outreach

I cannot believe what is coming across the wire. So may people are still blasting out news releases that lack the essential information media need. What a waste.

If you want your news release to be maximally effective, it has to answer the primary questions for the media:

1. How many people in my audience are going to be interested in this?
2. What’s in it for my audience?
3. How easy is it for me to use this information (e,g., how much does it cost me to do this?)

Then it must present your proposed story, the facts needed to support and flesh out the story, your ideas, advice, or comments, your skills, experience, credentials and accomplishments in terms of that objective.

You have to offer media everything they need to run with the story using you and the resources you’ve arrayed if you are to meet their needs in today’s fast paced environment and the ever changing technologies we get to utilize.

You are a natural problem solver filled with good advice.

This is the core approach you need to take when branding and promoting. You simply need to decide to help the people you can help the most, with each and every bit of outreach that you do.

Select the biggest upcoming problem that’s on the horizon and then solve it, offering an article and interviews.

This is what will carry you forward and propel media coverage. It will also carry your books, products and services along with it.

Make sure that the content you offer is like candy. It tastes so good that people want the whole bag.

Bet you can’t eat one!

Malcolm Gladwell triggered an avalanche of protests and howls from social media lovers for his analysis and commentary of social media in his article in the New Yorker magazine.

Here the links to the original October 4, 2010 article in The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=1

This one goes to Mike Isaac’s tech column in Forbes

http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2010/10/20/malcolm-gladwells-response-to-critics-of-his-social-media-piece/?boxes=techchannelblogs

Here is Twitter founder Biz Stone’s response in The Atlantic magazine.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/exclusive-biz-stone-on-twitter-and-activism/64772

And for my own history of rants and raves on the subject of social media and the difficulties of communicating meaningfully with people:

http://blog.directcontactpr.com/public/category/social-media

Hey, if it works for you, do it. If it doesn’t, do something else, and figure out what works.

Interesting post over at PR Squared titled The Dual Future of the News Release

I don’t believe that social media news releases are all that earthshaking or special or that it will replace every other MarCom method out there. I view SM news releases as another tool in the arsenal that represents yet another choice in how we reach out and communicate with people.

I still see that prime media matters a lot to clients. They want results and if SM can help produce results that’s fine. It’s the results that matter to clients. How you get them and the ROI you produce is what matters to clients.

To me, the SM news release is just the newest technology with specialized format requirements to come along. The technology you use is a factor because it influences the format of your message.

But it’s secondary to learning and proving that the words you place in that MarCom format are indeed words that will produce the action you want whether it be sales, attendance at an event, donations, name recognition, or political action.

Just because you use SM as a way to transmit the message won’t help you if what you place in the SM news release is boring, text heavy, laden with hype or simply is commercial advertising.

The biggest challenge is to figure out what you can say and do to really turn people on in the first place.

That’s what I focus on when i work with clients. That’s because unless you say something or write something that will turn people on, nothing you do with your message will matter.

My belief is that the technology doesn’t matter at all until you learn how to talk so people will listen and act. That’s true even no matter what people read, watch or listen to.

We live in a world where most people have serious attention deficit disorders most of the time. They are under so much stress it takes extraordinary communications skill to communicate meaningfully.

It even more critical when people base their decisions on snippets, slices, blinks and tweets.

Of course, once you do create galvanizing messages, then you can use all the conventional news release, online Internet and SM technologies as a force multiplier to spread the message and duplicate the action you get.