PR and the Editors

Pushing-the-edge-blogs may be trumpeting the demise of the press release in favor of the blog, but they're just pushing-the-edge-of-insanity. Press releases are still an important part of getting your client's name out there. Not the best way mind you, but a valid way and you need to know how to do it. I should know, my background is in technology journalism. This bears repeating: please don't call a broadcast list of press contacts; you'll just get variations of these two messages:

(Polite) "I'll look for it, and if it fits in with articles I'm doing I'll give you a call." Right.

(Less-than-polite) "I get 200 releases a day. Don't call." Bang!

Well, you knew that. So what do you do? Editors are so swamped with information that they must work with tunnel vision -- like horses with blinders on. They only see the messages that impact their work right now. So help them out:

• Watch the ed cals and suggest relevant interviews. Be prepared to explain why you think it's relevent. "This is the next big thing in block-based storage!" won't cut it with an editor.
• Build a relationship with the editor so they're glad to hear from you. Yes, it can happen. I'm still friends with several of the PR people who haunted my telephone door during my editorial years.
• Think way beyond the press release -- offer to write contributed articles if the magazine takes them, and query with your ideas if the magazine does not. The more the magazine depends on contributed content, as many trade journals do, the more likely you are to get a good response to your offer.

Writing bylined articles is a really good idea for a vendor to do. Listen to this: "Over 90% of engineers report that trade magazines are their number one source for getting information about suppliers." Don't depend on a hit-or-miss mention from your press release, offer to write the darned article. Read on for more on how to do this and why it's so valuable.

Comments

[mocc]

Nice advice

[Christine Taylor]

Thanks! One of my future posts will be to journalists on "how to be nice to PR people." Lots of journalists turn into little tin gods and it's mighty unattractive. But they DO have a tough job.