Need to get some PR? Want a reporter to write an article about you? There are basically four avenues for the small business:
- Traditional wire services
- Social Media
- Direct contact with the media
- Bloggers (yes, bloggers are sometimes considered “social media” but there is a big difference in the way you’d pitch an individual blogger versus sending out an alert to all your Twitter followers).
Wire Services
You can try the traditional route of putting out a press release on one of the news wire services, like PR Newswire and BusinessWire. MarketWire is a similar, but less expensive, wire service. While in the past these services have been effective, they are pricey and possibly becoming less effective as mainstream media declines and social media takes hold. For example, local-only distribution of a press release on BusinessWire starts at $180.
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, check out Bay City News Service. It’s a news wire service that focuses on news for the Bay Area. Rumor is it is FREE to put out a press release, but their website says “contact us for subscription and access pricing.” If you know more details, please leave them in the comments.
Social Media
Instead of a traditional wire service, try garnering some PR via social media. Of all your options, I most strongly recommend Twitter. First off, it’s FREE. Second, many people in the media use Twitter on a daily basis. Because of this, Cisco now uses Twitter almost exclusively for press releases. Need more convincing? Check out this blog post by April Dunfordabout how she used Twitter to garner her company more PR than they ever dreamed by eschewing the traditional news wire services.
Similar to Twitter, you might also want to check out Digg. Be warned that Digg is basically ruled by super-elite male computer nerds who are primarily interested in technology gizmos. So if you’re a video game manufacturer you might have a good chance of rising the the Digg ratings enough to be noticed by the media. But if you are an interior designer, Digg is not a good place for you. Don’t even bother.
PitchEngine also looks promising. It is focuses on “Social Media Releases” that can contain videos, audio, images, social links and more — in addition to the traditional text. Basically, members of the media sign up with PitchEngine to receive news on particular topics. Companies wanting to distribute news create Social Media Releases and host them (video, links, and all) on the PitchEngine site. PitchEngine then notifies the interested reporters and distributes the news to Google news. Currently, it’s FREE to host a social media release on PitchEngine for 30 days. If you want the release to be around – and findable by reporters – beyond 30 days, you can pay from $10 per month per release.
Of course, the worth of PitchEngine depends on it becoming widely adopted by both PR pros and journalists. Currently the network is kind of small – about 1000 users (many of which, I’ll bet, are “pushing” news for free instead of consuming it).
Direct Contact
The last, but most effective strategy for getting PR is to think of the 15-20 media outfits most interested in your news. Meet the specific reporters, get their contact information, and develop personal relationships with them – learn what they cover, the point of view they usually take, the type of stories they want to writer. Then, one day far in the future, email/fax your press release directly to them along with a personal note describing what that specific reporter will find interesting about the release.
Bloggers
All the above suggestions assume that your ultimate goal is to get members of the traditional media to cover your company’s news. However, in 2010 the traditional media is waning and bloggers are becoming more powerful. Having a high profile blogger cover your news can be a PR dream-come-true.
But targeting bloggers is also a whole other article in itself. Look for it in an upcoming post.