Updated: July 7, 2009
With the landscape of public relations changing due to increasing reliance on the Internet, you need to adapt to take advantage of the opportunities that have emerged.
When I first started working at a small advertising agency, I was handed a pretty menial task looking up newspapers, radio, and TV stations local to a town in the Midwest that was being overrun with wildfires. One of our clients made a fire retardant spray that could protect the homes there – if it were applied in time. The agency’s idea was to fax a press release about the spray to all the local media and hope the orders would roll in.
But faxes and postal mail are just too slow when it comes to news. Even back then, I suspect those journalists and editors were already looking for their story ideas and research sources online.
Now, everything’s changed. If we wanted to reach those same people, we would have various ways to place our product where they could find find it when they went online to search for something that would help protect their homes.
This impacts not only your delivery method, but also the content and topics that can pass for press releases.
The press release was originally aimed solely at editors, with hopes of finding our way into a story they were working on and getting coverage in their magazine or newspaper. Now, press releases are out there for everyone to see. You have the opportunity to reach your end customers directly online, whether it’s a housewife in Minnesota or a purchasing agent in Texas.
Visit David Meerman Scott’s blog to download his free report that shows you the new way to use PR to your advantage – The New Rules of PR