the tech boom of the late 1990s when I ran the PR group at Sycamore Networks. I was on board to take the company public and then stayed through the ups and downs that followed. We secured profiles in Business Week, FT, WSJ, NY Times, Red Herring, etc and had our pick of appearances on the cable news shows. The key decisions we made though, were determining which opportunities helped us tell our story. If it didn’t, we passed. Like some of the folks profiled in the story, my phone rang and rang from reporters and producers that wanted access to our executives. We actually passed on more opportunities that we accepted and instead worked on cultivating the right story, with the right reporter and publication at the right time. We never lost sight of our 12 – 18 month goals and how each story could impact, positively or negatively, our ability to achieve those goals.

I started Connect2 Communications, Inc. shortly after leaving because I felt there was a real opportunity in the marketplace for a PR firm that understood how to build long-term programs that served a company’s business and market objectives over time. One that didn’t live and die with each clip or story, but instead viewed how objectives were met and the needle moved over time.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, maybe not. My firm has created Facebook fan pages for clients and viral videos about cash cows. We tweet about our clients and of course we host “No Pitch” nights for press and analysts at ball games. We also spend a great deal of time briefing bloggers and industry influencers. In fact, in the past month, we’ve had clients provide comments to stories in the WSJ, Fortune, Business Week and Smart Money, as well as traditional trade publications such as Telephony, Light Reading, Fierce Markets, Xchange, Network World, and NGN Magazine.

But…I’ve never been on Michael Ovitz nor had Ms. Huffington attend one of my parties. I’m open though so if either is interested, please let me know.

Are Blogs Open to Libel?

The blogosphere in North Carolina (where Connect2 is based) is churning based on a state bill introduced yesterday that would open bloggers up to libel suits. The reaction? Interesting, but a bit predictable. Some folks are claiming the bill violates First Amendment rights, other are arguing that a public figure must prove "actual malice" regarding negative coverage, meaning that the reporter published the story, knowing it was false, with the intent to harm the individual. As some posts have mentioned, under common law, you can be sued, but the state's libel laws include specific protections for newspapers and magazines that may not apply to individual bloggers.

It's an interesting argument. Personally, I think there needs to be some sort of recourse against bloggers. For all the posts (by bloggers no less) on the topic, they are not all the same and do not all operate by journalistic rules, and quite possibly, don't even know the rules exist. Journalists understand that rules apply to objective coverage and that you need to source material before going to print, even if that source is unnamed. Journalism isn't run on rumors. Sure, stories can start as rumors but journalists fact check before running. When this doesn't happen, people lose their jobs and publications lose credibility (CBS, Washington Post, etc have all dealt with this over the past several years.)

Bloggers don't always operate under the same constraints and do not adhere to the same standards as traditional news outlets. Newspapers and magazines have mastheads to enable people to make contact and often have a OpEd page where readers can raise their voices. Bloggers don't have these tools and often hide behind pseudonyms instead of saying who they actually are. Sure, you can post a comment but you don’t really have recourse against the blogger if they are hidden. And...they often post things that are completely speculative without restraint.

That being said, there are many bloggers that do understand the rules and run their sites by traditional journalistic principals. These sites are great and deserve First Amendment protection.

Blogs are easy to set up and anyone can have one on any topic they choose. And I'm not sure everyone that has a blog understands the impact a post can have on people, which is unfortunate. Ultimately, I believe there has to be the same transparency within the print journalism world as there is in the online blogosphere – bloggers slandering citizens need to know that there repercussions to their actions and conversely, private citizens need to know they have choices/actions should such an incident occur.

Let’s face it. This law is not meant to protect people from credentialed bloggers like the Huffington Post and GigaOm who most likely will never have issues, but from the random blogger that is just out to throw stones.

Bad PR people…bad.

It’s a constant refrain. Unfortunately, it’s often true that PR folks are driven (either by their firm, their client, or their lack of experience) to pitch anyone and everyone each time they have an announcement to make. Problem is, not every announcement is news. That’s not to say it’s not something that is press release worthy, these are two very different things. The way we look at press releases at Connect2 is pretty simple.

• Tier 1 Release – Major company news ( e.g., new flagship product, major customer win, acquisition, investment round, new C-level executive, etc, ) or news that is particularly relevant giving an ongoing or emerging trend in the market place. With a Tier 1, we prefer to pre-brief if possible. Analysts a couple weeks out and press that cover the market or the company are pitched so they have time, if they want, to talk to customers, analysts, influencers, to tell a complete story.
• Tier 2 Release – Mid-major company news that is important to the company but not necessarily to the broader market in general (e.g., product upgrade, company milestone release, expansion of certain company partnerships, etc.). With Tier 2, we like to pre-brief as well but focus only on the analysts and reporters that cover the company. We’re trying to provide an update on company progress with these types of releases so folks that cover the broader market probably won’t care…so, we don’t pitch them. They will get the release when it crosses the wire as an FYI in case it peaks an interest but we don’t pitch.
• Tier 3 Release – This is low-key news that helps the client tell its broader story but isn’t newsworthy. There are lots of releases that fall into this category and because what we’re really trying to do is connect directly with key audiences, we write these a bit differently. They are still press releases (Headline, sub-head, dateline, etc.) and they go across the wire but we don’t pitch on it. With Tier 3, we write the release in a more general feature style instead of the traditional inverted pyramid a traditional release is written in. We rely on the wire service, and affiliated news aggregators, to get this story out directly to readers.

Here’s the key point to this blog…with each tier, we’re pitching people we know cover the market or cover the company. Sure, we make mistakes, especially if we’re moving into a market where we don’t know the pubs or reporters particularly well. And sometimes, magazines aren’t that good about updating who is covering what so we pitch folks that used to cover a certain beat but are now moving on to something else. It happens. When it does, we apologize and update our lists. We consider our press lists living documents and rely on several sources, as well as our own weekly call downs, to keep our lists as accurate as possible.

Yes, there are services you can use, and we use some of them, to find the right person for the right story, but the best way to find out what someone is writing about is to research the reporter and read the publication they write for…on a regular basis. It’s not only a great way to find out who is writing about what, but what their particular interest in the topic is, what they’ve covered so far and what part of the story they might not have told yet.

One of the complaints I hear most from PR people about reporters is how someone “got a story wrong,” or “clearly didn’t do their research…”. Well, I think we owe the reporters the same due diligence. Everyone knows that magazines are short staffed and that the news is more immediate today than ever before. Help them do their job by doing yours.

My two cents, more to come.

Another One Bites the Dust: Helping Local Businesses Help Themselves...

This morning I got another email from another of my favorite local businesses telling me that it is closing its doors. That brings the tally to five local businesses—two restaurants, two furniture stores and a baby store— that have closed their doors suddenly since I moved to the Raleigh-Durham area just one short year ago. After talking with most of them (as I had become regulars at most) they all had the same reaction: the community didn’t get behind us and support us. This got me thinking—what more can I do to help these local businesses stay afloat? Was it really the community’s fault?

The truth is it takes more than just financial support to keep local businesses thriving in today’s down economy. For the most part, I found my favorite local stores by chance—driving by, a random Internet listing, or a phone call. Local businesses have to look for ways to make the most of local newspapers, TV stations and word of mouth PR and marketing to be successful and, most of the time, there are free opportunities to be had!

If you run a local business, here are just a few tips that you can easily implement to get that free publicity you’re looking for:

• Know how you’re different than the big chains. Maybe you’ll price match big chain prices, maybe you only employ experts in your field, maybe you only use locally-grown produce. Whatever the case, you have to know your competitive advantage and be able to clearly articulate it.
• Get to know the local reporters in your area. Do you read the local newspapers? Watch the local TV station? Always pick up that local free newspaper? Give your favorite reporters a call or send them an email suggesting a story idea based on what makes your business different from the rest. This might take a few tries, but having a local reporter up to speed on your business (and the possibility of stories about you!) can only help further down the road.
• Don’t get discouraged. Building relationships with reporters takes a long time. Be consistent, but not annoying. Make sure you are going to them with relevant materials. i.e.: If you own a sports store, you’re not going to want to approach the local food critic.
• Support your local high school/middle school sports teams. If you own a restaurant, offer up your place for after-game meals at a slight discount. If you own a store, offer members of those teams a coupon for buy-one, get-one-free. Getting parents on your side will only help to increase business and promote extra word of mouth in and around your community.
• Find other local businesses to partner with. If you offer each other’s patrons deals to get them to come in, you’re growing your potential customer base exponentially.
• Make sure you appear in Internet searches. Registering on City Search or other local-based Websites is a cheap way to ensure potential customers can find you easily.
• And finally, partner with a local PR firm. Often times, local PR firms will barter for free services. Investigate your local PR firms and see what kinds of deals you can make.

Starting with these simple tools will help you attract more potential customers and keep you thriving even in these tough economic times.

Sustainable PR - The Message, the Media and What Matters.

How do you tell a story today? Not just bits of news, scrabbled together quickly to get a story listed first on some website, but a real, thought-provoking, compelling and relevant news story. It’s not easy given the pressures companies feel to get notice and the media feel to stay competitive. I’ve been in PR for a long time. I’ve worked for great companies, good companies and companies I wish to forget. Five years ago, I started a PR firm called Connect2 Communications, Inc. because I felt there was a market opportunity to reconnect PR as an integral part of a company’s business and market objectives.

For what it’s worth (and that’s up to you the reader), below is a list of things a PR person must do when they work with their clients to help tell a story:

• Understand why the news is relevant to their target audience (note, the media is not part of the target audience)
• Appreciate the interest, constraints and style of each reporter that might be interested
• Understand that the media’s job is to write stories that connect to their readers so be prepared with information that provides background, context and additional, outside resources that can provide unbiased opinions
• Good stories can happen often but great stories require a relationship between the company and the reporter and that takes time, trust and access.

The truth is, not every story a client wants to tell is newsworthy. There are lots of releases we write that fall into that category and we never send them out to our press lists. But just because it’s not newsworthy, doesn’t mean it’s not an important part of the client’s overall story. For these types of stories (partnerships, hires, new facilities), we writes the releases a bit differently and leverage the various news wires to talk directly to readers.

Fundamentally, a client’s ability to tell a story, and a reporter’s ability to write, comes down to trust, respect, honesty and integrity. No one wins when one side, or the other, operates outside of these basics.

There is a lot being written this week about good PR/bad PR, etc., so I wanted to contribute a bit to the ongoing debate.

My two cents, more to come.