PR: Most of the Time your Audience is a Search Engine
I hear the chorus – when it comes to pitching the media – traditional media like newspapers or tv shows – they want the story. They are sick of pitches that either don’t apply to them, or that aren’t interesting.
Most of the time, it’s not interesting that you named a new CEO or made a new partnership. Your software or product isn’t that interesting (unless you’re Klimit). What makes things interesting is the human element or the story.
Reporters are burned out, stressed out, and many are losing their jobs right now. They don’t have energy and time to read about your news. So what is a PR firm or a company trying to get attention to do? Tell and distribute your own story. When and if you have a story that’s interesting or bigger, then go ahead and pitch.
In the meantime, your audience is a search engine. Or, it’s a social media site like Facebook where you interact with potential customers (or just people) directly. It’s really about being human, responding, and building trust with communities. It’s where someone who specifically cares about your industry, your product, or your company will find you.
You pay a lot for distribution (hiring someone to get the word out to new audiences). You have something to say but no one is listening. You can say it on your web site, but how many people will find it? Some. But if you distribute your news online hundreds of others outlets will see it, you’ll get more exposure. Your news will be interesting to someone and be reprinted, blogged about, or linked to on other web sites that otherwise wouldn’t know you exist.
Or, your news will just sit there until someone looks for it in a search engine. That’s good too. Because search engines don’t get headaches. They’re not overwhelmed or losing their jobs. They have space. Sure it helps to be interesting. But it’s not the same as pitching to media.
When it comes to news, search engines are the holders of information about your company. Traditional PR needs to weed through the news and choose the right outlet. Many stories will go to search engines. Some will get on the news. Clients must change from wanting to see stories about them in the press, to thinking about impressions, traffic to their web site, and direct sales from their news releases.
7 Responses to “PR: Most of the Time your Audience is a Search Engine”
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December 5th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Thanks for the interesting input you gave about search engines! Nice job.
December 5th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
If you’re just targeting a search engine, you might as well just blog your news item, because the PR outlet web pages are likely to have lower search engine rank and credibility than your own company website.
The point of a PR company is to help a company identify the news that’s fit to print, or air. Appoint somebody within the company to be a blogger and evangelist, sure, but I wouldn’t pay a bunch of money to distribute a story that isn’t attention-worthy.
December 5th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Eric,
Why not do both? PRWeb gets you into Google News, Yahoo News, and hundreds of sites, including top newspapers that you won’t get in by posting the story on your blog or site.
PR companies are needed (to write, identify news, and for relationships they have). But for routine news that doesn’t have a larger play, you can distribute it yourself over a PR site and get backlinks for your keywords.
I should specify that I’m speaking to small businesses who don’t have the budget for a PR company.
Thanks for your comment -
Janet
December 6th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Hi Janet,
I have done a LOT of press releases with PRWeb, and while it does get you quite a few backlinks, they tend to be very low quality, on the whole. You could spend the same amount of time chatting up some influential bloggers on the topic and get a high quality backlink that will drive more actual visitors and search engine juice to the site.
I’ve done it both ways. The blogger outreach works better.
However, if you’re desperate for your first backlinks, or you just like watching numbers rise, PRWeb is a good way to make it happen — I just haven’t seen it monetize well compared to alternative marketing methods.
I did web marketing and SEO consulting professionally in a previous life, and I’ve helped launch websites with 5 million+ unique visitors monthly.
The simple truth is that the slap it on PRWeb strategy is not the least bit effective compared to developing a link worthy story or blog post to attract real visitors and the attention of thought leaders in your information space. There simply is no viable substitute for a bit of creativity and real PR work.
- Eric
December 6th, 2008 at 7:25 am
hey janet – i couldn’t agree more… PR is broken in a basic way. i think there’s a fundamental problem with how it scales… and for this reason more PR money will be spent on Online PR tactics in the future. I’ve blogged about it here if you’re interested. http://www.contentandmotion.com/blog/tradional-pr-is-broken-vol-2-the-online-pr-bullet-list/
….but yours is a little more elegantly put! : )
December 6th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Eric,
I agree completely that you should chat up bloggers (when it’s a good story). I still think both – but test for your industry.
My friends got on Fast Company’s blog and then on lots of other blogs through one PRWeb press release.
I recommend after the press release – promote the news – to bloggers, on your blog, on social media, and bookmarking sites.
A lot of my audience struggles to come up something newsworthy but want to do it themselves to some degree.
All of the reporters I hear from have to really scrape to give even one example of a good pitch they’ve gotten from a PR firm. They sound annoyed actually.
So it looks like there’s a shortage of creativity, but I’ve seen plenty of real PR work.
Care to write a guest post on the subject?
Thanks
Janet
December 6th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I think the point I was really trying to make is that the search engine is never a good target audience. If you don’t have a link worthy story, it doesn’t matter how many junk sites you get linking back to you. None of those links really matter, and the more search algorithms evolve to target individual searchers, the less it matters if you’ve got 6,000 PR0 sites pointing at you.
What really matters is when you get the attention of real people, you have a headline that grabs the reader, and a story that pulls them in, and real people start linking to you. Who cares if your press release ranks well, if no real people want to click on it?
Always, always write with real people in mind, and the search performance will follow. Do a little research and use keywords that real people are searching for. If you’re marketing a product, figure out a way to target your customer’s needs and get them thinking about what your product can do for them right away.
Maybe you’re running a small company with a small budget, but if you can organize a charity event, or coincide your product launches with seasonal deals or newsworthy events, suddenly there’s a real story there. There’s no substitute for creativity.
Remember, rankings don’t give you traffic. People do. Your friends wouldn’t have been on FastCompany without a good story.
What I’m really getting at is that there’s no point in dumping money into disseminating information that nobody is interested in. If you want to play with PRWeb distribution, start with a good story. The better your story is, the higher it will rank on PRWeb, the less you’ll have to spend to get it in front of influential people, and get real backlinks rolling in.