A lot has been written about how media relations as a discipline has been changed due to:
- the social media and consumer generated media explosion
- decline in trust in traditional media sources
- technology innovations like RSS, broadband video, and simple publishing
The next PR pros have to go beyond the story-pitching process of traditional media relations where the journalist is the gatekeeper that must be convinced of the relevance of the story. Big media or "Head-of-the-tail" media isn't going away any time soon. Yet it's influence is compromised by the new-media powerhouses and the ever-growing long tail of proam (professional and amateur) voices online.
"New Media Relations" is far more than mastering the Social Media Press Release, Blogs or Blogger Outreach. Essentially it includes three broad skills with a never-ending list of tactical implementations that follow.
The Three Skills of New Media Relations
1. A more organic & automatic ability to provide relevant value to any "media"
2. An ability to identify and engage new influencers who may not fit the profile of traditional influencers
3. An understanding of how technology and psychology impact people sharing information
Organic & Automatic Ability to Earn Media
Theoretically media relations has always required PR pros to offer their journalist counterparts something of value customized to teh needs of that journalist. They must "earn" the media, right? In the most valuable media realtions experts that is still how its done. When I hear Jane Mazur, Ogilvy media expert on the consumer side, talk about the producers at the Today show, I know she is thinking long and hard about who they are, what they value and how she can make their jobs a little easier. But the first wave of technology - wire services - actually undermined these best practices by making it easy to broadcast a standard "pitch" to dozens or hundreds of journalists.
Now individual relevance is critical again. If you broadcast a press release - either by wire services or by more intrusive emailing - you run the risk of ending up on the Bad Pitch Blog.
We need to go back and recommit to the practice of knowing who we are pitching to (and maybe not "pitching" at all) and what they will find valuable. That discipline of what is noteworthy, shareable and newsworthy has to be championed by the PR pro back in the discussion of the client's business goals and strategy. Sometimes that has to change to become of genuine interest and value to new and old media.
I say "organic" to mean that it should be built into our process of earning media. "Automatic" means that is where we start - define the value to the indivividual media contact whether they are journalist at long-lead publication or an enthusiast blogger.
Engage New Influencers
It's one thing to pitch a story to Cheryl Kramer Kaye at Redbook, still another to reach out to The Budget Fashionista (part of the Glam Network) and still another to reach out to a less well known blogger like Mai at fashioni.st (still one of my favorite street fashion spotter)
The two big differences implicit in these three comparisons:
- Earning media from even the head of the tail bloggers like Kathryn Finney at Budget Fashionista requires slightly nuanced skills than traditional media outreach. Who is a trained journalist, who is not? I actually think that distinction has become more and more moot. How can you earn media from them? What will they value? (get our Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics here)
- To even find Mai (and other long tail creators) and determine that she might be influential and helpful for a client, you need to understand how to find and assess influence amidst social media - social networks, blogs, message boards, review sites, etc... We can no longer look at the scarcity implicit in the Barnes and Noble magazine rack (as many titles as there in that rack, it is nothing compared to the Internet), or the cable channel line-up to know who is infuential in a long tail world. Knowing what is important to Mai requires morre research and honest relationship-building than you may think worthwhile.
Technology and Psychology and Sharing
Earned media in 2009 is as much about activating word of mouth as it is about getting coverage in popular media brands - new and old. What is word of mouth but earned consumer generated media? How do bookmark services like del.icio.us and mixx.com work? Under what circumstances will a user "send this to a friend?" What type of incentive do people need to pass something along? Is social capital enough? (revisit the book, Influence: Science and Practice. I am using it in my graduate class at Johns Hopkins this September) In this day and age of Google search results, what is the best configuration of a corporate online media room to be of-servce to journalists?
We want to promote word of mouth sharing and making "news' as frictionless as possible for journalists to pass on. Knowing how social technologies like tagging, RSS, embedding and forwarding work are critical to getting the most out of shareability.
Every online "press" room must now be an online "media" room serving the needs of the traditional journalist, the new media creator and the general public. They must feature the facts, hold back on the unsubstantiated claims (aka the spin) and make it easy for visitors to share the story, the pictures and videos, and access third-party content on the subject. The Social Media Press Release was born from the same intent - how can we give media - new and old - valuable elements to help them tell a story that is important to them. They have been misunderstood, misused ever since their introduction. Still a version of a new media release that satisfies the original intent will become standard-operating-procedure.
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