Once upon a time, there wasn’t really another way to do things.  Back in the day (wow .. I really sound old) you actually used a fax machine to send the release, but other than that the tactic was the same.    You blasted it out, started making phone calls, and hoped for the best.  These days, however, we have alternatives to bludgeoning the media with releases.  Here’s a look at the list of suggestions from the PR Princess:

• Pitch email (sending a customized email rather than just the release)
• Make a website posting (preferably a blog post)
• Send a Tweet
• Send a Facebook message
• Pick up a phone (call the reporter rather than just sending the release)
• Offer to meet the reporter in person

While I consider one of these a dead or dying PR tactic, I’m in favor of anything that teaches public relations people strategies to avoid creating the news release spam that journalists complain about so frequently.

I’d like to add a few more suggestions to the list:

• You can re-purpose these releases as part of a monthly e-newsletter to your clients and employees.  It will let them know what you’re up to.
• Create a custom Facebook landing page (new service EndGame PR is now offering — look for an announcement soon) and list releases there, along with special offers for Facebook “fans”.
• Post on a news release distribution service, and be sure to include a link back to your (or your client’s) website.  It’s a great way to spread your release around the web, and it’s good for SEO too.

It’s good to be a PR person in our social media age!

But, what happens when the media weakens, and there aren’t enough reporters to cover even the most fascinating stories?

I happened upon two different articles this week that say essentially what I’ve been saying for some time — the answer is to create your OWN media.  Blogging, podcasting, web videos, online news release distribution, Tweeting, and Facebooking all can take your message to your customers in an unfiltered way.

From Advertising Age:

As the body count of magazines and daily newspapers continues to rise and the once-robust news and feature holes of surviving publications shrink along with reporting staffs, some marketers have given up on the traditional path to media coverage: pitching journalists. According to the website Paper Cuts, which tracks layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers, nearly 30,000 reporters have left the industry since the beginning of 2008. So instead of pitching their stories to reporters, a growing number of marketers are directly engaging consumers through original content they and their agencies are creating.

This bleak picture of the media industry is one that I see on a regular basis.  I still do quite a bit of traditional media pitching, in addition to the social media PR tasks that I perform for clients.  While I still have success with my client media pitches, there simply aren’t the same number of opportunities for media placement as there were for PR professionals ten years ago.  The answer is to add to the value of your announcement/story/new product/etc. by utilizing social media tools.

More on the topic comes from Newsvetter, which says the death of the newspaper beat system is a huge opportunity for PR pros to become the experts that reporters so desperately need.  I’ve lived the issues that this article brings up as well.  At medium to large newspapers, there used to be one reporter in charge of health, another in charge of technology, and so on.  Now, one reporter might be in charge of health AND technology AND food AND any number of other things.  Even worse, reporters might be assigned to stories based completely on availability, not on knowledge of a topic.  One suggestion from Newsvetter to make yourself the expert that reporters can rely upon is to utilize corporate blogging:

Minimize the use of the dreaded press release and focus instead on developing your own corporate news channel that distributes information via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, or some other platform that you control. This will get your information to both consumers and the media.

Solid recommendation.

One thing to bear in mind in this new world of PR is that you can’t ignore the traditional media any more than you can ignore the new social media channels.  The old media is not dead, and I don’t think they’ll ever completely die.  I’m not ready to write their obituary and chisel their headstone, despite the attempt at an amusing picture at the top of this blog post.  The world is changing, however, and PR professionals who want to be successful need to change with it.

From the PR 2.0 Blog: Reviving the Traditional Press Release

As I got over that thought, I started pondering all of the ways that PR has changed since I started in the industry.  This pondering led to my post last week, 10 Dead or Dying PR Tactics, about common PR tactics we practiced 10 years ago that aren’t practiced anymore.  I decided to write this sequel on common tactics practiced today that weren’t even thought of 10 years ago.  If the tactics I wrote about last week are dinosaurs, these are newborns!

Please add your own suggestions in comments!

10 Newborn PR Tactics

10) Reputation Monitoring: I understand this isn’t an entirely new tactic, but who could have imagined the WAY we’re monitoring reputations today?
10 Years Ago: In existence, but in a different form

9) Corporate Web Videos:10 years ago we sent out Beta tapes or booked satellite time to deliver client video and video news releases to journalists. Today, we create YouTube channels and make our video clips available for download in HD format from corporate websites.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent, but corporate video was available in a different form

8) Corporate Podcasting: As mentioned above, the Internet has simply changed the way we deliver our content.  10 years ago, I was known as one of the early practitioners of the simple nationwide Audio News Release (ANRs … also called Radio News Releases or RNRs).  I recorded interviews with clients through the phone, cut the audio into soundbites using a simple digital editor, and made those soundbites available through a voicemail line.  The audio quality was so-so due to the layers of telephone sound.  Today, you can record high quality sound in your office and easily make it available via the web to whoever wants it.  Much more efficient than a voicemail line!
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent, but corporate audio was available in a different form

7) Viral Marketing: Who doesn’t want their company or client content to go viral?  Getting an article, blog post, web video or whatever to spread on its own through social media sites or email is a dream!  10 years ago it WAS in existence.  It was called “word of mouth” advertising, and it’s been around since we’ve been able to talk.  The web got involved later, and changed it forever.  Per Wikipedia, the term was coined in the late 1990s and was used to describe Hotmail’s practice of appending advertisements to the end of free email accounts.  The tactic wasn’t, to my knowledge, used by any significant number of PR pros until much, much later.
10 Years Ago: Gestating

6) Corporate Blogging: For years, we’ve wanted reporters and influencers to know our executives  personally.  Ten years ago, we took those bosses or clients on meet-and-greet tours with reporters.  That’s still a valid strategy, if you can find reporters who have time for it.  Another way to achieve this goal is to launch an executive blog.  That’s just one of the myriad of uses for corporate blogging.  Others include link building and SEO, news release distribution, and as a home for podcasts and web videos.  Per Wikipedia, the term “weblog” was coined in 1997, and was first shortened to “blog” in 1999.  Corporate blogs really didn’t start to explode until a few years ago.
10 Years Ago: Gestating

5) Blogger Relations: Once there were enough bloggers out there writing about enough topics, and enough people were reading them, we PR people started to realize that … OMG, WE NEED TO PITCH BLOGGERS!  From what I can see, there’s not much rejoicing going on among bloggers about that realization.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

4) Web Design: Sure … websites existed in 1999.  I started my first web business in 1998, and I certainly wasn’t the first one.  However, I agree with Sara Evans’ recent blog post that today’s PR pros need to have at least a basic knowledge of HTML code.  Optimizing and even simply improving the look of our postings, whether they’re on a blog, Facebook, or on a news release distribution site, is part of our job now.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent, at least as a PR tool

3) SEO PR, or PR for Search Engine Optimization: Keyword optimization has been around as long as the Yellow Pages.  Ever wonder why company names like AAA Auto Repair were chosen?  Yup … it was so they’d be at the front of the book.  SEO, meanwhile, came into being in the mid-1990s, as businesses tried to get to the top of Excite, Yahoo, and Lycos.  Using tactics like online news release distribution and keyword optimization of news releases, PR pros got into the act a handful of years ago.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

2) Social Media News Releases: There’s still a lot of discussion going on about whether this is the best format for a release.  I’m on the side that believes the old narrative format can still be used, while at the same time using some of the elements of a social media release.  Essentially, when I write a formal news release (something I’m doing less and less) I use a hybrid, which you can check on on my news release page.  However, whether you’re a practitioner of the social media release or not, I think we can all agree that this was not a tactic we were using 10 years ago.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

1) Social Media … anything: You can’t get away from the phrase “social media” these days.  Hard to believe it didn’t exist in any significant form 10 years ago.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

Honorary Mention:
Online News Release Distribution: I left this out because it’s a tool for SEO PR, but it can be used for non-SEO purposes as well.  PR Newswire has been posting its releases online for a while, but it wasn’t until the RSS feed gained wide use a few years ago that those releases could easily spread around the Internet … which is at least half of the point of posting an online news release!

Note: I’m sure there are some PR pros out there who were using some of these tactics 10 years ago.  If you have, then kudos to you … you were ahead of the curve!

So, at the risk of sounding incredibly old, I present:

10 Dead or Dying PR Tactics:

10) Newspaper-based Media Relations Strategy
Newspapers are dying. Circulation is down. You can’t wrap your media relations strategy solely around trying to get print coverage anymore.
Status: Alive, but poor strategy

9) Deskside Reporter Meetings
These are the sit-down meetings where you get to know reporters and/or pitch them in person.  My friend and former boss Jon Newman recently wrote about desksides, saying they’re dying.  I agree.  In a “former life” I flew from Richmond, VA to New York City on a semi-frequent basis for these meetings.  Now, reporters (particularly the print ones) are ridiculously overtaxed and even more jaded than I remember.  You will occasionally find journalists who appreciate the face-to-face time, but there aren’t many left.
Status: Hard to find

8) Media packets
I would put this tactic in the “nearly dead” category.  You still see plenty of them.  Just one man’s opinion, but I don’t consider glossy packets a good use of money for most organizations.  I’d sooner build a micro-website or even a Facebook page.
Status: Alive, but IMHO a waste of money

7) Video news releases (VNRs)
These are still around, but they’re not nearly as popular as they were 10 years ago.  The Bush Administration essentially killed this tactic.
Status: Alive, but hard to get results

6) Audio news releases (ANRs)
This tactic, which I actually promoted as a service when EndGame PR was first founded, was always the less popular younger sister of VNRs.  While I’m not aware of the Bush Administration getting in trouble for ANRs, they basically died at the same time as VNRs.  They’ve been replaced somewhat by podcasts or web audio soundbites used in social media news releases, but you can still find stations that are willing to accept them.
Status: See #7

5) Media Map
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this tool, it was a server-based media directory.  It was horrendously expensive compared to today’s web-based directories.  I recall the president of the firm where I worked being elated when I discovered we could save about $40,000 every year by switching to the web-based Bacon’s Mediasource.  Oh yeah … I got some major brownie points that week!
Status: Replaced

4) Blast faxing
Remember when we used to pay services to send our releases out to hundreds or even thousands of news outlets?  Who faxes anymore?  I have a fax machine.  I rarely use it.
Status: Replaced

3) Mailed Newsletters
These used to be very popular, but have been replaced by email newsletters that should be backed up by a blog. You’ll likely see a trend in this list. I consider anything that involves using snail mail to be outdated.
Status: Replaced

2) Bacon’s Media Guides
I’m not talking about the online media directories.  I’m talking about the paper media guides … the books.  I believe they’re still available in some format but, really, if I have to explain why the web-based versions are better then you need to take a course on the “Internets”.
Status: Dinosaur

1) Mailed Reporter Pitches
It’s hard to believe, but if you hunt through the “pitching preferences” in the media guides (the web-based ones of course) you’ll still find some reporters who say they prefer mailed pitches. This is another way of saying, “Don’t pitch me”. However, there was a time before email was widespread when it was a legitimate way to pitch.
Status: Doornail, as in “dead as a”

Honorable Mention: Peter Shankman claims the news release itself is dead, or will be soon, with the exception of financial releases.  I disagree.  I believe the release is still alive and well, but is in a different form than it was 10 years ago.  I believe online distribution has saved the release from becoming a dinosaur.  We’ll give it a couple of years and see who is right!

Note: Plenty of people DO still use some of the above tactics.  I’m not writing this list to offend anyone.  If you’re successful … I’m not judging!

Be sure to read the follow up to this post: 10 Newborn PR Tactics!

PerezHilton.com is a wildly popular celebrity gossip blog that recently started posting about what it calls “worthwhile causes” every week or so. My client, Fight SMA, is an international organization working to find a cure for Spinal Muscular Atrophy, the leading genetic killer of children under two. On Monday, May 26, taking an email suggestion from a public affairs person at the organization, Perez Hilton decided to include Fight SMA on its worthwhile causes list. They (he?) posted a link to the fightsma.org website, a description of the disease, a call to donate, and a YouTube video about a child and family dealing with the disease.

Here’s a look at what the one blog mention did for Fight SMA:

• At the time that Perez posted about Fight SMA, the video had less than 1,000 YouTube views. As I’m posting this, a few days after the PerezHilton.com mention, the video has about 30,000 views.
• On Monday, the number of visitors to the site was higher than the average weekend or holiday (Monday was a U.S. holiday) by a factor of eight or nine.
• According to the person at Fight SMA in charge of donations, they’ve definitely seen an uptick in people giving money.

Could a single mention in a mainstream print publication have gotten these results? I think it’s unlikely. The reason for this is twofold. First, the video posted on PerezHilton.com was extremely powerful. I’m pretty proud of it because I assisted with the editing of the piece. Several commenters on Perez’s site said they were moved to tears. It’s difficult to get that kind of reaction from mere still pictures or words.

The second reason this blog hit did more for Fight SMA than a print hit would have is the ability to immediately act to learn more. If you’re reading a magazine story that mentions a website, you have to get up and go to your computer to visit the site. Even worse, if you’re not near your computer you have to REMEMBER to check it out later! If you’re reading a blog post, however, you simply click a link … and you’re there.

This is a remarkable illustration of the power of blogger relations, and why it’s a strategy that shouldn’t be ignored when trying to promote your organization or yourself. Additionally, it shows that if you dig a little bit you can at times find very unconventional places to try to get your mentions. Who would have thought a celebrity gossip site would talk about a neuromuscular disease?

To view the video that everyone is talking about, please visit FightSMA.org (as I’m typing this, the video is on the front page of the site), or view it on YouTube.

Coming up in the next couple of weeks they have several opportunities for webinars for both new users and advanced users. If you’ve been thinking of using online distribution, they have a course for new users. If you use online distribution frequently, they have a webinar for advanced users could teach you something new.

Check out the schedule here.

Podcasting News has news today of a new report from Nielsen on Internet video habits. The report reveals significant gender differences in Internet video viewing. Apparently, men like it short and sweet (think YouTube), while women like to take their time and enjoy longer shows (like what’s on TV network sites). This is significant because it could affect how businesses produce content, and how websites create link bait. If they are targeting men, they should create short viral style videos. For women, they need to make the information more comprehensive.

Read the rest of the article here.

Listen to the episode by heading over to the Startup BizCast blog, subscribing via iTunes, or by downloading the mp3 file directly. You can also click the button in the sidebar of this blog that says “listen now” to launch a podcast player.

So, what are the tips? Here’s a preview:

1. Prepare in advance
2. Don’t use jargon
3. Be aware of time
4. Speak in the right direction
5. Bring a prop
6. You’re always being interviewed
7. Wear dark colors
8. Don’t leave until you’re excused
9. Record and review later
10. SMILE!

Give it a listen for more details, and feel free to leave feedback via the Startup BizCast blog or, even better, by calling the Startup BizCast voicemail hotline at (206) 984-0860.

Here’s a link to the site: Post your releases here.

Be sure to check back and let me know what you think of it!

Site note — Arun also says he’s working on a contest to help promote the site, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!

From today’s news release:

“As the explosive growth of video sharing sites demonstrates, organizations of all sizes are using video content as a way to tell their story,” said Bill Wagner, Chief Marketing Officer of Vocus, Inc. “Feature Video allows PRWeb customers to embed videos directly in their news release, providing a true multimedia experience for their news and increasing the video’s visibility on the web.”

The Internet continues to change the way companies promote themselves (or how their PR firm does it for them). This is an obvious statement, I know, but it really is amazing how things have changed in such a short amount of time. It wasn’t that long ago that faxing was the primary delivery system for news releases.

It’s nothing new to find bloggers, whether intentionally or unintentionally, hogging the top of the rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. What is new, however, is that companies large and small are entering the blogosphere in droves, hoping to create that success for themselves.

“One of the biggest reasons blogs are at the top of the search rankings is that they are rich in keywords,” said Laurie Baldwin, CEO of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm NetBaldwin. “Search engines create their rankings in part by looking at the words on a site and how often the words are repeated. They use those words to determine what the site is about, where it should be ranked, and what terms a search engine user must type in to find the site. A standard website’s text can only include the basic keywords, but the longer form prose used in a blog will ensure that less obvious combinations are covered.”

Baldwin cautions that all of that blogging time is wasted if it’s not done properly. She has provided a number of tips on how to create a successful corporate blog,

Update, update, and update again
·Search engines rank frequently updated sites higher than stale ones. Baldwin suggests updating as much as twice a week or even more. Aside from the search engine ranking benefits, frequent updates can turn users into frequent visitors or even customers.

Stay on target
·Whether you write your own corporate blog or you have someone internally or externally do it for you, be sure that what is written relates to your business. An anecdote about Uncle Benny’s hernia operation might be interesting, but unless your business has to do with hernias or operations, it won’t help you with the search engines!

Offer real content
·The best content is articles about your industry or tips and tricks for novices. Don’t be concerned about people not coming to you for business if you give away too much information. By giving them usable information, you’ll be demonstrating that you’re an expert in your field.

Free isn’t necessarily a good deal
·Websites that offer blogging as a free service are great, but they’re not going to help your company’s search engine ranking very much. Baldwin recommends using a package such as MyST Blogsite™ (Editor’s note: WordPress works great too) that resides on the same web server as your website. Using this strategy, the search engines will consider your blog part of your site and rank it accordingly. If it resides elsewhere, it’s considered a separate site.

These days I would add at least one additional tip:

Make sure your blog is optimized and marketed
If no one can find your blog, no one will read it except perhaps your Aunt Hilda. To ensure your hard work pays off, be sure to do the necessary SEO work to optimize your site, and market it on the many social bookmarking sites out there today (such as Digg, Del.icio.us, and Technorati). It’s time-consuming work, but it pays off. If you don’t have time, hire someone like me to help you!

Feel free to add your own tips, via the comment form. If you’re a member of the media and want to interview Laurie or I on this topic, feel free to email me.

Unfortunately the problem with pitching stories to radio outlets is that there just aren’t that many places to pitch anymore. It wasn’t that long ago that any decent sized city had at least two radio stations with news departments. Now you’re lucky if there’s one decent radio news operation in your area. Locally produced talk shows are also going the “way of the wind,” with the big boys like Clear Channel syndicating more and more content.

So … how on earth can you get your PR message out via radio? Personally, I think the answer is an audio news release, or ANR.

If you’re a PR professional, you’ve probably heard of Video News Releases, or VNRs. They’re fully produced news stories that are offered to TV news operations for use during newscasts. ANRs are exactly the same thing, except that they’re for radio.

I started producing ANRs almost immediately after I made the leap out of radio news and into PR in 1999. I recognized that there were a LOT of radio news departments like the one that I managed at WVNZ, All News 990 in Richmond (now an easy listening station with different call letters .. ugh.) It seems like every one of them these days is understaffed and overworked. As a result, many would be open to using “canned” content like an ANR. I found a way to produce the pieces using a cassette recorder and a digital editor on my desktop computer, and have been perfecting the system ever since.

So how does it work? Well, the first thing I do is interview a spokesperson for my client on whatever topic we’re trying to push. Then, I pull a soundbite or two from the interview and record a “reporter” track. To hear the final product, click HERE to listen to an ANR produced while I worked in Circuit City’s PR department. Yes, that’s my voice.

Once the piece is produced, it’s ready for distribution. Currently there are three ways I know to do this:

1) Talk Show Placement: I have connections with a national weekly talk show that has about 1.5 million listeners per program. The ANR can be placed in the show as a feature. The benefit here is that the ANR doesn’t have to be completely newsworthy, and there’s no chance of the content being edited by a news director or reporter.

2) Pitching to news operations: If the ANR is newsworthy, it can be pitched directly to radio news operations for use in their newscasts. The benefit here is that, if successful, the listener numbers can be quite large. I produced an ANR in the fall of 2005 that was pitched this way, and garnered 13 million impressions.

3) Podcasts: This is a rather new idea. Podcasts got their name because they were originally audio recordings meant for iPods. These days, it’s a generic term used for an audio piece offered online for people to listen to on their computers or digital audio players. It can be a minute or much longer. Some are fully produced talk shows. The basic production is the same with a podcast as with an ANR, although the podcast format allows the flexibility to be a litle more creative.

The ANR tactic isn’t for everyone. It’s a little more expensive than just writing a news release and pitching it around town. However, compared to its VNR cousin, it’s very affordable. VNRs can cost $10,000 to $15,000 to produce. ANRs, meanwhile, can cost as little as $3,000 for one distributed by talk show or pitched to radio stations. That includes production, distribution, and a final report. The price is even less to produce a piece designed solely to be a podcast. Email me if you’re interested in a price sheet.

This blog entry probably sounds like a commercial. Well, in a way it is and I’ll be happy if it leads to ANR business for me because I enjoy producing them. Aside from that, though, it’s information about a way to target a medium that’s usually ignored by PR professionals because they don’t know what to do.

Now, I didn’t actually start out in public relations. I spent the first seven years of my post college life in radio and television news. That work gave me the experience I needed to jump into a media relations job at a non-entry level. That said, here are the tips I usually give folks when they contact me:

*Do an internship: Unfortunately I don’t have the time capacity to be much help to an intern right now, although I hope to be able to be in the future. However, an internship with a corporate, government, or agency PR department is invaluable. Volunteer work for an organization that needs help with writing (any kind of writing) is also a great idea. Not only do you learn your trade, you make contacts. Unfortunately in public relations, as in many careers, it’s as much “who you know” as “what you know.”

*Put together a portfolio: In radio and TV, we asked for an air-check tape to show you weren’t just a pretty face. In PR, the equivalent is a portfolio. If you don’t have a resume full of PR experience, it’s good to have a stack of articles, releases, and other documents that show you can do the work.

*Buy a nice suit: This should be obvious, but to some folks it isn’t. A lot of college students don’t buy that “interview suit” for some reason, and either don’t dress appropriately for interviews or try to scrape something together on the evening before the interview. A lot of agencies these days allow their employees to walk around in shorts and flip-flops, but they still aren’t comfortable with their interviewees showing up that way.

*Know where to search for a job: There are entire books written on this subject. But, if you’re looking for a PR job there are a few key places to search. First, call all of the big and medium-sized agencies. I won’t mention the names of our local Richmond ones here because, well, they’re competitors, but do some research and learn who they are, then call them. You never know what a cold call will get you. Also, subscribe to Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com and set them up to send you all local PR jobs via the email. It’s easier than searching every day for the corporate jobs. Finally, if you’re in the Richmond, Virginia area (like I am) there are a LOT of entry level government PR jobs to be had. The best place to search for them is the state RECRUIT site, set up by the Virginia Employment Commission. All state jobs that are open to the public MUST be posted there. It’s easier than looking in the newspaper. A tip for state jobs that it took me a while to learn: When you see a salary range listed for a state job, the actual top end that’s available is likely somewhere in the middle of that range.

*If you’re still in school, join PRSSA: The PRSSA, or Public Relations Student Society of America is a great resource for learning your craft and making contacts.

*Visit your local PRSA meeting: Joining the Public Relations Society of America can be a bit expensive for your average recent college graduate. However, at least with our local chapter, you can visit their monthly meetings for only $30. That gets you lunch, a mess of networking opportunities, and usually some sort of lecture on a PR topic. It’s invaluable for a PR “newbie”.

*A little luck helps: As with anything, a bit of luck always helps. Being in the right place at the right time is key to any career. However, if you do all of your research and put yourself into the right place, good things are bound to happen.

Recently, I distributed a news release for my client, Shamin Hotels. It was about the company’s partnership with River’s Bend Golf Club on a golf package website. While we were hoping for news outlets to pick up the story and run with it (I did an email pitch to reporters, in the hopes that would happen) we weren’t really expecting it. However, we also weren’t expecting the response we got from the blogosphere. By writing a quality news release and posting it on a news release distribution site, you can get results these days. Most of the quality distribution services have their own RSS feeds (newsfeeds that bloggers use on their sites) and also have ways to get releases on other RSS feeds. Those RSS feeds were what helped us. If you go to Yahoo and do a search for “Shamin Hotels River’s Bend Golf Club” you’ll find SEVENTEEN PAGES full of links to sites that either posted the golf package release or linked to the version on the release distribution site! This is not only good for the visibility of my client, it’s also outstanding for their search engine ranking.

Is simply posting releases to release distribution sites going to replace strategic public relations practices like story crafting and cultivation of media contacts? Absolutely not. In fact, there are ways to pitch to the highest profile blogs that can get better results than just posting a release and walking away. However, the response you can get from a quality release, and knowing where to put it on the web, shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat!