With blogs fast becoming authoritative sources of news in their own right, the avenues you need to reach to get comprehensive publicity coverage can sometimes appear infinite. But you do need to communicate with far more than just traditional media outlets.
Spend a bit of time online researching who is writing the most authoritative and informed blogs on topics relevant to your business. You will easily be able to find the blogs you should be talking to.
People in your industry will be aware of leading blogs. The Technorati website shows who the most popular global blog sites are. Google’s Blog Search works well if you type ‘New Zealand’ after whatever topic search you are after.
“Newspaper people see their articles as finished products of their work. Bloggers see their posts as part of the process of learning.”
The way blogs work include “collaboration, transparency, letting readers into the process, and trying to say what we don’t know when we publish – as caveats – rather than afterward – as corrections,” Jarvis says.
Traditional news outlets like to project the impression that their story is the definitive version .
Whereas, as the Irish Independent reports, journalism – as practised by bloggers – exposes the workings of a scoop. “[High-profile technology blog] TechCrunch, for instance, publishes the beginnings of a story that may only be a rumour. The responses to that rumour, often from reliable sources, generate updates to the story, which is polished with the help of readers to get closer to the whole truth.”
“This is journalism as beta,” Jarvis writes. “Every time Google releases a beta, it is saying that the product is incomplete and imperfect. It’s a call to collaborate.”
And that call to collaborate is drawing millions of blog readers and comment writers. If you want your company to be where the word-of-mouth action is, you need to be noticed in the blogosphere.
iPhone and computer company Apple has made an art out of getting huge publicity by saying nothing at all. Where others work their butt off to get their business noticed in the media, Apple has the silent, cool guy role down perfectly, getting non-stop media that other companies can only dream about.
One of the standard rules of PR is to fill an information void with your own messages before others fill it with their version of what your message might be. Apple’s skill is in embracing the void and letting PR messages find their own path.
It helps, of course, that they have absolutely world-beating products such as the iPod and iPhone; and when they do decide to advertise something their messages are as well-crafted as any-one’s; but we like them for their confidence to take on the market by saying nothing at all.
Unconventional approaches to PR can only be good in a hugely crowded market place.
The other unconventional approach to PR that we have enjoyed this year is the Unites States food-PR guy who lets the media actually choose if they want to receive information from him, rather than hammering with them with press releases and phone calls. Like Apple, he has enough confidence in his offering that he reasons people will come to him to find out more.
Could you publicise your product or service by saying … nothing at all about it?!
Seems like us Kiwis trust people with a medal. Similarly, if you can get external recognition for your products or services it can be a helpful differentiator in the market.
Though not, it seems, for much longer in the United States if you are claiming green credentials: 98% of supposedly environmentally friendly products in US supermarkets reportedly make false or confusing claims.
I often get asked, “how would you spin that?” Both by clients wanting advice and people simply having a conversation when they find out what I do for a living.
But, rather than being a spin doctor, any good PR person knows that the best results for clients lie in helping people to more clearly and transparently understand a client’s business. Knowledge = power, for everyone. Spin simply confuses and obscures.
Below is a doctor of another kind, who definitely understands that honesty is the best marketing/PR policy. His marketing of his ‘Heart Attack Grill’ leaves no sacred cow - food-wise - untouched and he is pulling in the customers because of it.
You may find cynical the grill’s apparent mocking of obesity health issues, but it is simply a burger joint that makes no attempt to pass off its regular burger joint food as other than what it is … and, yes, warning: high-fat content!
Getting your company mentioned in the media and then having those mentions filter through the internet to be found by potential customers via search engines has, for many years, been a big part of getting company messages seen and heard.
News Corporation controls much of NZ’s media and has a huge influence around the world. Let’s hope a very useful channel for publicity is not shut off to the internet masses in favour only of people who can afford to pay to view.
Looking for a publicity campaign that will hit all the right targets? Probably best to stay away from a campaign like that of U.S online brokerage site Zecco who reportedly surprised its customers by giving them multi-million dollar trading balances on April Fools’ Day!
Zecco was surprised when some customers began making real trades with their newfound riches … and the company then, reportedly, further alienated customers by making them wear any losses they incurred in their trading!
A restaurant in Latvia’s capital Riga has certainly found its marketing niche.
Decorated like a hospital, Hospitalis serves food, shaped like body parts, on operating-room dishes. Syringes contain liquids to go with the meals.
And just to take their image one step further, customers are treated liked patients by waitresses in nursing uniforms. From time to time deranged patients are wheeled through the restaurant in strait-jackets.
Personally, I’ve never liked dining on gore and nurses never help me feel relaxed, but I guess the owners of this places (real doctors, apparently) are confident the dining experience will live up to the publicity generated by the medical theme.
Around 20,000 people from over 180 countries have so far applied! The Australian promotion has been going since last month but it is still so strong that this week the organiser’s reported that their website fell over due to the high number of visitors.
The winner of the competition gets to be ‘Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef’ and will be paid to live in a luxury villa for six months, and explore, swim, snorkel and also blog about their experiences.
Applicants’ 60-second video clip entries have been uploaded to the competition’s website, driving huge numbers of visitors to the site to check them out. (By the way, the competition closes Monday!)
Once again, a brilliant example of social media well-executed and showing its power to reach and engage global audiences, and posted here to show social media’s potential for powerful PR.
A good new article details how U.S airline South West uses social media tools in its PR work: from employee-writen blogs to Twitter accounts, podcasts, video and a social networking site.
Each tool is overseen by a single team member and is geared to reach a slightly different audience.
South West recommendskeeping social media channels distinct. It has used its employee-written blogs to look at issues, Twitter to break or tease news (South West also uses it to share photos, highlight competitions and job opportunities) and its Facebook account to highlight promotional events.
The article says that the airline’s Flickr group pool is for customers interested in posting or viewing photos of trips on the airline; the YouTube channel is for people wanting information about destinations or South West trivia; and South West’s Facebook fan site is for people wanting to know about airline-related events and news.
(Better read the article promptly! The guys at Ragan, who have published this article, only leave things up for a few days. You can register on their site, though, to read all their back copies. It’s well worth the effort to register.)
Don’t advertise, give people things! That seems to be the take-out of this U.S survey that found that promotional give-aways beat out all forms of TV, radio and print advertising as the most cost-effective advertising medium.
Give-aways had “a very low cost-per-impression, high recall among those who receive ad specialty items, and increased intent among recipients to make purchases from the advertiser,” the survey’s researchers said.
Key findings:
* 84% of people remember the advertiser on a product they receive.
* 42% have a more favourable impression of an advertiser after receiving an advertising specialty.
* Nearly one quarter indicate they are more likely to do business with an advertiser on items they receive.
* Writing instruments are the most commonly-owned advertising specialty, with 54% of respondents owning them, followed by shirts, caps and bags.
* The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.
More information on the survey is here (which, by the way, was undertaken by people who do promotional give-aways for a living, but interesting results none-the-less!)
