Tag: pr matchpoint

5 Awesome PR Innovations – PRWeek Awards

PRWeek Awards

The PRWeek Awards winners will be announced tomorrow in New York including PR Innovation of the Year. 
I have been working on the development of MatchPoint for the past year and want to congratulate everyone on the team for the nomination.  

  
All Nominees for PR Innovation of the Year:

Edelman and American Thoracic Society The TB Advocacy Toolkit  

Ketchum The Ketchum Media Optimizer: Adding Discipline to the PR Discipline  

Ketchum Virtual Meeting Mashups – Reinventing Online Events
 
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide What’s on Your Mind? Now Anyone Can Decipher Twitter Discussion with the Help of twendz!  

eNR Services, Inc. and MatchPoint MatchPoint for PR  
 

Best of luck to everyone and I look forward to speaking with you at the Awards!

The Most Engaging Part of MatchPoint That You Haven’t Used…Yet

 
Using MatchPoint searches to uncover influencers who are writing stories similar to yours is just part of the power of the MatchPoint application.
  
Many MatchPoint users are finding time efficiencies and increased pitching success by using the ENGAGE button attached to each journalist, writer, or influencer.
  

Engaging in MatchPoint
The Engage Button in MatchPoint

The engage button will open an email pitch note from you to the selected writer. You may also include any previously saved campaign elements embedded into the body of this html email. These elements can include:

  • Links to videos
  • Photos
  • A Press Release
  • Attributable Quotes
  • Bulleted News Facts
  • Boilerplate

 
Journalists have raved about receiving these embedded elements as opposed to attachments which often get filtered, ignored, or deleted.
 
When sending your pitch note through MatchPoint instead of via traditional email, you can also track who has opened your pitch!

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MatchPoint: Finalist for PR Innovation of the Year at PRWeek Awards

 

I am pleased to pass along the good news that MatchPoint has been nominated for The PRWeek PR Innovation of the Year Award!

Full disclosure: I’m a member of the development team for MatchPoint.  Additional disclosure: I am freakin’ thrilled about this!

 
A tip of the hat to all nominees:

Edelman and American Thoracic Society The TB Advocacy Toolkit

Ketchum The Ketchum Media Optimizer: Adding Discipline to the PR Discipline

Ketchum Virtual Meeting Mashups – Reinventing Online Events

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide What’s on Your Mind? Now Anyone Can Decipher Twitter Discussion with the Help of twendz!

eNR Services, Inc. and MatchPoint MatchPoint for PR

 
Saying it’s an honor just to be nominated along with these top global PR agencies is not just an old cliché in this case. I cannot think of a previous year where any non-agency PR application, software, or service was nominated for PR Innovation of the Year.  

See you at the PRWeek Awards  on March 11 in NYC!

Pitching Bloggers

I’ve been working on a research project for the past few weeks regarding the pitching of bloggers. I’m reaching out to thousands of bloggers on behalf of the MatchPoint application for PR pros to gauge their interest in receiving pitches, news, notes, and social media news releases from MatchPoint’s clients.

The team that developed MatchPoint decided (thankfully!) to make it an Opt-In service and ask bloggers’ permission to provide the bloggers’ email addresses to MatchPoint’s clients. Many bloggers have been rightfully outing PR people for spamming when they use old school databases that mass-blast PR Spam from their media lists.

 
Of those bloggers with whom I spoke:

•12% expressed not wanting to have their email address visible to PR people nor wanted to receive pitches via email

•52% said they would be open to emails from PR, BUT ONLY if the pitch was exactly on point, relevant to their blog, or from a PR person who has obviously read their blog posts

•36% said they would opt in to receive PR emails and in fact rarely get any PR pitches
 
I think that last point is most significant. There are many bloggers who have a huge appetite for your news content! It’s notable that this is not an obscure group of bloggers; all were in the top 100,000 blogs by traffic. Most likely, that last group of bloggers is not in most PR Spam databases.

So go get ’em! Just be sure you know each blogger’s preferred method of receiving pitches whether it’s email, via their blog, DM, or carrier pigeon. Also make sure your content is relevant to what they typically write.

Death of PR Spam

PR Spam took a few more hits last week. First, blogger Gina Trapani created a new wiki of PR agencies who have spammed her via press release. 
 
Secondly, MatchPoint rolled out a new version: MatchPoint v1.5. The anti-PR Spam tool will keep users off of Gina’s list!
 
 PR Spam
 
PR Spammers (and the over-priced PR vendors who enable them!) typically build lists of journalists (based on beats) who may or may not have ever written an article or blog related to the Spammers’ blast press release.
  
MatchPoint allows PR pros to identify the most appropriate reporters and bloggers based on what they have recently written, not by outdated information like beat or title.
 
The true PR Spam killer is this: after finding an appropriate journalist, users can engage them one-on-one directly through MatchPoint. The personalized, custom message can range from a simple pitch note to a full multi-media press package.
 
Other new enhancements include the ability for PR pros to monitor specific journalists, create notes on follow up activity, and evaluate success of campaigns with detailed tracking reports.
 
MatchPoint is now giving journalists the ability to evaluate the usefulness of story pitches and rank the sender. This new system was designed to weed out PR Spammers and open a dialogue between professional PR practitioners and journalists.
 
PR professionals can get a free ten-day trial at this link. PR Spammers should ignore this link!

Bulldog Media Relations Summit 2009 – Prologue

 
Media Relations pro’s – are you heading to the Bulldog Media Relations conference in New York this weekend? Why not?
  
This year’s show has tremendous potential with keynote speakers such as news icon Dan Rather and popular anchor / consultant Dan Abrams. 
  mr09logo
Please check back here throughout the weekend and week as we’ll be posting updates, photos, Tweetup details, and commentary.
  
 What are you looking forward to seeing at this year’s show?

Local Media Tips – Guest Blog by Hope Salley

 
This week, my friend Hope Salley of eNR Services is providing a recap local media pitching tips from a PRSA event in Connecticut. The event was hosted by the PRSA -Westchester County and Fairfield County Chapter. The guest speakers were Allan Drury, business reporter/editor with the Journal News (Gannett-Westchester and Rockland Counties), and Jim Zebora, business editor with Hearst CT Newspapers (Connecticut Post, Advocate). Thanks for the tips Hope! – Jack

 

 

First and foremost, Allan Drury said that the most important thing a person pitching to the media should do is – do their homework! As quoted by Drury, “Know your reporter. Look at the past six months to see what kind of articles that reporter likes covering. Don’t look at just the past week.” This solidifies why the MatchPoint application is so important to our clients. Drury said it is very important to target the right media.

 

Below are a few dos and don’ts explained both by Allan Drury and Jim Zebora:

 

Dos

  • Keep headlines short and concise. Reporters want to see what the news is right away.
  • The best time of day to reach a reporter is in the morning or anytime between noon and 2 p.m. The afternoon hours are usually a “sprint to the finish” time for most reporters and editors.
  • The best way to reach most reporters is via email.
  • After sending a press release, follow up with a phone call to the reporter a few days later.

 

Don’ts

  • Don’t harass reporters. Continuing to call them or emailing them is a sure turn-off.
  • Don’t send irrelevant stories. Only pitch stories that have merit and offer legitimate news.  

Drury said it is important to include statistical information and research in press releases that offer substantiality to the story. This data backs up the focus of the release, and makes it a lot easier for the journalist (less work they have to do). Drury said press releases without data tend to be “fluffy features.” When it comes to business stories, Zebora conveyed that the reporters at the Hearst CT Newspapers look at mom-and-pop businesses the same as national businesses, meaning small businesses have pertinent, legitimate news just as much as larger corporations. In fact, it is the local businesses – affecting the local community – that journalists are more interested in covering.

 

 

MatchPoint Launches

We’ve all played the target & hope game of using a media database:
1. Target journalist in database

2. Hope he or she still works at that outlet, covers that same beat, and has any interest in your topic

 

This week, MatchPoint is changing the game. MatchPoint is offering a 10 Day Free Trial to check out this innovative new way to match your press release or other pitching materials with relevant journalists and bloggers.

 

Here’s a link to the free trial sign-up:

 

http://www.prmatchpoint.com/register.asp