Dear PR folks: How many times have you received a note from a client or colleague that said: “This person just wrote abut our competitor (or market, whatever). Please send them a note in response.”

Um… NO! Once a journalist has written about a topic or product, the last thing they want is for a PR person to send a note that says: “I saw your article… we do that too!”  By that time, it’s too late. 

Part of your job is to stay on top of the topics reporters cover and help them develop their story. You are a resource so be a resource!

If you’re in a particular space, you should know who your beat editors are and be in constant contact with RELEVANT information. Do not bombard them with meaningless company news that isn’t newsworthy. They do not care that you hired a new receptionist. Remember, you are helping them develop stories that are interesting to THEIR audience. Just because your company is excited about a new hire, doesn’t mean that an outlet’s audience cares. Take a step back and ask yourself: “If I didn’t work for this company/client, would I really care about this news?" If you don’t, then who would? Investors? Consumers? Verticals? Once you have your answer, then you know who to reach out to specifically.

I once heard a PR professional say to cast your net far and wide. I don’t exactly agree with that statement. Sure, if you have a product or service that appeals to a variety of audiences, then make sure you’re hitting all appropriate targets, but don’t blast everyone on your media list for quantity’s sake. You’ll only tick off the multitudes of journalists who constantly ask PR professionals to read their articles and understand their respective beats.

It’s about quality: quality of media for you and quality of information for them. Be prepared and responsive. Know your product. Keep your message clear and concise. Be a resource, not a pesky pain in the arse.

There has been plenty of talk within PR and marketing circles about one of the oldest PR tools out there: The press release. As we PR folk continue to ponder the future of the press release (Google “Is the Press Release Dead?” and see what you get), we have to wonder: Why are there so many press release haters? Is it the worn-out distribution methods utilized by PR professionals, or the bad content contained therein?

Answer: Both.

Let’s start with distribution. We all know it’s not enough any more to just slap a press release on the wire, hoping someone important will see it. Nor is it enough to simply reach out to your personal media contacts with a pitch. Although these two methods aren’t dead (I personally still use both); it’s important to augment them by posting a Social Media Release (SMR). I use a blog platform and services like PitchEngine or MarketWire’s Social Media Release service, Social Media 2.0.

PR pros also need to take into account that the media is increasingly turning to alternative mediums to get information and news. According to a recent survey by TEKGROUP International, an online newsroom and PR research company:

• More than 77 percent of journalists think it's important to be able to access a company's social media networks from its online newsroom.
• 45 percent of reporters say they use a corporate blog when researching a story. 
•  25 percent of journalists visit a company's Facebook Page (up 10 percent from a year ago).
• 40 percent are looking to receive news or updates via Twitter.
• Almost 99 percent of journalists expect a company to have an online newsroom, and 75 percent said they prefer it to be organized by news category.
• 95 percent want access to photos, company background, and product information within the online newsroom. Sixty-five percent want digital assets and 53 percent consider video and audio files useful.

So go ahead, post your press release on the wire, but supplement that posting with Twitter feeds, a company blog, online newsroom, a corporate Facebook page and an SMR.

Now, for content. To quote Brian Solis: “I’m sorry to say, that just because a new tool is available to you, you still have to make your story interesting, relevant, and newsworthy.”  Yes you do! There’s nothing that turns the media off more than a poorly written press release.

Here’s one piece of advice: Stop writing the ME! ME! ME! press release. I recently read a press release that made me feel like the person who wrote it was preaching to me. It was obviously written for the company’s CEO rather than its audience. There were no benefit statements; nothing that indicated what the company’s new product did for its audience. It only highlighted what it meant for the company itself. Good for the company, I suppose, but if I were a reporter covering this company’s product category, I’d be left wondering what it meant to my reading audience.

Check your spelling and grammar! If you have any writing education and/or experience, you should know the difference between “complement” and “compliment”. You should know that the comma or period at the end of an executive quote goes inside the quotes.  

Speaking of executive quotes – save the biography for Random House. Two to three sentences should do the trick. Leave the verbosity for the interview. 

And for Heaven's sake, PROOF READ! ‘Nuff said on that one.

Bottom line: The press release is not dead. As long as they’re done properly, they’re still a very valuable business communications tool. And, considering reporters continue to ask for them, obviously the press release is very much alive and well.

I’ve heard many-a nightmare stories of how PR people just simply don’t know how to pitch or approach the media. I cringe at these stories, especially when the PR source happens to be a senior practitioner or from a better known, global agency.  I could go on about how their principals go in and close the business only to turn the account over to some junior underling. This may be why the press gets irritated:  young, inexperienced PR professionals who simply do not know how to pitch the media. I hear even some seasoned PR folks seem to get this basic media relations task wrong. It’s a no-brainer folks, yet it never ceases to amaze me jus how many PR professionals are guilty of these infractions.

Bottom line: Use common sense when it comes to media outreach. I’ve heard reporters vent about receiving a press release on a product or service that isn’t even close to their beat; reporters who’ve received 5, 6, 7+ copies of a particular press release on the same day; PR folks who sent a press release or pitch only to follow-up later that same day (via phone- gasp!) to see if a press person received it. Come on! Y’all know better!

I know we’re all under the gun to get results. We all have clients and employers brow-beating us to get them coverage. But, hounding a member of the media or sending the pitch to the wrong person isn’t going to get you very far. Here are some basic rules to follow when contacting the media:

1. Know their beat, know their beat, know their beat! This is numero uno! If your client is a manufacturer of home audio equipment; don’t pitch the guy (or gal) who covers printers or the one who covers enterprise cloud computing. You’ll be ignored, or you may be lucky enough to get a terse response. My advice: Make an effort and read recent articles by a particular reporter to see what they cover.
   
   
2. Wait a day or two before you follow-up. It’s likely, a reporter or editor received your note. He or she is probably very busy filtering through the hundreds of PR pitches they receive daily. They will get to yours eventually. A little follow-up doesn’t hurt, but give them a little time before you get overly persistent. If they’re interested, they’ll respond.
   
   
3. Know a particular reporter’s contact preferences. Do they prefer to be contacted via email only- no phone calls please - or do they mind a quick call? Is it ok to send a quick note via Facebook or Twitter? Media database services like Cision and Vocus provide this type of information. If you’re not sure, ask. I’ve found that more often than not, a reporter appreciates you taking the time to find out how they like to work and communicate. It’ll help you establish a good working relationship with them and you increase your chances of receiving a response, which could result in coverage.
   
   
4. Send your press release once. A well-known tech reporter recently Tweeted about receiving 2,000 copies of a press release from a major wireless phone company whose name starts with a “V”. I’m sure it was a glitch in the system, but this particular reporter, and I can safely assume others, definitely got the message while having their in-boxes inundated. Trust me. Once is enough.
   
   
5. Make your subject line compelling – not deceptive. I recently saw an influential tech reporter send a Tweet addressed to PR people: “Never, ever send me an e-mail with the subject line, "Are you calling in?" Makes me think I forgot a very important call.”  What were they thinking? I’ve heard of PR people who send Outlook meeting requests to reporters so they can try to get on a reporter’s calendar.  The only thing you’ll achieve by using these kinds of tactics is irritating them and ending up on their black list.
   
   
6. Finally, keep it short and sweet. No one likes to read a novel in the midst of their busy day. Walt Mossberg once told me to keep my pitch to 2-3 sentences. I took heed. A short note with a link to more information is really all you need in today’s busy, mobile workplace. If a reporter wants more information, an interview or a product for review, they’ll definitely ask.

I attended a business seminar this morning entitled “Strategies for Growth in a Recovering Economy”. It offered a variety of panelists. We had the CEO of a gardening center; a restaurant owner; a Director at the American Cancer Society and a salesman for Lexus.

Like the rest of us muddling through this economy, running their respective businesses and organizations has been riddled with challenges. Everyone has faced their ups and downs, but how did the panelists survive and thrive? The answers were relatively universal. Of course, no two businesses are alike, but there are many tactics all businesses can take to keep the wheels spinning during a difficult economy:

1. Analyze. Who is your competition? What are the market trends? What can you do to differentiate and capitalize?
2. Re-invent yourself. Madonna is the poster girl for reinvention, and that’s what has kept her interesting and relevant. What are you doing to keep your business interesting and relevant?
3. Look at your strengths and weaknesses. Capitalize on the strengths; get rid of the weaknesses
4. Enhance or expand your offerings. Diversify.
5. Re-invest in yourself. Do you need a new store front or web site? Have you considered Facebook promotions or LinkedIn advertisements? What about joining trade organizations? Or, becoming a sponsor of a high profile charity? It’s difficult to think about spending money when you’re having to make cut-backs, but sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
6. How’s your customer service? Customer retention is as vitally important as customer acquisition. As the restaurant owner on the panel so astutely pointed out: “the most expensive thing in business is an empty seat.”

Just as the holidays are winding down, Christmas comes again for tech enthusiasts as International CES takes over Las Vegas each year in early January. The 2011 event featured over 2,700 exhibitors showing off the latest and greatest gadgets to hit the market. Attendees surpassed 140,000 with a record breaking 30,000 hailing from outside the United States, according to preliminary figures. Tablets (more than 80 were announced) and tablet accessories, such as those by Targus, topped the list of show floor trends along with wireless 4G LTE, connected TV and 3D technologies, smart appliances, electric vehicles, including Ford’s newly unveiled Ford Focus Electric, and all things mobile.

There were countless products to check out at the show, but tablets including Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Android devices and the Playbook, which runs on Blackberry’s own unique operating system, drew the biggest swarms. 3D technology was another hot topic, although the consensus was that developers have a while before the general public truly embraces it. Everyone seems anxious to toss the glasses. We also heard a lot about Intel’s power efficient Sandy Bridge chips, which are designed to greatly improve video display and video speed encoding, along with the latest innovations in smartphones with 4G capabilities.

There were numerous parties, dinners and press events to woo the media, Pepcom and Showstoppers being two. According to a recent news release, Showstoppers reported a new attendance record of more than 1,300 journalists, analysts and bloggers at their invitation-only affair. It should come as no surprise that loads of CES related articles and posts have begun flooding the Web, in addition to more than 158,000 CES centric tweets counted thus far.

So, given the facts, those of you who were not in or around the Las Vegas Convention Center January 6^th through the 10^th can probably begin to imagine the energy level which propagated throughout one of the biggest and most successful events in CES history. Consumers will have plenty of new innovations to look forward to in the coming months. And if the public’s interest can be measured by the triumph of CES 2011, we should assume that the tech industry will play an integral role in the economy bouncing back. As long as consumers, investors and the media continue to find technological advancement irresistible, we can bank on cool new gizmos and a surge in economic growth.

Millions of people across the globe use Skype every day to IM, video chat or Skype Out! Today… not so much. Skype suffered a major outage today, and for a company (like mine) who uses it to communicate with employees, clients, members of the media, etc., it was (and at the time of this posting still is) a royal pain. We had to resort to (gasp!) email!  I even had to call a few folks on the phone. My dependency on Skype is another issue entirely, but if you are equally as Skype-dependant, @robpegoraro offers a couple alternatives here: http://wapo.st/hTbbbd

What I am really interested in is how Skype is handling this from a PR point of view. It turned to the Twittersphere to keep its 50,862 followers informed with regular updates; and to Facebook to notify the 1,604,009 people who ‘Like’ Skype of the status update posted on its blog in both English and German.  BTW- thank you Skype for the explanation of ‘supernodes’.

Skype has been reassuring users for the past 5 hours that things are returning to normal. Define “normal”. For me (and I can safely assume millions of others), things are not back to normal. I suppose we can anticipate an eventual return to Skype normalcy, but I wish Skype would stop promising it.

To compound the issue, when digging around the Skype web site, I got a few Problem Loading Page errors, mainly when I clicked on the “About Us” link and http://heartbeat.skype.com/, which is supposed to let people know the status of any network issue. What good is a status update page during an outage if that page doesn’t even work?

Ultimately, I’m glad Skype is communicating with its users about something so we know they’re working on it. However, the communiqué IMHO seems a bit pedestrian. Continually letting people know you’re working on it is like a “check’s in the mail” response. We know it’s not working. We now know you’ve been working on it. Let us know when it’s fixed.

At the time of this post, there are over 56,700 (and counting) updates on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks about the Beatles now being available on iTunes. It’s the news of the day and obviously trumps Zuckerberg’s big Facebook email announcement (which was kind of a sleeper anyway, IMHO).

But what is all the hype about? Is it because the Beatles have held out on the idea of selling out to iTunes for so long that this is one of Steve Jobs’ biggest personal coup d'états? Is it the fact that this marks the end of a “long and winding road” (so to speak) between EMI and Apple and their seemingly ceaseless trademark dispute? Or, is it because after 50 years, the Beatles are still massively relevant, despite the fact they haven’t released an album in over 40 years and two of the four band members have gone to that 'Yellow Submarine' in the sky?

I see some interesting parallels in this whole thing. The Beatles impacted a generation; the iPod and iTunes impacted a generation. Now, both are making a huge impact on current and future generations. Both revolutionized music and the way we listen to it - either by the nature of the content or the way it’s delivered.

The Beatles “came to be perceived as the embodiment of progressive ideals, seeing their influence extend into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.”¹ They became the icons of 1960’s pop culture. Cut to modern-day, Apple has undoubtedly become the embodiment of progressive technology, and the iPod has absolutely played an integral role in the present-day cultural revolution - changing the hearts and minds of music lovers across the globe, becoming an icon of modern pop culture.

Apple’s announcement with EMI today brings the past to the present: what was once only available on vinyl is now available in digital, all from the comfort of your iTunes library. The remaining Beatles seem to be excited about it:

Sir Paul McCartney: "We're really excited to bring the Beatles' music to iTunes. It's fantastic to see the songs we originally released on vinyl receive as much love in the digital world as they did the first time around."

Ringo Starr: "I am particularly glad to no longer be asked when the Beatles are coming to iTunes. At last, if you want it--you can get it now--The Beatles from Liverpool to now! Peace and Love, Ringo."

Personally, I am not a huge Beatles fan, but I absolutely appreciate their music. It was groundbreaking to say the least, not to mention the impact the band itself had on society as a whole. I think the fervor around today’s announcement mirrors the frenzy the Beatles caused back in the day. It’s rather apropos that there would be so much ado about them. No other band or musician has received this much attention without it involving rehab or the police. I just wonder what would have happened if Michael Jackson’s estate had held out for another 20, 30 years…

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles

 

As companies of all sizes struggle to determine the best way to use social media to enhance their existing customer service initiatives, Home Depot has found its niche by creating an online community for those who love to build, repair, replace and renew. The “How-To Community” (http://community.homedepot.com/) is a forum designed for DIYers of any skill level to discuss home improvement projects. Participants can share tips, ask questions and consult “experts” about anything from painting to gardening to replacing a toilet. The How-To Community also maintains a blog and video library for additional sources of inspiration and dialogue available on YouTube.

Home Depot’s online community is yet another example of how any type of business can establish an excellent rapport between themselves and their customers using social media. Not only does the new How-To Community leverage peer-to-peer communication and support; it does a great job of facilitating interaction with the Home Depot staff. Each “expert” provides advice, information and answers on specific topics, thus creating a new and improved customer service experience spearheaded by social media. Plus, the How-To Community’s interface encourages dialogue amongst the members themselves where fellow DIYers can share their project experiences and advice. 

This is customer service at its best, folks. Got a question about how to install a new garbage disposal, sustainable gardening or painting your living room? Tweet about it or go to the Home Depot forum and you'll receive an immediate response. Questions can even be answered by in-store professionals no matter where on the web they're posted.

So, when you’re considering new ways to employ social media, take note of businesses like Home Depot, which have soared past the standard to create a virtual destination that truly encourages participation and interaction amongst customers and employees and makes the daunting task of replacing tiles or painting the garage easy and enjoyable.

DISCLOSURE: KLR Communications is not affilaited in any way to Home Depot. We just like what they're doing with social media. Kudos! The Home Depot is a registered trademark of Homer TLC, Inc.

Social media has clearly established a place for itself in sales and marketing strategies in businesses across the globe. Simply search Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or other popular social outlets for one of your favorite brands and you’ll find a page loaded with dialogue between customers, fans, critics and employees. This sort of engagement between an audience and the brand itself fosters a sense of connection and loyalty. You audience now has access to the “insider scoop” and the opportunity to voice comments in a public sphere which garner a response. This, of course, only seems to unfold when the brand is actively engaged, as avid social networkers thrive on reading and sharing the latest updates and communiques. 

So, social media works for consumer products, but how does it or can it work for the B2B sector?  Hint: It’s all about the conversation, my friends.

First, identify where your buyers are (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and the right tools for making the most out of their presence and your presence on social networks. Mashable.com recently posted an article highlighting 10 essential social media tools for B2B marketers http://on.mash.to/cjfn7c. The list provides information on the most useful services for managing and integrating social networks as CRM tools.

Second, perform a little self analysis with an industry/media/customer "focus group", for example, and define your company’s personality. Listen to stakeholders. Build a community. Have mutual conversations that involve everyone. Ask the influencers. Also, find out where your sales are coming from- through the channel? Direct? Retail or e-Tail? If developing content is an issue, ask yourself what content do you have already that you can use.

Third, get everyone on board. Is everyone within your organization involved in the conversation? The Altimeter Group summarized this perfectly when they stated: “To be successful using social technologies, companies must first prepare and align internal roles, processes, policies and stakeholders with their business objectives. Social business is a profound change that impacts all departments in the organization.”

The final and most important step in integrating social media as a marketing and sales tool is engagement. Social media is a two-way conversation that requires brand alignment and planning. It is essential to:   

• Observe and listen
• Define expectations and assets
• Set goals and metrics
• Concentrate on channels
• Engage

With social media today, customers can voice their accolades or complaints to the world without having to go through any media gatekeeper, and they can communicate with each other about your company, product or service. You must join the conversation; maintain customer loyalty by interacting with existing customers and help potential customers understand the value and benefit of what you’re offering.

To effectively engage you must make the most out of all that social media has to offer by posting videos of executive interviews; syndicate your corporate blog or podcast. Be responsive to ALL inquiries and dovetail launch activities with social media initiatives. Build your reputation and increase brand awareness one post at a time. In today’s marketing world, it’s not about who you know; it’s about sharing what you know.