Category — Marketing & public relations

I work in public relations and marketing, but spent about a decade as a journalist — newspaper reporter, newspaper editor and freelancer. As such, I have been on the receiving end of lots of story pitches from PR people. That’s experience I now put to work on behalf of clients.

Here are five ways to pretty much guarantee that you won’t get news coverage from the media.

1. Call or email when the journalist is on deadline. Unless you’ve got a huge breaking news story - like a giant corporate merger, for example - calling a journalists when they’re on deadline is a sure way to get rejected. A couple of tips for avoiding this:

• On phone calls, start by asking if the journalist has a minute or two. If he or she is on deadline, you’ll find out.
• Know the deadlines of the media you’re pitching. Morning newspapers are deadline in from mid-to-late afternoon. Weekly papers usually have one day where they’re on deadline. TV broadcasters have to hit deadlines for each of their daily broadcasts. Avoid these times.

2. React slowly. When a journalist does express interest, respond fast. Reporters have real deadlines that they must meet; if you don’t help them meet those deadlines by responding in a timely way, they’ll find someone else who will. And often, once that deadline has passed, your chance for coverage may have passed, too.

3. Contact the top editor or producer. Most of the time, the top editor or producer is not who you need to pitch to. Figure out who the beat reporter, assignment editor or bureau chief is who is most likely to be the one who will actually make a decision on whether your pitch is a story for the news outlet. For small news outlets, the top editor or news director may indeed be the right person to pitch, but for most outlets, it’s not.

4. Bait and switch. Imply something is available - previously unreleased financial data, a high profile interview subject - and, once a journalist has expressed interest in the story, tell that person that something isn’t available. Most journalists can and will walk away; once they go away, so does your chance for publicity.

5. Emphasize your publicity needs over the news outlet’s news values. Whether you agree with their approach or not, most news outlets are focused on certain news values - local interest, a particular kind of news (business, lifestyle, politics, etc.), timeliness, strong personalities in their stories. Since you need the news outlet’s cooperation to get the coverage you’re seeking, know the media’s needs and look for ways to meet those needs. These news values widely from outlet to outlet, so the pitch to The New York Times should be different than the pitch to a trade journal or a local TV station.

Of course not doing these things is no guarantee that you’ll get coverage. In the United States, at least, there are fewer journalists and more PR people than ever before, which means even with a well-crafted, on-target pitch, it’s still tough to get a response from busy news people. But I can guarantee you that avoiding these five bad practices will put you a step ahead of many publicists.

What are your top do’s and don’ts when pitching stories? Please share in the comments.

Yesterday I tweeted about Fast Company’s Buzz blog launching a service that allows people to vote story pitches up or down, similar to the way blog posts, stories and other items are voted up or down on Digg. This morning the launch was announced officially. Buzz blogger Francisco Dao wrote (in part):

Since Fast Company Buzz looks for companies that are breaking new ground and changing the game, I believe it’s only right that FC Buzz also looks to break new ground. The pitch portal taps into true social media by letting everyone vote and pitch on what should be covered.  All the pitches and votes are open to see, so just posting a story idea will get you exposure.

Traditionally pitching has been a one-on-one thing between the PR person doing the pitching and the journalist making the decision about whether to pursue the story. This changes the game.

First, it raises the bar for pitches. Put together a bad, off-target pitch for Fast Company Buzz and lots of other people will see it, so you don’t want to do anything that’s embarrassing. We’ve seen some bloggers publish some of the more embarrassingly bad pitches they receive, but now all the pitches to Buzz will be visible.

Second, I also wonder if it won’t lead to people trying to game the system. (Francisco, want to weigh in here? Are there systems in place to prevent gaming?)

What do you think? Will other media outlets or blogs start using a system like this to evaluate the interest readers have in different story pitches?

I’ve got a whole bunch of good links for your mid-week browsing. Here we go:

1. Blogging: Add TwitterCounter to your blog to display how many people are following you on Twitter. I’ve added it over on the left, under the “Connect to Me” section.

2. Marketing: Price vs. customer service, which is more important? MarketingSherpa has a great chart that shows that companies often care more about customer service than price from their vendors. Losing customers? Maybe your pricing isn’t the problem. Maybe you need to take a good long look at your customer service. By the way, think about the implications for blogs, which are free to readers: The quality of what you provide to your readers, how you treat them, and how responsive you are to any comments or emails they send you may well determine how loyal they are.

3. Social media: Angela Connor is the community manager at WRAL.com here in North Carolina. She’s got a really cool blog foused on managing online communities, an increasingly important topic. Check it out.

4. Online marketing: Chris Brogan takes a look at how we can define the spectrum of social media marketing efforts, from banner ads at one end to dialogue between businesses and their customers. This helps to frame the slippery question of what should we do if we want to use social media marketing.

5. Writing: Copyblogger has links to two free teleclasses on copywriting and marketing. Free — so go forth and learn.

6. Social media: The Caffeinated Blog has eight tips for using StumbledUpon effectively. By the way, I love this blog’s name and wish I had thought of it first. But the blogger, Kari Rippetoe, has great content and is worth subscribing to. (And you can Stumble this post if you like — there’s a link at the bottom to make it easy.)

7. Management and career: Jeremiah points out that when you hire someone, you also get their network, including their online network. That can pose challenges for businesses, but it also brings opportunities. This is not a new idea, and applies to offline networks as well as online networks. In The Tom Peters Seminar, Peters describes the modern corporation as a Rolodex (the book was published in ‘94, in the early days of the consumer Internet). The more experienced I get as a professional, the more I think that a greater and greater portion of my value as an employee comes from my existing network and my ability to nurture and grow that network. How are you working on your network?

8. Values: Christopher Penn reminds us that, to quote Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” What are you using your powers of marketing and communications for?

A couple of overdue posts:

• I am was one of guests on Bob Knorpp’s BeanCast podcast, where we discuss all things marketing. This week’s show included discussion of Lionsgate deal with Google to allow its content on YouTube, the InBev-Budweiser merger, data about the changing U.S. consumer, and more. Please check it out.
• Over at ProBlogger, Darren Rowse had a great idea, asking everyone to post their social media info (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) in the comments of a post to create a kind of social media directory of ProBlogger readers. As of this morning, the post had more than 400 members. Go add your information if you want to build your network — comments will close within the next 24 hours.

Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it? We’re all talking about social media. We’re all doing social media. Social media is supposed to be the next big thing. But what is it?

Marta Z. Kagan has a pretty much the best explanation I’ve seen:

(via Scott Monty)

So this is it, this is what I’ve been counting down to: The public launch of my new blog, MarkTzk.com.

I’ve been blogging, a little irregularly, and have had my own domain (www.thoughtsignals.com) for nearly eight years, but I felt it was time to try something a little more focused. I’m going to give thoughtsignals, which has always suffered from a lack of focus, a rest. I’ll write more about why I launched this blog, and what I hope to accomplish here, later. And if you’re reading this on thoughtsignals.com, where this has been cross-posted, I encourage you to go over to marktzk.com and subscribe to the RSS feed or to the daily email update.

Now, on to the contest. In the last couple of weeks as I’ve been counting down on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and thoughtsignals.com, I’ve been surprised by how much attention I’ve gotten. Coworkers, friends and acquaintances have all been guessing what I might be counting down to. (For the record, only Cameron Tew figured it out before today.) People guessed that maybe RLF was going to have a big announcement, or I was going to have a new child, or start my own business, or go skydiving (!), or more. Let me just say that all of you have much more creative, interesting ideas about my life than I do. Thank you. I’m honored.

But I also hope that no one feels let down by the fact that I’m launching a blog. I mean, c’mon, everybody and their mother has a blog.

So, to make this a little more interesting, I’m going to have a contest. You can participate. You could win. And if you do win, you’ll get a $50 Amazon gift card.

One of the topics this blog will focus on is the use of social media in marketing. So I’m looking for a short piece on that. Give me no more than 500 words (remember, longer is not necessarily better) in response to this:

“Social media (including blogging, wikis, social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) is better than, worse than or just different than traditional marketing and public relations techniques. Please provide examples, anecdotes, links, etc. to support your point.”

Here are the rules:

1. The total length (excluding the headline) must be 500 words or less. The title/headline doesn’t count toward the total word count.

2. The entry must be posted someplace online that’s publicly accessible — a blog, Facebook page, whatever — and must include a hyperlink back to this post: http://marktzk.com/launch-contest. (If you don’t have a place to post this, one option might be to create a Squidoo page.)

3. Please email the link to your entry to me at marktzk at gmail dot com, and put “MarkTzk.com contest” in the subject line. Your email must reach me by midnight this Friday, July 18.

4. Multiple submissions are fine, but each individual submission must follow these rules. If your entry is a blog posting, each one must be a separate post.

5. As I receive entries I will post the links to them here. So if you have a blog you should get some traffic out of this, too.

6. I reserve the right to disqualify entries that are pornographic, contain hate speech or are otherwise objectionable. (Hey, I believe in free speech, but it’s my contest.)

7. The winner will be announced in one week, next Monday morning, July 25.

Got it? If you have questions, leave them in the comments or shoot me an email. Otherwise, gentle readers, start your keyboards.

And even if you don’t want to enter the contest, I hope you’ll point your feedreader at that big orange RSS icon in the upper right hand corner and subscribe to the feed, or put your email address into the little subscribe box over to the right to receive the blog posts via email (just one email a day).

Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications has a great post about balancing the needs of ‘personalities’ — people with their own online brands — and the companies they work for.

It’s an oft-cited maxim at SHIFT that “we run a talent agency, not a PR agency” – so Chris’s words rang true for me.  Think about some of our most recent hires: Doug Haslam (@DougH, with 4,000 Twitter followers), Chris Lynn (rockstar blogger), Amanda Gravel (blogger), Sandy Kalik (tweeter), et al.

We’ve made many more hires than this handful, of course, and expect great things of all of them – but, specific to these “well-known” people and their personal brands?  We consider them to be “on loan” to SHIFT for the duration of their tenure.  And I expect more and more of our employees (and future employees) will have their own personal brands either well-established or on the rise.

Might we see the rise of formal policies that not only address things like blogging, but also the whole gamut of “personal branding” activities? Maybe.

Where do you think the line should be drawn? How do balance the potential that someone with a strong personal brand brings with the needs of a company that has its own brand?

Here’s a round-up of links that ought to be of use for anyone marketing online:

• Get the Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II via free download.
• Chris Brogan shows you to organize for more efficient, effective blogging.
• Skelliewag explains how to get some link love from Digg.
• Christopher S. Penn says you can take advantage of those RSS scrapers that steal your blog posts to actually bring more traffic to your site.

Please let me know if you find these links useful.

SEO 2.0 has a list of the top 10 URL design mistakes. It turns out, there are some basic principles you should follow if want to create URLs that are friendlier both for search engines and human web searchers. I’d also note that these shorter, human-readable URLs are also far better when you’re pasting them into a tweet or a Facebook update.

Link.

The New York Times explains the art of choosing key words that will help your news release get picked up by the news media, and search engines. Favorites include terms like ‘green,’ ‘fat,’ and ’secret.’ On the other hand, business jargon such as ‘turnkey’ and ‘mission critical’ are likely to trigger journalists’ BS detectors and have the opposite effect.

Of course, it’s not just the words. There’s actually got to be news value in the release to get the news media to pay attention. Understanding what that is, and how to express it clearly and succinctly in a news release, is a big part of what the art of good news releases is all about.

Link.