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?