What kind of energy are you putting into getting publicity for your company? Who at your company is responsible for public relations? What I know about PR from the writer's perspective can be summed up in three essential rules I'll call The Rules of Public Relations:
- Writers write about the companies they know;
- Writers write about the companies that their (thoughtful) readers rave about;
- Writers write about the companies that don't tick them off in the process of doing research.
These three rules should be taught in every business class when advertising and public relations are covered. I fear many of you (PR folks) are falling down on the job because so few of you are doing your part to get free press for your companies.
Rule #1: Tell Writers About Your Company
I happen to know that most of you are terrible at public relations. How do I know? Each week I only hear from about a dozen readers or PR people telling me about their company's or client's great products or services. Have you noticed that I'm writing about your competitors and not writing about your company? Has it occurred to you that I'm not writing about you because I don't know about you?
As an example, last week I wrote about seven companies that offer some form of rich media e-mail (see E-mail You Can't Ignore). (If you submitted your e-mail address for samples, see my note below.) I immediately heard from representatives or customers of five more solutions. Where were those messages when I was planning the column?
What types of messages do I receive? In order of increasing influence:
- A generic press release from an official PR person
- A press release with a personal note telling me why this announcement will be of interest to me, given what I've already written on this topic
- A personal note telling me that, since I was interested in some specific solution I've written about recently, I may also be interested in what this new company is doing (or doing differently), with a brief explanation of what it does
- A personal note from a satisfied customer saying I should look at the great solution they've discovered.
Can you make a difference? Yes. Make a list of every publication you read regularly. Pass it through the office, asking each member of your staff to include what they read. You'll probably find that there are 15 or more publications that you collectively read.
Now, don't just harvest all our addresses from those magazines and add us all to your press list (you can, but that's not enough). Writers are favorably impressed when we hear from readers who clearly have read some of our work. If you write to me and demonstrate that you know my style and what I write about, then I'm far more likely to request a white paper or a sample of your software, email, research, etc.
Also, don't always leave it to your PR department to handle the correspondence. What do you think will make a more positive impression on me: a note from PR about networking solutions, or a note from a director of technology with Cisco about networking solutions? That's a no-brainer. Have the person closest to the flame write to members of the press.
Rule #2: Get Your Customers to Rave (to us) About You
What could be more impressive to a writer than a customer who is so enthusiastic about a product he's using that he's sending mail about it? Viral PR -- can't beat that.
Rule #3: Don't Tick Us Off
Don't bombard members of the press with attachments until we ask for them, but do have official documents ready should we decide to follow up. Compress images that are included in attachments as much as possible. You don't know whether the writer works at home via a meager dial-up connection or in an office with a speedy T3. If your product or service is technical, have a white paper (not a brochure) ready to send. (If you're not sure you have a good white paper about your services, click here to see what I consider good ones -- sign in required.) If you do send a white paper, make sure it prints quickly and looks good printed in black and white. Also make sure there is at least one illustration of how your product works. Everyone looks at the pictures first. If you sell software that might be of interest to a small business, offer a "review copy." Ditto with research if that's the business you're in. How is it I can quote Zona Research, AMR Research, Forrester Research, Meridien, eMarketer, and IDC? Those companies make research available to writers. We can't be impressed by the quality of your products and services if we can't get our hands on them. Don't expect us to believe the demo.
Finally, you'll see that at the ECommerce Guide, we all have our addresses available on each and every article for you to contact us. DON'T contact us all at the same time about the same product. Can you think of a faster way to alienate me than to get me interested in your company, have me spend time doing research on your competitors, then find, the day I plan to sit down and write the column, that Beth Cox or Mark Merkow or Don Sussis just wrote about you? Decide in advance where your product would fit best and stick to one writer per outlet. If you're not sure, then contact the editor of the outlet (for the ECommerce Guide, contact managing editor Laura Rush) and let him or her forward the information on the to appropriate writer.
Press Releases: A Necessary Evil
There are many, many, many outlets that cover news. The hard part is getting your news to these places in a timely manner. I came across software that, through the use of a wizard, will help you write a pretty good press release and then send your press release via e-mail to over 13,000 media outlets. The product is called Press Booster. You can purchase the software -- which automatically checks for updates to the contact list when you open it -- for under $200. Alternatively, you can have the company send out your release for you for $70. There will soon be a fax version of the software, as well, which is nice since fax is still the preferred press release medium in many newsrooms.
Using Press Booster, you can select either by industry or by geography where your press release should go. I, personally, don't tend to cover news. But make sure your press releases end up at those outlets that do cover news, because your press releases are their content.
Note to Readers: Remember what I said about testing? Well I had a memory lapse and failed adequately to test the form on my site where I asked you to leave me your e-mail address if you wanted to receive sample copies of messages from the seven vendors mentioned in E-mail You Can't Ignore. If you submitted your e-mail address before about 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, June 18, please re-submit it. I'll scrub the file to make sure no one is listed more than once. Click here to submit your address.
Alexis D. Gutzman is an author, speaker, and consultant on e-business and
e-commerce topics. Her most recent book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12
Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena, was named one of the
30 best business books of this year. For more information on her upcoming
speaking engagements, please contact her directly at agutzman@internet.com.
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