This is the biggest misconception people have when launching a PR or media relations campaign. It's common even among seasoned marketers.
But it's the truth.
Here's a tip: Journalists are not sitting around waiting to regurgitate what they’re sent by PR people. They are not parrots.
We were reminded about this we saw this Tweet linking to The Walking Deadline from Billy Brown, a journalist we work with fairly regularly.
Billy, like many journalists/bloggers/content creators/whatever you want to call them, is not a parrot. Also, Billy is not an idiot and can think for himself. Why is this important to keep in mind?
If we put in the headline of a press release or subject line of an email “This Is A Game Changer!” or "This Is The Best Thing Ever!" then it better be a game-changer, or else Billy will think twice before looking at our pitch next time around. Keep in mind that we can send things to Billy that aren’t game-changers, but before we do, we better be able to explain why it’s worth his time or else we're going to sour the relationship.
Simple enough? You'd think so, but time and again PR people are asked to push things to media that either aren't newsworthy or so overstated that they turn off the intended media targets.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind when trying to forge relationships with journalists and what you need to do to ensure your efforts are deemed newsworthy.
For the most part, media outlets need make money: They accomplish this based on selling advertising in some shape or form, the rates for which are calculated from publication sales, website traffic, Nielsen ratings, headline clicks, etc. It’s the journalist’s job to create compelling stories, relevant to the media outlet’s specific audience, that will help with this.
What may be a good story to you and/or about your brand may not help with the point above. You need to consider that. And while your pitch doesn’t have to be a game-changer to secure coverage, you do need to explain what value it has to offer.
Personally, when looking to hire consultants for our partners, we’ve found that the best PR people are those that can secure coverage for the brands that aren’t the leaders in their space. Our overused phrase in this instance is that anyone can pitch an iPhone to the media. Everyone wants to cover the next iPhone.
Journalists are busy. They’re not waiting around for your news, regardless of their need to drive revenue for the media outlets they're working for. They’re most likely not going to drop what they’re doing unless what you’re offering is incredibly monumental in the total scope of their relevant news world. And the more time you can give them, the better.
Even that Instagram personality with 100k that you so desperately want to feature your brand using a VSCO picture may work days, if not weeks in advance. Local media have their own deadlines, as do journalists who write for magazines and websites.
Everyone is your competition for media coverage. Every brand, regardless of newsworthiness, if they're engaging in PR, they're potentially blocking you from securing media coverage.
Journalists have their own coverage areas and interests. This gets overlooked often. Some will cover a range of topics, others not so much. Some just don't like certain brands. It happens. A finance reporter at one publication may cover everything from credit cards to mortgages, but at another media outlet, those topics could be spread across multiple reporters. This leads us to our next point...
You need to go to the right person at the right publication with the right pitch. At your own company, you don’t drop off a creative brief for a new logo design with the accounting department, do you? Sure, they may pass it onto the right people, but why would you ask them to do that? They’re busy handling accounting related tasks and your request, in addition to being annoying, may cause them to think twice about getting back to you in the future.
Send your news at the right time. We can't stress that enough. This is going to vary by what sort of media you're targeting, but again, Billy and others like him aren't just waiting by their laptops for emails from their favorite PR people every minute of the day.
We'll close with this because potential clients often ask about media lists and networks.
Relationships matter, but the story being pitched is more important.
Remedy has developed some incredible relationships and in our network of colleagues, it's fairly easy to connect to journalists we've never worked with before. The same goes for many other PR consultants and firms and a lot of them will agree that the relationship won’t matter if we don’t follow some simple points outlined above.
If you want to secure editorial coverage for your brand, you need to look at it from the reporter’s perspective and go from there. Give them a relevant story for their coverage area(s), presented in a way they want to see it and with time to consider it.
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Should You Buy Followers On Instagram?
The answer really goes back to your views on advertising and how you measure success. Does being the biggest make you the best? Or is there more to it?
Long before social media and the World Wide Web were so dominant, print media was a major component in many brands’ marketing budgets. And much like Super Bowl ads, an ad in a national publication, such as USA Today, would guarantee you a lot of eyeballs.
Or would it?
We hear from colleagues all the time that “advertising does nothing” for their brand. While we thoroughly disagree with that (usually it’s bad advertising that’s to blame, or the lack of time/energy/ability it takes to measure awareness and results), we understand where they’re coming from. They bought an ad, people supposedly saw it and nothing happened.
How many times have you left your hotel room and even looked at the free paper left there?
We are not criticizing USA Today, but we’re bringing this up to set the stage for our point that metrics such as circulation maybe aren’t always as valuable as things such as engagement or particular demographic information.
Here’s an example we can call upon from our own experience with PR and editorial.
In April we a financial client in the New York Times on some changes that were going to happen that would affect home buyers. Big news and a great piece. Did that correlate to more phone calls for the client? Hard to say, there wasn’t a real call to action there since the changes are months away. But people saw it, we’re sure of that. How many? No idea.
Back in January, the same client was also featured in a regional newspaper for another, a more consumer oriented story, in a newspaper about five times smaller than the New York Times. About two months later, a regional associate in that market received a phone call from a customer regarding a very large deal.
By no means are we saying we should never call the Times again to pitch a story, but it’s interesting to see what measurably moved the needle for the client. Keep“measurably” in mind.
Ok, back to Instagram. Should you buy followers? It really depends on your goals.
On social media, there’s followers and then there’s engaged followers.
Eyeballs are nice, but eyeballs that care about your brand and are incentivized to act nicer.
Many marketing departments judge success based on impressions. Buying an ad in USA Today, while more expensive than a regional newspaper, will probably get you more impressions to show to the higher ups. That doesn’t necessarily correlate to actions, awareness and what most brands really want… sales.
Buying followers on Instagram can make your brand look more popular than it is and as a result cause others to consider it to be somewhat important, which may cause others to follow and hopefully, engage with you.
However, we have to strongly recommend judging the success of a social media campaign strictly on the growth of followers alone. If that’s your criteria for judging success, then you’re driving down the wrong street.
What’s the best way to grow your presence on social media? Advertising can help you get fans (again, advertising works, if it’s the right kind), but above all, you need to have great content that people actually want to engage with and share with their network.
All it takes is strategic thinking and typically, a great deal of effort. This is why companies have social media managers with decades+ years of experience in strategic marketing and, unfortunately, why sometimes our proposals for social media programs are as much or more than in fee than our traditional PR proposals.
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Ever wonder why you sent out a press release and nothing happened?
Public relations is more than knowing the right people and having a list to email press releases to. Of course, it helps if you have relationships, and the team here has them with a variety of outlets, from the local San Diego media to people at the Wall Street Journal, the real estate trades, defense industry publications, the green world and action sports magazines (just to name drop a few ;-).
However, for many journalists, press releases are a quarter-step above SPAM. And some probably consider them a few steps below. Here are some things to consider before you start writing your next release.
Let’s start with what you’re sending and who you're sending it to.
We’ll assume here that you’re sending a press release to garner editorial coverage somewhere and not for SEO related purposes (if it is for SEO, use a newswire, instead of spamming our busy journalist friends).
Look at the publication you're going to. Is what you're sending something they would cover? Despite appearances, it takes more than a pretty face to land you editorial in a publication such as Maxim. And your zip code alone doesn't warrant coverage in Riviera San Diego. Make sure what' you're sending is relevant. Look at the outlet and see where your story would fit.
Next, make sure you're sending it to the right person. Journalists at different media outlets have different jobs, similar to other companies. Your IT person probably doesn't handle the landscaping, so don't send a press release on a new product launch to someone you know covers financials for the same industry. They may appreciate being kept in the loop, but at the end of the day, they probably won't write about it. Target your releases for the right person at each publication.
Keep it relevant and realistic.
Let’s say that your story (not press release) is newsworthy. Is your release readable, or is it filled with jargon, fluff and poor writing? Is it paradigm shifting for Web 5.0? Does it have typos like this blog post?
The release – in a formal sense – should have all the facts and stats a journalist may need to begin crafting a story. But personalize it with a pitch (more on that below) and explain how this is right for their audience.
If you do have some news, now you have to find the right people it’s appropriate for. Generally speaking, it’s “your list”.
This was touched on earlier, but it's extremely important in your PR efforts. Before you send something out, think about if it’s appropriate for the people you’re sending it to? The “PR blast” is a tool that needs to go away… it annoys journalists more than it helps. In fact, get rid of the list. Target your press releases with a quick elevator-style pitch – or as some people call it – Tweeting (we’re joking here… kind of). Put a 3-10 line description – keep it brief and relevant. If your elevator pitch (or Tweet) sells the story, then the journalist will turn to the release for more.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a PR newbie or have friends throughout the world of journalism, if your story isn’t appropriate, they’re not going to write about it.
When it comes down to “the list”, realize that if your story is appropriate, it won’t really matter if you know the right contacts or not. You can find them. Walt Mossberg and the folks @ Cnet will cover your new MP3 player if it indeed does redefine the listening experience for lifestyle consumers with unique audio needs.
In all seriousness (and perhaps as a better example), the Remedy team did a project involving accessories for firearms enthusiasts. We had very little background in firearms prior to this. None of us own guns and have limited experience using them. That didn’t matter to the client. We know how to write, how to find the right journalists and how to engage them. And we didn’t mass blast to journalists. By not blasting them with releases that are irrelevant is one way we maintain that friendships we have. By targeting the right people with the releases is another way we build them.
When are you sending your news?
Here’s a secret… journalists are people too. They have deadlines and things going on at work besides waiting for story ideas to come in. Sometimes they work weekends, but many try to have what some refer to as “a life” outside of work too.
So when are you sending your pitch and press release? Here’s a general tip – don’t email it over the weekend or at 4:30 on a Friday unless you want it to get ignored. Depending on if you’re targeting print publications (daily, weekly or otherwise), online or TV/radio, you really need to adjust accordingly as well. Don’t just blast out the release to everyone you know.
Follow-up!!!
PR is similar to sales in that you have to sell your story to the journalist. Many don't want to be called, but if you have something worthwhile you think they'd really be into (again, if you don't, why are you sending out a release in the first place?), you need to follow-up. On the phone.
Putting together a PR program doesn’t require an advanced degree in media relations (although Bill does have an advanced certificate in social media)… most people we know in the industry actually didn’t even study PR in college. But there is some strategy and thought that you need to have if you want to get your stories covered. Just spend some time and think about it before you hit the send button… and maybe don’t hit that button at all.
This isn't necessarily a recent placement, but as we were budgeting potential trade show support for a client, we thought it was worth posting.
If you're going to spend the resources on a trade show, you should make the most of them, including devoting some time to booking media appointments (or at least letting the media know you'll be there).
In late June, our friends at Datron took their Scout (an unmanned aerial reconnaissance system) to the Paris Air Show. We weren't able to attend, but that doesn't mean we couldn't coordinate media remotely, including a CNN piece that delivered some great results in both impressions, but more importantly, interest from potential buyers.
More than 2,000 companies exhibited, but with a little (ok, a lot) of effort remotely - pun intended!) and some strong pitching were able to help Datron maximize their presence at the Paris show, all the way from our home base in San Diego.
Why do some PR people continue to blast out their releases to everyone in their network?
We recently received another “press release” from a brand today. We’re not sure why. We’re not a media outlet. In fact, the release was from a competitor of one of our clients! Thanks for the heads up on what you’re doing ;-).
We fully realize why brands keep PR in-house. Sometimes it’s budget, often it's because a company doesn’t see the value of a dedicated team (in-house our outside help) and believes it’s ‘easy’, since the hard costs in terms of tools include a word processing program, email and phone, along with the ability to write.
And sometimes, those mass-blast emails do bring results. Great results? Not really, but they do bring results for little investment.
Regardless, PR is not easy. You may be able to get a few hits by leveraging your network or the simple mass-blast. Heck, because of the great work we did for some clients in the past, we know journalists continue to go back to those brands for news on their own, regardless of if we’re working with them any longer. That says a lot.
But to really put together a great, results driven, strategic campaign takes some work. Megan Michelson, someone we’ve worked with more than a few times in the outdoor landscape (in addition to being an all around nice person too), made a Tumblr post a while back offering some tips for PR people. Here are some highlights and our thoughts from Megan's post:
Totally agree. Story pitching in PR is a little like dating. No response often means not interested.
Mental note: mass PR blasts do not = exclusives. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of doing an exclusive, but when you do, it can help really get that top tier coverage.
Keep it personal. It may take longer to do this than the mass-blast BCC email, but a little extra effort can go a long way.
Look at the magazine/website/tv show before that email goes out or you grab the phone. You wouldn't buy a boat trailer to haul your dirt bike... make sure the media you're sending info to is the appropriate media for your pitch!
Some of our favorite portfolio pieces involve the people behind the brands. Those sort of stories take real effort, but they're worth it (and many times, our friends in the media, like Megan alludes to, enjoy working on them as well).
While the team at Remedy Communications (http://www.remedycomm.com) is good (we won't go so far as to drop such over-used terms as "pr gurus," "social media experts" or "media mavens," although... we're not too bad and we've been called those things before), we'll acknowledge that we make mistakes too (including typos in the Remedy Communicationsblog) and sometimes don't follow all of the rules Megan has put out there. Sometimes we don't have a choice, sometimes... well, stuff happens. But regardless, this is solid, strong advice for anyone who is taking on a PR role.
Like this post? Please share it by clicking the LinkedIn icon below! Wondering if your PR program is working? Drop us a line at PRcheckup@remedypr.com.
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How many times have you left your hotel room and even looked at the free paper left there?
Why do some PR people continue to blast out their releases to everyone in their network? 
