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5 PR Rules for a Changing Media Landscape

Brian Posnanski

Principal, TrafficPRM

Getting startup and emerging companies on the public radar has never been easy, but the migration of our collective attention span from traditional media to the Web is changing the public relations picture for the better. According to The Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Internet has now surpassed newspapers and radio as a primary news source. In fact, the explosion of online content—via blogs, social networks, new online media outlets, video portals and other venues—is coming not just from traditional media companies, but from individuals and organizations from every walk of life. It is a development that invites an entirely new way of thinking about how young companies can get out their message and amplify their brand.

Following are five PR rules designed to help emerging companies take advantage of this new media landscape:

Focus on niche media, not mass media.

The balance of power is shifting away from media conglomerates to just about anyone. All you need is a PC and the blogging platform of your choice to publish whatever you want. In the technology realm, professional macroblogs like TechCrunch, Mashable and PaidContent have quickly risen to challenge old guard media such as CNET, Wired and others. For every traditional trade journal, there is a blog, news site or forum gunning for their audience. What you need to know is this: whatever your industry, there is someone out there covering it online. Your job is to find them. The PR mistake many companies make is to focus on prestige over effectiveness. workdigital, a UK-based job search site was surprised to find that a story in The New York Times generated a few dozen visitors to their site, while a story in TechCrunch generated more than 10,000.

Take control of your content.

So what if traditional media continue to shrink? Small companies have more power than ever to tell their own story, thanks to the proliferation of blogs and social networks. Plus, most companies don’t take advantage of the huge untapped potential that their own website offers to connect with the public. The imperative for startups is to take your story direct to customers, prospects, potential partners and investors. Some of the best ways to do that are:

• Releases as articles – The press release has evolved from a tool designed strictly for journalists to something that is read by everyone. The key is to make them more like news articles and tell people something interesting rather than filling them with fluffy language like “bleeding edge,” “robust,” “best of breed” and a host of other eye-glazing adjectives.
• Company blog – A blog is a great place to connect with a wide audience to give your brand a unique voice. Don’t just talk about your product or service. Go beyond your customers and prospects to address your industry as a whole. Eloqua, for instance, provides marketing automation software, but uses its company blogs to talk about marketing best practices and its views on industry trends. Also keep in mind that a blog can be critical in keeping you at the top of the search rankings. Search engines love fresh content.
• Video – Video is a terrific asset to engage just about anyone, and it can be used in a variety of ways. Show how your product works. Record any public speaking engagements. Interview colleagues at industry conferences. None of this has to be a high-budget production. Get a Flip video camera and keep it handy. We like to create YouTube channels for our clients and then embed videos with online news release and blogs to increase visibility.
• Webinar – Are you or your company expert at something? Tell the world by organizing a Webinar. Convene an online panel to address topics near and dear to the hearts of customers and prospects. Record it so people can access it whenever they want.

Social media: learn by doing.

No two words strike more fear in the hearts of some organizations. Don’t sweat it. The Web was once an object of wonder, too, until it was recognized as just another part of a company’s overall presence. By now, the stories of brands that have used Twitter to build buzz and business are legion, and Marketing Sherpa reported earlier this year that marketers’ confidence in social media is increasing. The key is to let your business strategy dictate what kind of social media presence to have. A B2C company will likely get more out of Facebook, while a maker of sophisticated B2B software could do well to start a user group on LinkedIn. The only way to determine how best to use social networks is to learn by doing.

SEO and PR go hand in hand.

All of those news releases, white papers, webinars and videos you produce are not just great content for your audiences—they’re also fodder for SEO. Be sure that your PR team adopts SEO best practices by integrating keywords into content and making sure that links point back to the right landing pages. This is an opportunity that often goes overlooked.

Define your objective.

Remember that all of the activities outlined above must drive at an outcome. Every PR and marketing plan should begin with the question: what are you trying to achieve? Depending on who you are trying to reach, it could be:

• Driving traffic to your website
• Capturing a specific kind of buyer
• Positioning your company as the leader in its field
• Becoming a recognized subject matter expert

Sit down with the core management team and ask: why are we investing in PR? If you can get nothing better than, “We have to,” or “All successful companies get media coverage,” you need to keep digging.

Startup and emerging companies have an opportunity like never before to shape their future. The decline of traditional media and the ever-expanding power of the Internet are changing the public relations game in significant and lasting ways. Media relations remains an important part of the PR function, but as fewer journalists produce less content, the Web is giving companies the ability to act as their own media outlet. As we like to say, the media is dead. Long live the media!

Brian Posnanski is the founder of TrafficPRM, an interactive PR firm that focuses on the convergence of public relations, social media and SEO.

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