creating an effective media relations plan
DESCRIPTION
A special workshop presentation given at the 2009 National Conference on Service & Volunteering on Wednesday, June 24, 2009. Presenters include Eric Borsum, Marta Bortner, Kelly Huston, Jessica Payne, Alexia Allina.TRANSCRIPT
1
Presented June 24, 2009
Creating an Effective Media Relations Plan
Presenters
Eric BorsumManaging Partner
PainePR
Marta Bortner Assistant Director/External Affairs
CaliforniaVolunteers
Kelly HustonAssistant Secretary
California Emergency Management Agency
Jessica PayneSocial Media Strategist
PainePR
Alexia Allina Media Relations Strategist
PainePR
Mary BorrelliMedia Relations Manager American Cancer Society
3
Agenda
• Media Relations Fundamentals– Today’s Media Landscape– Working with Media– Creating Your Story– Telling Your Story– Traditional Approaches– On-Line/Digital Approaches
• Case Studies
• Discussion/Q&A
4
Today’s Media Landscape
5
Journalism in Transition
• Technology has dramatically changed the way consumers get information – Blogs, podcasts, vlogs, v-mail, PDAs, RSS, etc.
• Broadcast/print media are losing “share of mind”– Only 1/3 get information from TV news– Newspaper readership (printed) has dropped; recent
circulations: down 2.8% daily and 3.4% Sunday • Online editions are adding readers and advertising
revenues are at a healthy pace – More than 32 million people in U.S. read blogs
66
Today’s Media Are …
• Under increased pressure and facing uncertain industry economics
• Journalists are producing content for multiple mediums– Print publication and outlet’s online site and/or blog
• Being asked to do more with less• Constantly monitoring their value to their media
companies
7
Media +
• We’re evolving from … get me ink … to a combination, including word of mouth “buzz” and influencer marketing
Now we can generate publicity as well as help ignite conversations among our target audiences directly.
8
Working with Media
9
Media – The Perfect World
• Ready to take our calls
• Have plenty of space or time to fill
• Committed to getting the story right the first time
• Double-check facts and sources
• Believe we have a valuable story
10
Media – The Real World
• Traditional media are stretched thin and struggling to keep up with online competitors (i.e., news sites and blogs)
• Editorial space is shrinking• Fighting to be first and pressure to
produce• Believe we have a valuable story
11
How Media Work – Print
• Newspapers– Access to spokespeople for detailed interviews – Allows for greater explanation– Work against varying deadlines
• Magazines– More in-depth interviews– Angle relevance to readers– Longer deadlines
• Wire Services– Always want story first and always on deadline– Service all of the above
12
How Media Work – Broadcast
• Television– Completely driven by visuals and sound bites – Varying formats– Emotional hooks, personal relevance– Work against hard deadlines for scheduled programs
• Radio– Reliant on sound bites and audio– Varying formats– Work against hard deadlines for scheduled programs
13
How Media Work – Online
• Varying formats and focus
• Utilize print, visual and audio elements
• Optimum flexibility
• Allows interactive dialogue
• Anyone can be a reporter
• Huge opportunities, huge risks (can be a spoiler)
14
Media Deadlines
• All reporters write stories on a deadline … could be days or minutes!– Always respond before the deadline, even if it is to explain
that you cannot provide them with the needed information
15
Creating Your Story
16
What’s News?
17
News Is…
• Controversy or change
• Rooted in the “new” and each story must contain newsworthy elements
• A strong story idea is a must– Idea must be interesting to viewers, listeners or readers
• The reporter will ask: “Why would my audience care about this story?”– Have an answer
18
What Isn’t News?
19
News Isn’t …
• Just any event• A personal opinion or interpretation
of something• Only a bunch of facts• Always news
20
20
What Media Are Looking For
Story
Accurate Facts
Credible Experts
3rd Party Validation
Colorful Anecdotes
Audience/Time Relevance
Unique Perspective
21
What Makes A Story?
• Angle – The theme of the story; you must provide an angle that will make sense to the reporter’s audience
• Hook – The initial idea that grabs the reporter’s attention – provide facts that support your story
• Timing – Pitch your story at an appropriate time; do not pitch when a major, national news event has occurred (e.g. Hurricane Katrina)
22
Decision Process
• Does this fit my beat?
• Is this “breaking” now?
• Is this something people want/need to know about?
• Will this help people make decisions about how to live their lives?
• What else is happening?
• Is this a credible source?
• Does this support/impact another story?
• Is this exclusive?
• Who else has the story?
• Can I tell the whole story right now?
23
Where Media Go for Info
• Internet• Industry Trade
Publications• Past Media Coverage• Competitors or
Colleagues• Influencers/Experts
• PR Practitioners• Blogs/Message
Boards/Community Forums
• Other Media • White Papers/Annual
Reports
24
The Five W’s
• Good news stories need to answer:
25
Story Mining
• What are all the related stories?
• Which can I support? – Information
– Impact
– Immediacy
– Individuals
– Images
26
Story Mining Process
National Conference on Volunteering
& Service
Topic
Event
People
27
Story Mining Process
PEOPLE
Government
Staff
Speakers
Partners
Community
Participants
Youth
Faith Community
Nonprofit
Experts
Volunteers
Employees
Corporate
First Ladies
28
First Ladies Story
• What we know: – Support service and volunteering
– Serve America Act/CaliforniaVolunteers backdrop
– Attending largest gathering of volunteer/service leaders
• Strategies – Remarks frame service and volunteering
– Activities kick off Summer of Service
– Serve as chief motivators to drive volunteering
29
Key Messages
• Key messages communicate a vision, position or essential fact in a concise statement
• They should be consistent and incorporated in all communications
• Spokespeople should be trained to deliver messages effectively
• Key messages are the points to your story
30
What is a Key Message?
31
Developing Key Messages
32
Sample Message
33
Telling Your Story
34
Media Materials
• National Press Release – Communicates your news and includes quote(s) from organization
– Tailor for local markets as needed
• Pitch Letter/E-mail – Offers various angles for covering story for editor/reporter/producer’s audience
• Fact Sheet – Includes more detailed information
• Backgrounder – Provides a history of the organization
35
Media Materials
• Media Alert – Promotes specific event, including details about what, why, when, where and PR contact information
• Biography – Offers more detail about campaign spokesperson's background and expertise
• Infographic – Illustrates a statistic or key information graphically
• Photography – Photos that media can use in their stories
36
News Strategies
• Broad Pitching – Target all relevant outlets
• Exclusive – Give single media outlet(s) the story before any other outlet receives it
– Used for stories that might be tough to sell
– Can secure bigger story and drive other types of media to cover
– Strategy MUST be used carefully … can really upset other key contacts
37
News Strategies
• Embargo – Offer details to media, but asks they do not publish/broadcast info before a specified date
– Can be risky to media relationships, especially since online outlets and bloggers have such a fast news cycle
– “Lead Steer” – Leverage key outlet, such as wire, to ignite more broad coverage
– Heavily focus on USA Today and Today in order to generate interest from local market broadcast and print
38
Example Media Strategy
Target Audience
Newspapers inTop-20 Markets
LocalTV
Local RadioBusiness & News
Weeklies
Exclusive Embargo
BlogsOnline
LocalNewspapers
Press Release
Trade Media
First Ladies at the National Conference Story
39
Traditional Approaches
40
High-Profile Spokesperson
Using a high-profile spokesperson can really help
get media (and consumer) attention for your cause,
event or ongoing initiative
Julianne Moore and Susan
Sarandon for Duracell
Wendy Bellissimo for Pampers & Dreft… Celebrity Nursery
Designer and exclusive product line at Babies R Us (LOVED by moms)
NASCAR’s Tony Stewart for Old Spice
Felicity Huffman
and Tucker for
IH4TH
41
Media Event
• Provides setting for news in a high-profile way
• Opportunity for on-site media to capture b-roll, photos and interviews with spokesperson– Images and interviews
captured provide additional content for resulting media coverage
42
Consumer Surveys
• Independent research company conducts survey to gauge perceptions
• Data offers statistical info for media materials – Cost: $8M
• Statistics sell story to media• Data offers reporters news nuggets
and provides reason to write the story now– Survey data is best used when it’s new
43
Satellite Media Tour
• Producers book time in “windows” with interview live or edited for later use
• Two types of SMTs:– Stand-alone or Co-op
• Broadcast bookings (12-20); 2MM-3MM impressions
• Cost: $40M (stand-alone); $25M (co-op)– Includes spokesperson fees
44
Audio News Release (ANR)
• Pre-packaged "news" story distributed to 500+ radio stations and 7M online news sites
• Transmissions sent via popular radio networks– CBS Radio, Westwood One, CNN Radio, NBC Radio and
CNBC Radio
• Reach: 10MM-12MM impressions• Cost: $8M
45
Matte Release
• “Controlled” print opportunity consisting of a camera-ready, 350-word print story with photo
• Pre-produced article is mailed to small, localized daily and weekly newspapers
• Reach: 1MM impressions via 250+ outlets
• Cost Estimate: $7M
46
Other Examples
• Media/Deskside Tour – Road tour with to meet with editors and talk about an organization, industry news, etc.
• Bylined Article – Written by a non-media person, usually an influencer in a certain field, and submitted for publication
• B-roll Package – Includes footage of an event, real people and soundbites that can be used in resulting TV stories
• Webcast – Use of Web to deliver “tours”
47
Online/Digital Approaches
48
• Crowd sourcing will drive new business models and innovation
• Leveraging offline contact via social networks• Mobile Web and iPhone application development• “Micro-Segmentation” or niche communities• Slim-down, build-up of news media• Mandate for “doing good” amps volunteering and
service organizations
What’s Going On?
49
• Essential social media tools
• Start here for an understanding: ProCommunicator.com
Social Media Tools: Taking A Closer Look
Wikis Bookmarking
Forums
50
• 300+ million users; largest social network in the world
• 70+ million American users
• 95 percent of users have used at least one app
• The fastest growing demographic - Boomers
51
• Official Statshttp://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
• Uncovering Tastemakershttp://facebook.grader.com/
• Popular Facebook Forumshttp://forum.developers.facebook.com/
• Still confused?http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking
Research: Facebook
52
• Essentially a photo and video publishing platform – enables users to upload photos, tag them with relevant info
• More than 5 billion images hosted; 24 million monthly unique visitors
Flickr
53
• Search Flickr.com for tagged photos
• Don’t forget to search for misspellings or abbreviations
• Looking for research on most popular cameras? Try Flickr’s camera page, based on camera metadata from uploaded images:http://www.flickr.com/cameras/
• Still confused?http://www.commoncraft.com/photosharing
Research: Flickr
54
• Video sharing site – users, brands can create “channels” with their own content that others can subscribe to
• Also a social network – account creates ability to comment on photos, join groups
• An expensive Google acquisition – $1.6 billion
• High traffic – 60-80 million users/month, serves 100 million videos daily
• Crackdown on overly promotional videos (and ads) signifies emerging trend of monetization
YouTube
55
• Go to YouTube and search for client names or industry terms
• Helpful FAQ page: http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/
• Take a look at Blendtec “channel” to grasp how YouTube can be customized: http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec
Research: YouTube
56
• Answers the question: “What are you doing?”
• Micro-blog = express publishing of the here and now
• 3rd most trafficked social network – 17+ million unique visitors
• Reports of wild growth – 2700 percent, 900 percent … whatever, it is a force of nature
• Oprah and Ashton “stamp” helped it go mainstream
57
• Twitter search is straightforward, searchable by date via advanced http://Search.twitter.com
• Twitter Grader is useful for searching out top Twitter influencers by keyword, location and more; also has interface for Facebook http://twitter.grader.com/
• Still confused? http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter
Research: Twitter
58
• Private-label social networks platform
• Lets you host a content-specific social network without building the infrastructure
• Commonly used for specialty groups, nonprofits
• Requires some HTML/coding but is very straightforward
Ning
59
• Ning has a search interface on its home page:http://www.ning.com
• For now, search is pretty limited – no ability to sort by number of members or relevance
Research: Ning
60
• There are two kinds of Wikis:
– Internal Wiki (Razorfish) designed for real-time collaboration within an organization and streamlining/simplification of file-sharing over multiple sources
– External Wiki (Wikipedia) augmented and policed by consumers and viewed by the general public
WikisWikis
61
Still confused?http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
Research: WikisWikis
Main Wiki Page
Discussion about Page
Content
View Page Source (edits)
See Change History
62
• Blog – “a type of Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video” (Wikipedia.org)
• 77.7 million unique visitors in the U.S. (ComScore, August 2008)
• Moms (aka “Chief Household Officers”) heavily use blogs as source of information; according to the 2009 Women in Social Media Study by BlogHER:– 64 percent of women are twice as likely to use blogs than social
networks as source of information
– 55 percent of women are in the blogosphere each week
Blogs
63
• Technorati: Helps identify blogger influencers by topic http://technorati.com/
• Google Blog Search: Provides a good second layer for uncovering blog content. Use advanced search page to dig a bit deeper on date and other delimiters http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch/advanced_blog_search
• Build lists of top blog influencers for your topic http://www.blogs.com/topten/ and http://alltop.com/
• Still confused? http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs
Research: Blogs
64
• Top 10 social bookmarks garner more than 30 Million monthly visitors
• These include (in order): Digg (news), Y!Buzz (news), Technorati (blogs), StumbleUpon (news), del.ici.ous (news), kaboodle (shopping), reddit (news), mixx (media sharing), Propeller (news) and Fark (media-sharing)
• “Slashdot Effect” aka “Slashdotting”
Social Bookmarking Bookmarking
65
• Junoba (http://www.junoba.com/) currently offers one of the more robust social bookmarking search engines
• Still confused?http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english
Research: Social BookmarkingBookmarki
ng
66
• Thread-based conversation sites for users to pose, answer questions and engage in dialogue
• Structured much like e-mail; forum might be based on a large topic (airline travel) with sub-forums for specific categories (airlines, destinations)
• Often used for technical content on consumer electronics sites
Discussion Forums
67
• Researching and monitoring posts within forums: http://boardreader.com/
Research: Discussion Forums
68
• 162 million smartphones sold globally in 2008
• 34 million smartphones were sold in the United States in 2008 (20 percent of the nation's overall mobile phone market of some 173 million units)
• Apple's App Store offers 27,000 iPhone applications
• As of March 2009, 800 million downloads from the App Store (500 million as of mid-January 2009)
• According to marketers: mobile apps – trillion dollar industry; mobile gaming apps – billion dollar industry
Mobile/iPhone Apps
69
• Google remains the easiest way to find mobile applications
• iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows all offer very popular mobile applications, some of which are platform-specific, however many are cross-platform
• Popular aggregators like Google and Yahoo! also offer branded apps
Research: Mobile/iPhone Apps
70
Web-/Pod-/VOD-casts
• What is it?– Distribution of edited video or audio clips to media outlets– Helps support programs with online or buzz-driven coverage
• Expected Results– Postings on variety of Web sites/blogs– Potential traffic increase to brand Web site
• Best used for– Supporting larger PR initiatives and tactics– Generating broader awareness for campaign, event, etc.
with media – Repurposing b-roll, sound bites, etc.
71
Asset Page for Online Influencers
• Develop brand asset page and populate with content that bloggers and target sites can drag and drop
• Includes multiple categories for information
• Facts, stats, pics, video, media coverage and more
• Link to content is given to target sites when we’re dialoguing with them; so content is exclusive to our online influencers
72
Research, Education & Empowerment