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Open PR Pitch to NY Times Small Biz Editor

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This is a media pitch I delivered by email at 4 p.m. ET March 3, 2011. If you’re on board and support the public relations profession fighting back with a balanced and positive blog post of its own on the New York Times small-business blog, then please indicate  yes in the comments section. If you’re wondering whether Gini Dietrich knows about this; she has been forewarned! (For those just tuning in, search on the NYX for “P.R., restaurateur, Hamptons.”)

credit: businesspundit

Mr. Loren Feldman, Small Business Editor

You’re The Boss Small-Business Blog; The New York Times

Hi, Loren:

The pulse on You’re The Boss in several columns has been lacking in, shall we say, balanced professionalism, and I’d like to suggest your consideration of a perspective written by a public relations agency CEO, Gini Dietrich. In every profession there will be those who do not uphold standards, ethics, civility, respect, and the like; we agree there are those in public relations giving others a bad name. I’d like the opportunity to lend perspective to what is highly disturbing to me and many of my colleagues – the one-sided bashing of a profession at large for the behavior of a few.

Gini makes an effort via her blog, Spin Sucks, and as a guest author on many other blogs to set the record straight against shoddy public relations and clients, as well.

The post she’d write, however, would not be a point-counterpoint; it would instead communicate the value of public relations, the strength of relationship necessary between client and firm, and the factors that weigh in that relationship to be successful. In this era of instant communication, the relationship between client and agency is precarious and thoughtful strategy is required.

Gini has a strong influencer presence in North America; she is a natural educator in our profession, and as a thought leader, small business owner, and CEO of her firm, she absolutely knows what it takes to service clients. Please consider a guest post from her (short bio below), and we can provide more in-depth info should you need it.

Thanks for your consideration,

Jayme

Tumblr, Fashion Week and Tourism PR

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I have a confession. I love “America’s Next Top Model,” I subscribe to In Style and Vogue, and I relish the models’ make up, style, poses, photography, and settings – forget the clothes.  When I saw in the Wall Street Journal this story, “Fashion Week Tips Hat to Blog Site,” I eagerly scanned.

This week is New York Fashion Week, and guess who’s getting a seat to the party? Tumblr! Tumblr is a blogging platform, much like Blogger and WordPress. How it differentiates from the two latter is with its 13.4 million blogs, about 20 percent related to fashion. There are 24 Tumblr fashion bloggers (independent writers) attending Fashion Week because of their influence (there’s that subjective word again).

When you take a lens to more data, Tumblr is on to something. Tumblr had 1.6 billion U.S. page views in December 2010 only; whereas, Blogger had 697 million and WordPress had 141 million, according to comScore.

You can read the business story associated with Tumblr; what I’d like to offer up is the uncanny similarity with Tumblr’s public relations and the familiarization (fam) tours of yore in travel and tourism PR. I used to arrange these fam trips for travel media back in the day when I worked in Chicago’s agencies. These all-expense paid media getaways lavished everything imaginable on reporters in exchange for a story; you can imagine how popular these were, until the FCC swooped in and changed the gifting rules across industries.

So, here’s Tumblr, the publisher, if you will, inviting Joe and Jane “fashion” blogger (some with no experience at all) to attend Fashion Week with free hotel, tickets to events, and a rooftop party (will it be inside?).

You can bet the blog posts will flow freely, among other things.

(photo credit: NYDailyNews)

Traditional Media Relations By Firefox

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In the battle for users, the search engine wars  heated up a notch with Mozilla Firefox pulling ahead a smidge with a recent front page Wall Street Journal Marketplace article regarding tracking deterrence.

The irony is that while Firefox announced it had launched a web tool to deter privacy infringement, the sites that scam, phish, scan, and covertly “steal” our data must agree not to practice this behavior for the web tool to be effective. (That’s an LOL if I ever heard one.)

The other two major search engines, Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have the capability to launch a web tool similarly but Firefox snared the limelight for a minute with its traditional media relations thrust and first-out-of-the-gate positioning.

How important is traditional media relations to companies?

Very.

Imagine the stakeholders and business audiences reading this story. Now look at how much that story will influence users. I, for one, had a positive reaction after reading the piece and was glad I use Firefox.

As for media impact, any time a story appears in a national print daily the likes of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, the cascade of resulting media impressions is fierce.

As a business, your company needs to consider all communications strategies to positively influence your business goals:

  • Start with defining your business goals and set communications objectives and strategies to align to the company’s growth.
  • Conduct messaging to develop your foundation and platform for communicating to various audiences and how.
  • Include in your public relations mix traditional media relations ala what I mention above along with social media communications or online engagement marketing (the term I now prefer).
  • When there’s a good story to tell with all the elements for a national piece, ensure you hire the professionals familiar with pitching media. How we conduct media relations today varies greatly from how we used to secure story hits. The internet has altered how business is conducted; yet, media continue to operate with some of the same principles as pre-internet days.

Who has a success or challenge story to share about media relations these days?

National Media Vitamin D Confusion

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I had no intention of posting today; in fact, I liked my post yesterday, Thoughts on Public Relations, and wanted it to stay front and center one more day.

But this morning’s news stories in our two national papers (sorry USA Today) for the first time I can recall conflict. I’m shocked and keep reading each story to ensure I’m not seeing things or my brain is misfiring. It’s not:

  • In the Wall Street Journal (everyone knows I read it each morning and it’s my muse for blog fodder) in Personal Journal is the story “Triple That Vitamin D Intake, Panel Prescribes” by Melinda Beck. I read that column and reached for my Vitamin D capsule and promptly popped it. Beck’s reporting is taken from “a long-awaited report from the Institute of Medicine to be released Tuesday.”

How on earth can two highly credible, national reporters cover the same report to be released today with two opposite angles?

Should consumers triple their intake of Vitamin D as encouraged in the Wall Street Journal, or should we avoid Vitamin D and calcium because we already get enough, according to the New York Times?

Media Relations Strategy Gone Awry

As a media relations expert, I am disturbed as a professional with these stories. Knowing how national media work, it’s obvious the reporters each got an advance with the institute issuing the report.

  • But, how on Earth did the media relations practitioners not know the angles these two reporters would take and recognize each was covering the story from opposite ends of the spectrum?
  • Should the finger point at media relations?
  • Were spokespeople trained appropriately and was there a message map created?
  • Should the finger point at the spokespeople toplining highlights of the research during media interviews ?
  • Was the strategy to give each paper a different angle?
  • Was there a media strategy?

The national media must clarify the angles they took to cover this research, and that can only happen IF my recommended public relations strategy was executed right now:

  • Issue a press release clarifying to the nation whether consumers need more Vitamin D or not (and calcium).
  • Issue an Internet press release to crawl the Web immediately to rectify the news.
  • Use social media for this entire week to clarify the news about Vitamin D.
  • Launch a special website with highlights of the research and share the clarified message.
  • Put the spokespeople in front of the national morning show circuit to fix the damage these two stories have done.
  • Immediately contact each reporter with the appropriate news peg and asking for their help to rectify the news.

In my 26 years in public relations with a specialty in media relations, I’ve never seen anything like this. Astonishing.

Media Relations ala Reputation Management

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One of the first pieces of counsel I give to companies embarking on media relations, messaging or message mapping is to know your competitors. By conducting a regular competitive analysis you garner full understanding of the space in which your company plays. While before competitive analysis was a challenging exercise, the onset of social media and social networking has made this research easy and fun.

To know your competition, who’s the spokesperson, what they’re saying, and about what product/service they’re preaching is imperative. This knowledge helps create a defensible or offensive position to tell your story via traditional media relations as well as social media engagement.

The August 2010 story “Rethinking Reputation Management” in Website Magazine says similarly:

“It’s time to rethink reputation management solutions. Ask yourself: How closely am I looking at my competition’s reputation? Identify companies you actively compete against as the first step. Commercial reputation management and monitoring solutions provide the deepest insight.”

The article goes on to say that tracking search terms produce the best information i.e. key words associated with your vertical. Once search terms yield a treasure of info, save them for constant monitoring via online reputation management tools.

What I mean by developing a competitive position relates directly to how informed you are about your entire industry sector. If there is a company with which you continually vie for market share, then learn everything you can about how they play and conduct business.

This knowledge translates directly to your boardroom chats about how to position your company to your peer group, customers, media, and other influencers. With the wealth of information now available online, you can build industry monitoring directly into tasks accomplished three times weekly.

I recommend some basic starting points to drive business intelligence (please add more to enrich these suggestions):

  • Monitor Twitter for trending topics, company spokespeople, and what the Twitterverse is saying.
  • Register yourself with Twellow and Listorious (with your own Twitter account) and regularly track others in your market there. Be sure to follow “people to watch” and get on lists to track the buzz.
  • Set up Trackur or Radian6, a few online reputation monitoring tools, along with Google or Yahoo! alerts, too.
  • Definitely monitor Facebook and YouTube for posted content as well as commentary associated to respective posts/videos within each social media channel.
  • Blogs tracked via Technorati and RSS are a must to monitor. It’s easy enough to subscribe to a competitor’s blog to see what’s going on and how aggressive their messaging truly is (relating to your market).

Rather than get inundated with data you don’t know what do with, monitor other companies for about six weeks to garner a firm understanding of competitors’ messages. This time period is enough to showcase a decent perspective of the alleged market leader. It also provides the backbone you need to begin to develop your own offensive position.

With the aforementioned, your messaging framework is rooted in competitive intelligence, and it strengthens delivery of your company’s external information to the influencers you’re trying to reach.  Your goal is not only to engage social media and create community, but to do it with aplomb! Hard-hitting, influential message delivery by designated spokespeople to traditional media and social media is how you get ahead of the curve and catch up to those already playing in your space.

  • Incorporate learnings from your peer group into your own messages. Package messages that resonate with a sprinkling of key words to satisfy search marketing, and be confident in your own storytelling abilities.
  • After you have a comfortable working message framework, package it into a message map. (Ask me if you’re unfamiliar with this necessary tool.)
  • Develop content that tells your story, issue many online press releases to build link love, drive traffic to your social media and networking outlets and continually garner attention from consumers at large.
  • Conduct traditional media relations with trade media in your market sector, and when a story appears be sure you feature that in all the respective places you publish content.
  • Give it three-to-six months to earn traction, depending on your aggressiveness.
  • Monitor your own company and the key words associated with your business. By doing so, you remain in an offensive position and can more expediently thwart attempts by the competition to gain the leading edge.

What have I missed? Please add your thoughts to the importance of competitive analysis for pretty much everything in which we engage, right?