First, sorry for the lapse in posting but after the trip to Birmingham and the ATL, I had to have some downtime with the family.
I promise to be more "regular" in the new year.
At the urging of one of my Hodges Partnership colleagues, I have tweated the name of the blog to Jon's PR 1.5. This title more adequately captures the place that I find myself in daily, the space between the "old" and "new" PR.
I was reminded again of that last night as I joined the weekly Monday #journchat session on Twitter. It's a fast-paced chat session created by the marvelous Twitter guru Sarah Evans, prsarahevans.com (here's the Facebook Group page), that has PR folks, media folks and social marketing folks discussing the PR issues of the day at no more than 140 characters at a time. Here are some of my takeaways and I hope they are helpful:
- Press releases: There is a wide divide within those in the practice itself on issues like the usefullness of the press or news release as a tool in the 21st Century. Some see it as critical in laying a stake in the ground on newsfeeds and in SEOland, others see it as just background info they should have for reporters in case they need it. I am more in the camp of the latter until someone can really prove to me that SEOing news releases really can lead to substantial revenue for my clients.
- PR-media relationships: Okay, I admit it. I still create media lists using a combination of media that I know from relationship and those who I think will be interested but with whom I don't have an ongoing dialogue. Shoot me. While I agree that PR people should be doing tons of research to find the exact best person to pitch, read every story that person has written in the last two years, and treat them like their best friend the first time they talk to them…that might be tad unrealistic. PR pros do need to start heading in that direction but given that the number of outlets will only increase with number explosion of bloggers, it will take us all a while to get there. There needs to be patience on both sides.
- Bloggers: Again, I may be unpopular here but I have some concerns. The first one I addressed above which is the vast number of them and the bloggers desire to be "courted" and not "blasted" by the media. I can understand that but that understanding needs to go both ways.
- Bloggers, the sequel: More concerning to me is the lack of a general "blogger rule book" for PR folks to follow. With most reporters you know that things like "off the record" and "embargo" may still mean something and when they get something wrong a correction may be in order. I have already on the receiving end of either a lack of standards or even an incredulous, "why should we have them," attitude that concerns me. Again things need to go both ways. I am happy to do the research, read your posts, offer you stories, but frankly I hope for some of the same courtesies in return.
- The positives: What excites me about #journchat is the hones discussion and the willingness of those who participated to share ideas and to teach each other. Everyone is so new (to varying degrees) in seeing which direction this thing is going. To a certain extent it is evolving on the fly and we need to be patient with each other.
To illustrate the PR 1.5 world I live in, one the same day I participated in that, I had two discussions with folks about how they still don't care about any of that and that the most important thing to them is "getting on The Today Show." Today's PR people are living with one foot on each side of the Grand Canyon of Communications.
Some final musings. My wife, whose father is about to celebration his 50th year (not a typo) working for the SAME community newspaper, asked me again yesterday if we could cancel our subscription to our local paper because she can read it online. I'm having trouble with that, don't ask me why.
Also, on my trip to the ATL we took the kids to the World of Coca-Cola. Did you know the Coke brand was build more than 100 years ago primarily on the back of free sampling?
The more things change….
Hodges Blog 
Hanging onto the Bridge
/ January 6, 2009Hey Jon – I like your blog. What’s your take on SEO? Is this something PR professionals should invest time and $$ in learning about? Should we be using SEO all the time, with every press release?
Jon Newman
/ January 6, 2009Windy,
It’s definitely worth learning about and is valuable in improving search placement and in turn driving traffic. It is obviously one of many tools that should be used.
What I’m not sure of are those that say an SEO-powered release in and of itself is enough to move the needle on its own.
Sarah Marchetti
/ January 7, 2009Hey Jon,
I enjoyed reading your perspective in this post. I’m surrounded by folks who “drink the koolaid” so to speak so it is great to get a different perspective. Here are my thoughts in relations to some of your points:
-I think press releases are one small tool to help get information out not the be all end all of PR. I’ve found value in using SEO for press releases usually because of its indirect benefits rather than immediate benefits. I’ve gotten many a call from reporters months after a release to get an expert on the topic discussed in the release. This still gets your client’s name out there, but just not in the way you intended. Since services like PR newswire do it for you and it isn’t hard to do yourself, I think it is valuable tool in raising awareness of the brand online.
-As for bloggers, I think it is great that they are raising the standards by which we all interact with them and other journalists. We all need to make lists, but I think it only takes a few more hours of time to do the job in a more targeted manner. No harm in cold contacting as long as you’ve determined that they would truly be a good fit for the story. Some PR firms contact any and all blogs/journalists to get their message out which is where the problem stems. For example, you probably don’t care to write about the newest kitchen appliance on this blog, but if someone did just a bit of research they’d know you might want to write about the new Springsteen album. Check out the Ogilvy code of ethics for more ideas a about working with bloggers and, heck journalists too. http://blog.ogilvypr.com/?p=243.
-I’ve found that most bloggers are very respectful and nice to work with so I’m sorry that you had a bad experience. I think that rules like embargoes and off the record are tough for bloggers because some of them think of themselves as journalists others don’t, so you just need to adjust expectations (yours and the clients) until you know a blogger better and have established a relationship.
-Love your Coke factoid- So true. Word of mouth and sampling is back in a big way.
Jon Newman
/ January 7, 2009Sarah,
Thanks for the kind words. You are in the middle of this (for those that don’t know, Sarah works for Ogilvy PR’s social marketing arm…nice plug, btw :)) so you know better than most.
I think Sarah’s got a good handle on all of this and we should all follow her lead.
Jon
Caroline
/ January 7, 2009great post, Jon. You’re mosdef where many of us are and it’s nice to read some good commentary on the hype. A bit like coming back to earth after a lot of excitment. Love the name, btw. 😉