Tag: pr tools

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.

PRSA 2009 Conference in San Diego

2009internationalLogo

Are you registered for the PRSA 2009 International Conference? If not, do so today and join the conversation!

November 7 – 10marinaHotelview
San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina
333 West Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA
Register here: http://www.prsa.org/ic2009/register.html

 
If you can’t make to the PRSA conference, please check back here.  I’ll be blogging throughout the day each day with conference notes, updates, interviews, photos.

My colleague Jeff Tidyman and I will be speaking about MatchPoint, the Associated Press Planner, and other tools and tactics our clients are using to tell the right story at the right time. We’re setting up attendees with free access to the MatchPoint application – readers of this blog are also welcome to access MatchPoint for FREE for a limited time to check it out: http://www.prmatchpoint.com/

See you in San Diego!

100 PR People Worth Following on Twitter

Two weeks ago I was surprised to find myself on Conversation Agent’s list of 100 PR People to Follow On Twitter.
Conv Agent

First of all, I appreciate the massive time Valeria Maltoni devoted to reading hundreds of website pages and blogs in order to make decisions.  

I am very pleased and honored to be a part of this collective. I won’t feign false humility or act like I’m too cool to be excited about this – I’m thrilled!

I’m excited about the new followers and friends with whom I have  conversed since  this list was published. I’m even more excited to find 99 others with the same or greater passion for our industry. Here’s a link to the full list. 

And here’s a convenient link Neville Hobson created so you can easily follow the Tweeps on the list: TweepML.

Proof That PR Drives Sales!

This week’s PRWorkbench guest blogger is Thomas Scott, VP of Operations for Showhomes. Thanks to Thomas for these great observations made at last week’s Franchise Update Conference.

Franchise Industry Execs Miss the Opportunity to Leverage Franchise PR to Drive Sales

P1040751300 franchise executives converged on the Drake Hotel in Chicago this week for three days of intense evaluation about the state of franchise sales and dialog about best practices that drive results in today’s market. This much anticipated Franchise Update Conference centers around industry reports on numbers of franchise units sold, lead sources for the year, and cost per franchise sale.

P1040747

 

This year’s theme, Mission Possible, held lots of promise as the previous year has been a wasteland for many companies. This year three big issues converge into a perfect storm that creates lots of choppy waters for franchise sales:

 

  1. Fran Data experts projected that the franchise industry will have some truly choppy waters for the next four or five years due to lack of bank financing and shaky loan underwriting making credit hard to come by
  2. Traditional powerhouses of franchise sales lead generation have trailed off significantly; franchise portals in particular are not delivering the quality leads they once were
  3. The dramatic shift in the way people communicate and build trust and how this impacts the rise of social media left more than a few companies struggling to connect the dots

A big disconnect with franchise sales lead generation centered on an old-school tool: Franchise PR. Here’s a list of lead sources for franchise sales this year:

Lead Sources for Franchise Sales (where leads for franchise sales come from)

  • Internet          34%
  • Referrals          28%
  • Brokers            17%
  • Print                  8%
  • Other               13%
  • Trade Shows      3%
  • PR                    3%

Sources of Closed Franchise Sales (Where the leads that actually closed came from)

  • Internet          50%
  • Brokers           16%
  • Trade Shows   13%
  • PR                 11%
  • Other             10%

Franchise companies only generated 3% of the total leads for franchise sales this year. Only 3%! Those measly 3% of leads resulted in 11% of the total industry unit sales this year. 11%! Making matters worse, almost half of the companies represented at the Franchise Update Conference were not using PR to generate sales leads. HALF!

The Franchise Update report also gave out projected average budgets for franchise development: the average company will spend $162,000 on its total budget to sell franchises this year. PR was way down on the list of expenditures. If PR done poorly and without consistency produced 11% of the franchise sales last year, what should you budget to grow a franchise system?

Franchise companies need to wake up – PR if used correctly by someone that understands the social media shift is a powerful tool for franchise sales lead generation. PR firms need to wake up too. What PR worked 20 years ago and even what worked last year DOES NOT WORK in today’s market.

Here’s the issue: publicity is great. Publicity will get you in the papers and can help with search engine optimization and Google search results. Publicity can generate a binder full of clips. Franchisees love publicity because it’s great for the ego. Publicity does not, however, generate franchise sales. Old-school press releases about store openings, expansion plans and staff changes don’t have the oomph they once did in today’s social media market.

PR can be used to aggressively drive your franchise sales if you focus on telling your story and driving the social media conversation about what you do. We’ve successfully done this at my company, Showhomes, and I listened to Stan Freidman, CEO of Retrotax talk about how he has used it to get his new company off the ground.

Success with PR centers around the story you tell. If you can get people talking about your sales effort in social media arenas like Linkedin and Twitter, you can get reporters to bite and that will lead to lots of online trust and credibility. This is crucial because candidates are at their lowest trust level any of us have seen.

They call this the ‘Great Recession’ for a reason!

For more information from Thomas Scott, please contact him at:

Thomas Scott
VP Operations, Showhomes
615-483-4923
tscott@showhomes.com
www.showhomes.com
Twitter: @showhomesthomas
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomscott

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 – Update

 
Yesterday, our team at eNR had a lively discussion on the direction of social media and public relations lead by co-developer of our MatchPoint service, Peter Himler of Flatiron Communications.
 
For anyone attending the Media Relations Summit in New York this weekend through Tuesday, Peter has organized a Tweetup on Monday. Click here for details and registration: http://nyctweet.eventbrite.com/

 

Crown Plaza Times Square - Home of Media Relations Summit 09
Crown Plaza Times Square - Home of Media Relations Summit 09

 

PRWeek Goes Monthly

 

PRWeek has just announced that that it will soon be a monthly magazine. This was part of a slew of announcements about revamps of the online edition, e-newsletter, and blogs.prweeklogo1

 

See the full announcement here:
 

http://www.prweekus.com/PRWeek-announces-weekly-online-edition/article/130669/

 
This move makes sense to me, especially combined with the online changes and additions. 

 
What are your thoughts on PRWeek and other PR industry publications? Are they still near the top of your reading stack? Or have you already seen most of the content online by the time it arrives? 

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.

 

 

Fundamental Change at Media Outlets

  

Here is a very interesting trend pointed out by the development team at MatchPoint:

 

 

PR pros should be aware of a fundamental change in the media. In the current economic debacle, fewer and fewer journalists are employed be a specific media outlet.
 
It appears that the media have responded to the current business conditions, in part, by outsourcing editorial functions. The overwhelming minority of bylined journalists in MatchPoint are staff journalists. Most content is now produced by freelancers and syndicators.
 
For example, an analysis of MatchPoint’s Benton Evening News content, circulation approximately 4,000, produced the following results during a recent sample month:
 

  • 301 bylined articles.
  • 171 unique bylined journalists
  • 30 journalists produced > 5 articles

 
However, the Benton Evening News maintains a staff of only 2!
 
“Contributors,” including both freelancers and syndicators, are rapidly becoming the new mainstream.

 

 

For more information on MatchPoint, visit: MatchPoint

 

Or check out MatchPoint’s Facebook page

 

 

Media Outreach via Twitter

 

In March 2008, the Dow was over 12,000 and just a handful of early-adapting journalists and PR folks were using Twitter on a regular basis. What a difference 12 months make! The growth of Twitter has created an amazing and somewhat frightening channel to PR pro’s to converse with the media.

 

I would like to hear your stories and comments about experiences connecting with journalists in recent months.

 

  

  • How has your media outreach via Twitter been received?

 

  • Any negative feedback from journalists?

 

  • Overall, has Tweeting journalists been effective for you?

 

  • What would help improve this method of engagement?

  

Please comment below or send your tales to me at jmonson@enr-corp.com