Digital PR Campaigns. How Important Are They?
At 72Point we are constantly experimenting to try and create digital PR campaigns that work for our clients and publishers.
Interestingly we're seeing great results from online quizzes, which are getting great digital pick up with the added benefit of real engagement from readers.
This represents a win for both parties. The client is getting thousands of completions on their quiz which is specifically designed to align with their messaging and the publishers are getting an uptick in terms of dwell time.
Our in-house design team, Oath Studio, create these assets to engage target audiences spanning and coupled with our experience of what stories drive the news agenda, these digital-first campaigns have been driving punchy results for our clients.
YourRedCar
Our recent project for The Romans and YourRedCar featured a fully branded quiz to discover what your car choice says about your personality.
As well as the vast news coverage secured, the quiz delivered 11,568 completions, providing great engagement with the brand and carrying their key message to their audience in a fun and memorable way.
Average completion time of the quiz was 2 minutes and 30 secs, showing that visitors had a solid dwell time too.
Fixter
Likewise, MOT and car service provider Fixter needed content to engage their audience. We put together a quiz to test for dashboard knowledge, promoting their key message of being a revolutionary car maintenance provider.
That quiz generated 11,300 plays to give Fixter a highly engaging asset to embed on their website and supplementing the widespread media coverage secured.
As part of SWNS Media Group, we have access to a social media audience of over 540,000 users, meaning that we can distribute content to a wide audience on those digital platforms, ultimately directing viewers to our clients' websites.
If you'd like to know more, drop us a line. Hello@72point.com
Snapchat and Infographics
By Evelina Peterson
A demand for visual news bites on social media apps such as Snapchat is giving infographics a new lease of life.
Graphic visualisations of research and insights came to the fore on the back of the online news boom, giving editors a dynamic piece of content that is appealing to internet audiences.
But now they have found new avenues thanks to various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and, most recently, Snapchat.
Thanks to the new ‘Discover’ channels, graphic statistics and news content have taken on a more important role as publishers strive to reach a more millennial audience.
As a platform that is more intimate and absorbing than other social networks, infographics have found a more natural fit on Snapchat’s easily-to-consume news channels, and it’s an area that is playing into the hands of PR firms.
Chocolate gets snapped
A recent 72Point story distributed on behalf VoucherCodes garnered significant traction after it was picked up by The Sun’s discovery channel on Snapchat.
With a reported 150 million daily-active users on the channel it demonstrated tremendous value for money for the client, driving users to a wide spread of online coverage.
Senior Designer Matt Harvey from 72Point, emphasises the success of infographics, saying: “Content marketers are well aware of the value of visuals like infographics as they increase engagement that connect your audience to your brand.”
“To maximise engagement and their value it is important to tailor infographics for the platform they are published on and supply in formats that are easy for editors to use.
“For example supplying infographics as one image but also design it so it can be split into sections, providing options and maximising the chance of pickup.”
“It is also important to strike a balance between creating content that is engaging but also uses a visual style that ties the content to the brand”
Why Infographics?
One of the most powerful aspects of an infographic is the way that colour can be used to help suggest which emotion should be felt by the reader, therefore making the content seem more personal and connecting the individual to the information being processed.
This can be deemed particularly important as readers don’t want to be ‘sold’ to but expect the brands they associate with to enhance their experience with useful resources, which is exactly where infographics come in to play.
At 72Point we always aim to target our infographics to specific audiences to make the graphic as captivating as possible in order to catch the eye of other audiences.
Research by MIT, which conducted an extensive study on the way the human brain processes visual information, revealed that poorly designed infographics are useless to the brain, no matter how interesting they are.
As users demand more special interest content that is in bitesize format and easily digestible the need to keep up with methods of presenting ideas will increasingly become mission-critical.
Get in touch to see how we can help you today, and to follow 72Point’s new Snapchat channel, please see @ThisIs72Point.
How to Capitalise on Influencer Marketing
In 2017 it was recorded that there was an 325 per cent increase in influencer marketing searches on Google. With Kylie Jenner being capable of wiping off $1.3 billion off of Snapchat’s value in one Tweet and the mass outrage brought about by Youtube star’s Logan Paul’s visit to Japan, it is clear influencers are as important as they have ever been. However, with that in mind, there is a right and wrong way to use influencers for brand purposes. This is especially true where Jenner was also responsible for the complete social media catastrophe in Pepsi’s controversial advert last year. Here’s our tips on how your brand can safely use social media stars to elevate and gain coverage.
Tips
1) The Bot Problem
A recent survey from the University of Southern California and Indiana University found that up to 15 per cent of all Twitter accounts were not even real people but bots. Significantly, this means that up to 50 million accounts are fake. It also doesn’t ignore the fact that many wannabe influencers are buying these bots to make themselves look more credible. This is relevant as it could mean that by using these influencers, you could be conveying a strong message to a very small audience which is not just a waste of time but also money.
2) Focusing on the Right Demographic
More followers may equate to potentially more eyes on your brand but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success if the brand’s message can’t accurately be conveyed by that influencer. At 72Point we focus on listening attentively to customer needs as brand message is the biggest priority in any campaign we produce. This is exemplified by our recent campaign for Cineworld which used The Mash Report’s Rachel Parris to highlight “what makes the perfect film.” The success garnered a staggering 148 pieces of coverage in print and online media, with coverage in the Metro and The Sun. Consequently, the message was authentic and combined an influencer who had an engaged following with a brand they loved. This unsurprisingly resulted in a natural relationship that worked very well. Therefore, the focus should be on having a partnership with an influencer who has followers in the right demographic who are actually listening and will be interested in the brand’s message.
3) Consistency
Staying true to your values is an unheralded value that is dismissed more often than not. However, in the increasingly scrutinized world of social media it can come back to haunt you in the worst ways. This was best shown with Zoella’s old Tweets resurfacing. By using influencers you have to be very careful in picking consistent individuals who you are confident can deliver. The core of 72Point also focuses on consistently providing good results that don’t devalue a brand in circumstances that may result in negative coverage later on. Ultimately, this can only be rectified by strong research for brands to find the right people for the job.
4) Measurement
Without the right tools it is difficult to evaluate how successful a campaign has been, which is why a large proportion of the job in conjunction with influencers is convincing them that we can deliver on our promises. The Digital Team at 72Point focuses a large proportion of their time measuring different metrics and keeping up to date with trends to stay on track in the ever-advancing digital landscape. Overwhelmingly, it means our content matches up well with how much extra coverage an influencer can provide to strengthen a brand to the next level.
Conclusion
As a PR firm we are always looking to capitalise on the next big trends but before doing so it’s always important to step back and get the fundamentals of conveying the right message to the right audience. The marketing and PR world is always adapting but with these tips it could provide an effective solution to help steer your brand in the right direction.
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Why PR Needs To Be A Valuable Part of Your 2018 Marketing Strategy
The beauty of PR as a 21st century marketing tool is that it has evolved into an all-encompassing method of communication. Few, if any, comms methods in a modern marketer’s tool kit could claim to meet SEO, social media and brand exposure KPIs in one fell swoop, but thanks to the nature of the digital market that is precisely what PR can achieve.
In an age where content is king, creating stories and empowering storytellers has given brands oxygen on the web to stand out where others get swallowed up. Little surprise, therefore, that 77 per
cent of exhibitors at this year’s Prolific North Live carried out PR campaigns in 2017 and 92 per cent look to do it in 2018 as well.
But there are objections to utilising PR tactics among the marketing community, namely because confusion exists over how to implement a successful PR plan.
And who can blame them? The market today is extremely crowded, which means the ability to stand out is becoming increasingly difficult. PR can return a bounty of positive business benefits, but only if campaigns are orchestrated successfully, which returns me to my initial point.The art of PR is about creating stories and empowering storytellers. Whether it be journalists, bloggers, vloggers or social media influencers, having a good story at the heart of your campaign is key to its success, and so a PR plan should always start with idea generation and stress testing.
Although journalists and other media professionals aren’t always on hand to judge a story before it has been created, plenty of agencies do have current or former hacks on their books, so seek them out and run your ideas by them before you get underway. After all, overcoming the first hurdle early on will ensure you don’t run into any bumps further down the line. Then, make sure you develop the campaign with a holistic approach across all platforms and channels. Ask whether there is a natural linking structure to satisfy SEO objectives, whether the content is optimised for online media and social media and that it is sharable.
Crucially, make sure you have an effective means of distributing the story beyond your established circles by assessing how to make a big splash in the media and ways in which to infiltrate social media audiences that aren’t currently in touch with your brand. With over nine in ten companies set to roll out PR campaigns this year, the reality is that PR is not something you can afford not to do.
72Point secures media exposure for your brand across digital and traditional media. We create, distribute, and land PR and branded news stories in massmedia publications including Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun, Daily Telegraph and Metro as well as mass-readership news sites such as The Independent and UNILAD. Content. Covered.
This blog was written as part of 72Point’s presentation at Prolific North Live 2018 as part of their Digital Keynote Theatre – click here to view video highlights from the event
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How to Make the Most of Marketing Exhibitions
How to Make the Most of Marketing Exhibitions
Exhibitions form a key part of a marketer’s arsenal, offering unique face-to-face communication with prospective clients and vital networking opportunities. But it can be a tricky task to maximise the takeaway from these events. Last week, 72Point attended the Prolific North Live Expo at EventCity in Manchester. If you read our earlier blog (http://www.72point.com/future-digital-media-north-heres/) you will be aware of just how pivitol the North is within the digital industry. 70 per cent of total UK digital tech investment was in regional clusters beyond London, with Edinburgh (£159 million), Manchester (£78 million) and Sheffield (£61 million) among the notable recipients. The event represented a massive opportunity for us to interact with the biggest movers and shakers of the digital sphere, and we wanted to share our strategy for how we maximised our return on investment.
Make sure your branding stands out
Expos offer a fantastic opportunity to get your brand out there, and you should be looking at capitalising on every opportunity you get to do so. From merchandise to sponsored events, billboards and digital content, it is crucial that you utilise as much of the available collateral at hand to make sure your brand has prominence. At Prolific North Live, we sponsored the keynote session as a way of ensuring that our logo was in as many visual slots as possible. Our Managing Director Chris Pharo and ChannelMum’s Jane Hamilton also took to the stage to share their vital experience and insights on the changing world of digital media, news and PR, which reaffirmed our position as a professional, authoritative brand. It also gives attendees some real takeaway – making them more likely to attend and remember your brand.
Keep It Simple
Simple but effective branding is the best way to convey your message. Long-winded, complex collateral can often result in key messaging being lost. Any collateral used at an event should be punchy yet informative. At our exhibition stand at Prolific North Live, we made sure to keep it simple. As an agency that creates, distributes and lands proactive stories in major publications, we can cut out the marketing fluff and just say it as it is, highlighting our key services and ROI for clients. Making sure that your message is conveyed clearly and concisely with your exhibition panels is vital so that any passers by can instantly recognise your specialties at a glance. This will give potential customers a lasting impression of what you specialise in, meaning that you will likely be their first port of call.
Engage with social channels
Events provide great visual content for social media channels, another key way to boost engagement. Followers can be gained by simply interacting naturally with other attendees and piggy-backing on the momentum that any decent expo will generate. The exhibition floor at Prolific North Live was full of cutting-edge brands showcasing innovative tech which lent itself to regular Instragram story updates – great engaging visual content for our followers to view. Through regular updates linked to the event you can boost traffic to your social pages page and gain followers. Twitter feeds work well when utilised on a rolling basis displaying general updates and goings-on at the event including relevant hashtags. This provides followers with a newsfeed, giving them all the information they need.
The take-homes
Marketing events are a great way to boost brand exposure and increase traffic to company websites/social channels – all very viable justifications for allocating spend. But, above everything, attending marketing events allows your company to stay on top of industry trends. They provide a fertile ground for networking with key individuals and learning about what’s current and what’s next to come – allowing you to identify how this relates to you. This knowledge can be invaluable in keeping your brand fresh and relevant.
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2018: The PR Trends that you need to monitor
Jack Granard looks ahead to the trends you need to monitor in 2018. See the first of this two-part feature on the digital media predictions of 2017 that you should have followed here.
2017 oversaw the continued evolution of what it is to be a PR professional, as it became more influenced by digital elements, social media and marketing.
Importantly, as content became more visual, it superseded the tried tested methods, such as traditional press releases, whilst also bringing about the rise in the use of video, influencer and infographic content. This article will highlight the upcoming trends that need to be monitored in 2018 and how it can be incorporated by your company.
The Future Role of PR: The Statistics
The advancement of the PR role is indicative of the importance of reacting quickly to the latest PR trends so as not to be left behind.
A 2017 USC Annenberg Global Communications study which interviewed 875 PR executives and 101 marketers from around the world found that digital storytelling is the biggest future PR trend with 88% citing it as important. Moreover, social listening ranked second (82%) followed by social purpose (71%) and Big Data (70%).
In terms of skills for future growth, strategic planning with 89% was voted as the most important, followed by written communications (86%), social media (84%), multimedia content development (82%), and verbal communications (80%).
87% of professionals believe the term “public relations” will not describe the work they do in five years, which exemplifies the initial point about being reactive. This is given further strength, where 60% of marketing executives believe PR and marketing will become dramatically more aligned in the near future.
Ultimately, these figures suggest the importance of being a well-rounded PR executive. It is essential to keep on adapting, otherwise the PR professional today could become extinct in as soon as 5 years.
Dark Social Media
Data coverage and tracking in the PR industry has become a fundamental element of presentation and success for clients, in identifying social influence and monitoring performance. However, what is impossible to track is dark social, which is defined as the communication through private messaging platforms, such as, text, email, Whatsapp, Messenger and Skype. The importance of tracking this is accentuated by the likes of Forbes.
Bearing any privacy concerns, the main interests in measuring this is emphasised by the notion that increasingly we are more likely to share a link via dark social than on your Facebook profile. Consequently, PR firms are incapable of measuring this and are left confused as to where the rise in traffic to websites stems from. Significantly, standard web analytics are incapable of measuring this and key insights are lost.
Therefore, to start measuring dark social, one method could be to really emphasise the social sharing buttons on your site, whilst making sure all buttons have trackable links. Alternatively, if your direct track URLs are too long, it will be more unlikely to have been typed in their browser.
Overall, with this being a recent hot point, it is notable to keep your eyes peeled for new developments.
Artificial Intelligence
As stated throughout, data measurement has been very important to the PR role and AI has the potential to extend this further, through being utilised for basic research and media monitoring.
By utilising data scientists to predict future trends and investing in artificial intelligence to also combat this, it could pave the way for workload to be reduced for PR companies and to predict when and what businesses need to change. However, one topic that has been heavily discussed is the usage of intelligent chatbots. These bots powered by artificial intelligence could evolve the way customer communication is utilised and may also be used to create a new fun concept to promote a brand. Further weight is given, as it was highlighted by Business Insider as “the biggest thing since the iPhone.”
Speech Recognition Technology
Whether you have seen the parody videos or you have utilised the technology in Amazon Echo, Apple Siri or Google Home, it is largely agreeable that it has been a strong talking point recently.
Speech recognition built into modern devices is quick, accurate and definitely the future. With the possibility of it being used more frequently it could bring about a process where ads and SEO are not relevant. This has been heavily advocated by Steve Waddington (Social Media Director at Ketchum) who believes it will “create another wave of internet disintermediation.”
With rising incomes and interest in becoming more technological, firms should try to incorporate this technology into their campaigns and find new ways to be different.
Personal Brand Reputation and Social Ethics
Is it obvious? Yes.
Does, more need to be done? Yes.
Social media has brought about exposure in new ways, putting us all under scrutiny. However, this is also a positive thing as it allows the opportunity for engagement with all these individuals through social media to gauge what this company is like. Previously, executives would target features in broadsheet papers but now optimising social networks is essential to harbouring not just brand reputation but a personal relationship with the consumer.
72Point has effectively created a space to combat this and has evolved through its recent brand revamp to better understand our organisation, our consumers and our goals. Now with increasing competition and shorter attention spans, only specialised websites who understand how to communicate effectively with all these new tools can succeed.
The PR industry is only likely to become more ethically focused with the Public Relations Communication Association’s (PRCA) expulsion of Bell Pottinger being a major point in 2017. Therefore, more awareness and positive messaging needs to be shown to restore trust.
Conclusion
This year will involve more competition and more technologies to use than ever before. At 72Point, we attempt to stay one step ahead and monitor these trends carefully. The PR world is a jungle and it has been shown to be ruthless in the past year. Therefore, more personal and genuine campaigns need to be implemented this year before it is too late.
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PR’s Fake News: Finding Meaningful Metrics
How many people were actually at Donald Trump’s inauguration? Official estimates say a maximum of 900,000 were in attendance, 100,000 fewer than Obama’s second inauguration and close to a million fewer than his first. Certain publications were happy to pitch much lower than that and soon a stream of images flooded social media showing vast swathes of empty spaces earning journalists the reputation of being “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” according to the incoming President.
In fact, so great is the challenge of fake news that President Trump used his first full day in office to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd. But whatever your opinions are of the man his incoming ceremony showed that the time for playing guesstimations is up, and media and PR professionals need to start listening up.
The PR industry has long wrestled with metrics and has at times become consumed by them. Having to prove the value of brand awareness and the actionable response of positive press coverage is no easy task, and in trying we have almost created our industry’s version of ‘fake news’ in statistics that try to convey a meaningful message, but often end up saying very little at all. Without getting all President Trump on the industry, we really need to look at our numbers.
Let’s start with AVEs. I mean, it’s 2017 and we are still constantly asked to supply these godforsaken metrics. These are the sort of figures provided back in the days when PR account executives would sit with a ruler and a bundle of newspapers and measure the size and space of a piece of coverage to generate an “equivalent advertising value” for that space. Today, people use it because the figures returned are often much higher than any PR budget and so they make PR people look good, but it’s fake news.
Even the more sophisticated measurements are struggling to keep up. Take SimilarWeb. They collect multiple amounts of data and apply an evolving algorithm with a scalable estimator to come up with a ‘best guess’ number of how many people view a piece of coverage. It takes into account the popularity of the publication, average click through rates and where the coverage sits on the homepage, but it still returns ludicrously over-beefed numbers that rarely correlate with the number of shares and other actionable responses. In fact, the PR numbers often converge with the top piece of news content from that day, even though anyone with an ounce of rationale would see the disparity.
The problem we are really trying to confront in the PR world is that we’re trying to assign arbitrary numbers (where bigger=better) to disparate campaigns which are all out to achieve disparate objectives. I have been sent countless invites to seminars discussing how best to calculate a measure of success for the PR industry, and on each occasion, I decline on the basis that surely a one-size-fits-all approach is part of the problem.
At 72Point we take each project by its individual merit. If it’s big numbers you are looking for then that’s what we can deliver – we landed on an average of 14 sites per story in December with an average of over half a million eyes per story. If it’s generating a social buzz, then we’re well set up for that too – our stories achieved an average of 5,546 social shares in the same month. And if it’s generating a bit of Google juice with follow-links and keyword optimised content then let us know, because we are one of few companies in the industry that have eschewed fake metrics for real results, because that is what ultimately counts for our clients.
2017 must be the year the professionals take back control
There’s a proverb in Romani culture that goes “a dog with two masters will die from hunger”, implying that you shouldn’t divide your loyalty because each master will assume the other has taken care of you. The philosophy of moral determinism – also notably satirized by Jean Buridan and, erm Amy Farrah Fowler from the Big Bang Theory – is particularly poignant as the PR industry reaches a crucial crossroads in 2017, where it must decide how to properly balance its commercial considerations with a responsibility to media publications and its consumers.
Last year as part of our annual white paper we noted the merger of several digital disciplines coming together under an umbrella leveraged by the creation and distribution of content. Our take on the year ahead was that traditional PR disciplines are no longer confined to the PR industry, with SEO practitioners dabbling in content to satisfy Google’s demands and marketers making the shift in response to consumer disdain for display placements.
What we didn’t initially foresee was how the input of marketing and SEO industries would impact the sort of content being produced. Marketers, for example, are slaves to the brand and very much tied to its messaging. SEO professionals are ultimately looking for tangible search results. But we PR professionals have to satisfy two masters, and as the industry starts to swell we must capitalise on the opportunity to take back control.
As an agency, 72Point is in a unique position in that we’re sat between PR agencies and the media. Our parent group, the UK’s largest independent news agency, is a shout away at any point and are there to lend us their insight into what is working at any given time, which is advice we dispense to all our clients as well as at Creative Therapy Sessions, which we rolled out across the country this year. We don’t embargo, we don’t distribute our news content in press release format, we don’t include brand mentions in the opening paragraph and we stick to the best stories, and that’s why we landed 100 per cent of our projects in back-to-back months in the close of 2016; We make it as easy for the media to lift our content as possible.
Publications will adapt at pace
Despite much change in the mainstream media market the forecasters are all starting to paint the same story; print revenue is in decline, digital revenue is yet to be fully realised. This year the pace of change is set to shift a gear, with editorial teams likely to shrink and commercial departments expand in scale and remit, often with conflicting implications for the PR industry. Soon, many media publications will be viewed more as partners than a separate entity.
Meaningful measurements
The PR industry is suffering from a serious numbers addiction. It uses estimated coverage views that bare little relevance to the social interactions and absurd projections based on simplistic mathematical sums. At some point, we’ll get found out and there will be a shift to more meaningful measurements which will result in targeted distribution on relevant publications and, crucially, better quality, shareable content.
Google will shift its indicators
In the same way brands will demand more human interactions over meaningless numbers, Google is about to shift from “exogenous”’ to “endogenous” signals to incorporate more genuine quality signals. The end may be in sight for link-building practices, which are currently a key indicator of trust, but a rather shallow one. Google’s algorithms in the future are more likely to incorporate the time people spend on the page and the way they interact with content.
From visual to interactive
Publishers want people to stick, brands want people to share, and both parties want content that works across channels. That’s why 2017 will be the year of the interactive. Quizes, graphic puzzles, even the old “spot the ball” type competitions will have their day in the sun again as we fight to keep consumers engaged.
Is the PR industry maximizing the potential of bloggers?
In the world of Public Relations all of the KPI’s, AVE’s and company mottos can distract from the aim of the game. What it truly comes down to is generating awareness of a service or product. Whilst traditional media coverage is still incredibly relevant and valuable, there is one area that is massively underutilised and potentially misunderstood– blogging!
Blogs are great for PRs. One of their main advantages is that they tend to focus on one singular issue, whether it’s gluten-free meals, menopause or men’s socks. This means that if your story fits in with the blog’s subject matter, then it is relevant to their readers. By securing coverage in blogs you’ll actually be promoting the brand more effectively with people who are genuinely interested.
Also, by focusing on a singular issue, bloggers will usually have a good understanding of the relevant research, products and experts in their field. If you can convince a blogger that your story is credible and relevant to their readers, you tap into an entire audience of people who trust the blogger’s perspective.
What is vitally important in getting bloggers interested is really getting to know their blog. For example, we work with a lot of parenting bloggers and recently did a story charting the life of an average 12-year-old boy. It was not simply enough to send the story out to all the parenting bloggers; we had to select the ones who actually had sons. It’s always good to explain why a story would interest them and with this particular story it helped to ask them to compare our findings to their experience as parents. Sometimes the content itself is not enough. You have to give the blogger a reason to engage.
So, the million dollar question is: What can PRs offer bloggers?
Payment?
The truth is the principle rule of PR is that we do not pay for coverage. That’s advertising. However, some bloggers run their site as their main source of income and expect PRs to pay them for taking their stories. Unfortunately, that is just never going to happen. When a PR can land a good story on the MailOnline with nothing but the quality of the content, why would they pay a blogger £70? Especially when the blog has about 3% of the readership of the MailOnline. It may upset some bloggers to hear it but payment is just simply not on the table.
Content
Content is what PRs can offer to bloggers. PRs have surveys, spokespeople, experts and a whole host of other resources at their fingertips that a typical blogger couldn’t afford or gain access to.
Personally, I am in a unique situation as I’m both a PR and a blogger. Now if I were approached and asked to write something for money I would turn it down. My voice is credible and taking payment ‘bribes’ to run a story would make it less credible. My opinion can’t be bought. Yet, if someone came to me with good content, research I didn’t have access to, graphics and other resources that I actually found interesting and felt my readers would find interesting, I would be more than willing to take it.
This is what PRs can offer to bloggers: content they couldn’t afford and stories their readers will respond to. PRs can also offer bloggers products to review. This saves the blogger time and money and gives them something to talk about. Providing a beauty blogger with free make-up samples does two things.1- it saves the blogger having to spend money on the samples and 2 – it makes for appropriate content that the readers will be interested in.
Events
PRs also have the funds to put on events that bloggers can go to. Bloggers shouldn’t want to be seen as a keyboard warrior, preaching from the confines of their bedroom. They should be out there engaging with people on the topic of their choice and PRs can facilitate that. Events are great. Not only does it keep the old Instagram account looking busy but it is also a meeting of like-minded people working in the same field which is great for getting inspiration as well as keeping an eye on your competition.
Inspiration hub for bloggers
As part of SWNS, we have an online hub (PLUG!) where we upload our stories and resources. This is free for bloggers to go to get relevant content. Whether a blogger needs stats to support something they are writing about, a quote from an expert or if they are simply looking for something fresh to write about, we’ve found an online hub is a great way for bloggers and PRs to work together. We have the content and they have the following. We provide newsworthy content to bloggers for free and they find their readers responding.
My hope for the future is for bloggers and PRs to understand how to work with each other more effectively and make each other stronger.
Understanding how a national newsdesk works
Can you just email it, please? Six words to send a shiver of dread down the spine of any PR when attempting to “sell-in” a story to a national newsdesk. It almost certainly means that cleverly tricked out idea or cheerfully penned piece of copy is heading for the email queue graveyard, unloved and almost certainly unread.
But perhaps the issue lies in the very phrase “sell-in” – and the alarming lack of a working knowledge of how a newsdesk works.
I should know…I ran one for a decade and had exactly the same attitude to the daily avalanche of well-meaning but ultimately futile calls from PR executives.
A newspaper is not a blank canvas of opportunity to be filled with PR “puff”, rather, at least in the opinion of the journalists manning its newsdesk, it is a limited space on which they aim to paint a daily masterpiece.
Everything must be there on merit. Every line, every column inch must be hard earned. The same golden rule applies to their online counterparts. Content must match the digital DNA of its host. Anything that does not will jar with an online editor.
The step from national newspaper journalism into PR is a very small and indeed logical step to take.
But for many it represents a yawning chasm with an ‘us and them’ mentality that frequently sees the two sides who should, perhaps, be working hand in glove instead diametrically opposed and pitched as polar opposites.
How can this gap be bridged? Put simply by working hard to understand the mind-set of the national papers and the staff who populate them.
By their very natures, news editors are a tough and cynical bunch. There is little a grizzled desk veteran will not have heard during his or her career. They’ll have heard every pitch, every nuanced subtlety deployed to chisel some space in the paper. And chances are, a call redolent with cheery bonhomie will be the last thing they need at 10.45am as they battle to build a newslist that will impress an editor.
Similarly, an online news editor will be bombarded by pressure – working at enormous speed while attempting to make sure every paragraph is accurate and every line sings.
That is why every decent PR would benefit from time spent in a newsroom environment. An opportunity to witness the ebb and flow of a day at the editorial coalface. A chance to witness:
- How a newslist evolves, who is likely to give them the time of day and when.
- The pressures brought to bear by editors and their executive teams.
- The immense speed at which stories are published online.
Much of the problem is caused by the very different timelines in play. A PR exec may have spent six weeks working towards building the “perfect” pitch. Gathering the information, writing the copy, ensuring all is approved by the client – only for it to be dismissed in a matter of seconds by a harried news editor working at warp factor 10.
Understanding the news agenda on any given day is utterly crucial as well. No newsdesk journalist will give a PR their attention while a terrorist atrocity is unfolding. Equally, sometimes a well-delivered light and frothy pitch might be the perfect riposte to the grim horror that seems to haunt our newspapers and websites in these troubled and uncertain times.
Timing is all. Freelance journalists are masters of this, understanding the right moment to call in with their offerings. They have this advantage because they have virtually. all worked in a newsroom environment and there really is no substitute for that.
Even the jargon is completely different…as with any industry, journalists and PRs have their own patois of acronyms and buzzwords, but for two professions seemingly so closely aligned, I have been taken aback by quite how different the methodology and mantras are.
News is gathered organically, and no one can have complete control over how it will grow during any given day.
News editors and journalists, in general, are perpetually one call away from triumph when a story works, or staring into the abyss if a front page splash crashes and burns.
They are expected to keep dozens of plates spinning simultaneously and to move with devastating speed when a story breaks because time is their greatest enemy.
It is only close up that the frenetic pace of a busy newsroom can be truly understood.
It is only through experience that the alchemy of turning newsprint into newspaper can be fully appreciated.
At 72Point working alongside a newsroom is an undoubted advantage. Having the SWNS Group as our parent company means we are in hourly contact with our content users, and actually being able to immerse staff in a newsroom environment with newsroom attitudes gives them an invaluable insight into how the media works.