Tell Your Story

In recent weeks, I generated a couple of posts with the theme of "the more things change, the more they stay the same."  Specifically, I was referring to two constants in the public relations business. The first was that PR pros have been practicing for decades what is today called "content marketing." The second was despite the proliferation of social media and new digital forms of communications, the majority of tech journalists and bloggers prefer e-mail-based communications vs. all other types.

I also called out a few of the revolutionary changes in our business, many influenced by advancements in technology.  For example, how we write with SEO and SEM in mind.  The entrée of real analytics to how we measure results vs. the THUD factor days of old.  And even how the Rolodex is being replaced by services that peg story ideas to specific journalists and bloggers.  For example, HARO, PRManna.com, Reporter's Source and PitchRate, among others.

Remember the Rolodex? Ever have one on your desk? 

They still exists, of course, but they mostly reside in Gmail, Linkedin, Twitter, etc., these days.

For a PR pro, the size of their over-stuffed Rolodex used to be a badge of success.  It communicated to colleagues, competitors, clients and prospects that they were connected.  And their vast connections meant they could open doors and close deals.

Today, a Rolodex -- real or figurative -- doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to.  The advent of HARO-type services reinforce this position.

Instead of asking "who do you know?," clients and prospects should be asking their PR and social media agencies about their process for researching and developing clients' stories; their process for creating memorable, diversified content based on strategy and messages; and their process for engaging their audiences in a conversation.  

Having close connections at the Wall Street Journal, Fortune or InformationWeek are nice-to-haves.  Crafting the right story on behalf of your client and communicating it to their customers, though the right channels, are must-haves.  

E-Mail Rules the Roost For Tech Journalists and Bloggers

Technology journalists, working in print and online -- and bloggers - overwhelmingly prefer e-mail as their preferred method of communicating with PR pros.    

Amen.

Despite the many alternatives to email, from cloud-based collaborative apps to social media channels to the telephone, tech journalists and bloggers say e-mail is king.  

This news flash is according to the good folks at PRSourceCode, a service provider to PR professionals, which recently released this stunning news -- among other tidbits -- in its 5th annual "Top Tech Communicators" report.

A little about the PRSourceCode survey and report:  a survey was administered to more than 800 tech journalists and bloggers in the third quarter of this year.  The results were made public a few days ago.

The survey also asked the participating journalists from such industry stalwarts as Wired, CFO, Information Week, eWeek.com, and CIO, among others, their picks for top tech PR agencies and top in-house tech PR practitioners.  

But for the purposes of this post, I find the recommendations for becoming a "2011 top tech communicator" much more interesting, at least until the time that 3Point Communications makes their top 10 list!

What I find most interesting from the survey results is that for all of the mind-numbing changes the PR professional has had to adapt to in recent years, the core tenants of how we find success haven't changed all that much.  

In last week's post I sided with Ford Kanzler of Marketing/PR Savvy, who argued recently that  content marketing has been a successful PR strategy for decades.

So this week it's only fitting that I'd report the same: that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The PRSourCode results help me make my point.  Here they are:

• While the tech journalists and bloggers encourage PR pros to "experiment with new media," their emphasis is on e-mail based communications.  More than 90% of the print journalists prefer e-mail communication and online journalists and bloggers are right there with them.   A distant second is communications via Twitter.

What about in other aspects of practicing sound tech PR principles, like being proactive?  Nearly 80 per cent of the participating journalists report that their sources and ideas for stories come to them via PROACTIVE pitches from PR folks.  Oh, and ensure you read past stories from the journalists you're pitching so you learn what they're interested in before pitching them. The same rule applies to pitching bloggers.  This is new?  No, I don' think so.

How about this gem:  journalists want PR pros to get back to them quickly because they have this thing called a "deadline."  Oh, and don't promise what you know you can't deliver.  Aren't these just the basics of doing business, whether your working in PR, journalism or most anything else?  But the fact that the survey respondents point these issues out tells us that not every PR pro approaches the job in the same way.

I should note that the bloggers who participated in the survey prefer to hear from PR pros via Twitter and Facebook more so than their print and online colleagues.  But as noted earlier, the vast majority of bloggers prefer e-mail above all other channels.

Click here if you want to view the full report.  My guess is the 6th annual report will look pretty much the same.  

Still True: the more things change, the more they stay the same

A recent blog post from Ford Kanzler of Marketing/PR Savvy has been getting its fair share of attention on Twitter and the blogosphere.

Kanzler's post, "Content Marketing Has Been a Successful PR Strategy for Decades," makes the claim that the term Content Marketing is a shiny new term for an age-old marketing and PR technique.

I couldn't agree more.

To me, Kanzler's post is a reminder that although the public relations profession has morphed in recent years -- as have many professions, thankfully -- the PR person's keys to success have fundamentally remained the same for eons.

Case in point:  creating exciting content and distributing it through targeted channels has been part of the PR pros daily regimen for years.  Today, it's called Content Marketing.  The reality is that PR pros have been practicing Content Marketing for years.

We just used to call it PR.

Here's how Junta42, a content marketing firm, defines content marketing:  Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience -- with the objective of driving profitable customer action. 

Sound familiar to any PR pros out there?

When we, as PR people, interview a product manager about a new software release, we turn it into (hopefully) remarkable content in the form of a press release -- just as we have forever. And then we market it to specific audiences.

When we interview a client's customer about how our client's solution saved their customer time and money and improved product quality, we turn it into exciting content in the form of a case history, a blog post, a by-lined article, an instructional podcast or Webinar, Web site or You Tube video, etc., and then we promote it.

When we want to pitch a story to an influential journalist or blogger, we create content in the form of one exciting "teaser" paragraph to peak their interest.

Yes, how we exchange this content and measure it has changed significantly, especially in recent years thanks in large part to technology advances.  And we reach our clients' audiences in new formats and on new devices, and this will always be changing.

Joe Chernov, Eloqua's director of content, said in a recent tweet:  "'content marketing'" is different now, w/rise in SEO, collapse of print, networked customers who need info to share."

His points are very valid.  Content marketing is different now. 

But so is Kanzler's point, who says, "Just don't think that calling it content marketing makes it something entirely new."

What do you think?  Is Content Marketing an updated handle for a battle-tested discipline?