Traditional and Social Media Roles in PR

Whether you're doing all the public relations yourself -- or part of a large organization with a press shop -- you need a media plan. The two biggest questions you have to ask are (1) What audiences are you trying to reach? and (2) What do you want those audiences to do?

The technology of social media and public relations is changing by the week. Yet certain bedrock principles will never change. If you talk too much, too often, people will see it as spam. But if you're not out there when people are looking, they won't know you exist. When time of day should you publish blog posts and tweets? How often?

Marketing experts will tell you that a well planned public relations campaign is often far more effective than advertising. This tutorial will assist you in developing and creating the core of your public relations campaign in six easy steps.

The media business is changing fast. Public relations is changing along with it -- but in different ways. Technology, the web and people getting their news on portable devices is bringing great change -- and opportunity -- to public relations, which is expanding worldwide.

Social media tools are turning the world of public relations upside down. It's confusing and ever-changing and incredibly useful. It's not uncommon these days to send out an announcement about a major media event by Twitter with a link to a blog with the full press release, then to post video of the event on Youtube. Doing public relations...

If you're not familiar with social media tools, it's natural to start looking at the options and get overwhelmed. Should we create a blog or be on Twitter? Is smarter to have our own web page or make a page on Facebook? Yet those are the wrong questions to ask. These social media tools are different. You wouldn't use a screwdriver to pound...

Twitter is a great tool for public relations and a social-media monster that may only grow in audiences and importance. Yet you can pack a lot of trouble in 140 characters. Public figures -- actors and rock stars, politicians and professional athletes -- have learned this the hard way. There's no rewind button. So be careful out there. When it...

A startup called Votizen is leading the way in truly using two social media tools for more than posting baby photos and issuing tweets about your current state of sandwich preparation. Votizen believes that Facebook + Twitter = votes. Votizen is on the cutting edge of marrying social media with old-fashioned persuasion, face-to-face. Just as...

More and more people are getting local news on mobile devices like iphones, Droids and iPads, and that trend is accelerating. Those who get local news on mobile devices are also opinion leaders. They're optimistic. They're connected. They talk to a lot of other people. It's an audience everybody will want to reach. And that's why PR needs to go...

Instead of trying to reach the world, people are increasingly using online media outlets to reach a local audiences, or a specialized audience, or an audience that's both local and specialized. This is a great opportunity in public relations, because public figures of all types -- from politicians to authors to movie stars -- are typically...

Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill is famous for saying, "All politics is local." The equivalent maxim in public relations and journalism may be, "All news is local." The fragmentation of media means nobody dominates the national scene. News is becoming hyper-local. That trend will be a challenge and an opportunity in public relations. How...

It's hard to say whether a newly hatched news aggregator will become the next sensation, grow into medium-sized respectability or sit in a little-known corner of the web in obscurity. These new players in the news business pose great rewards and risks. Great rewards because these new media outlets will likely be more responsive and publish...

Is a TV story better than an oped in a daily newspaper? Or should you treat a big post on a popular blog as your version of winning the Super Bowl? Public relations doesn't have a lot of science. It's an art. However, it's useful to know what works and what doesn't. A study conducted by Microsoft in the United Kingdom provides some guidance....

With the 24-hour news cycle and social media, there's a constant demand for new content. This can be a trap. Instead of sending out too little content, you can wind up sending out far too much. And it's much easier for your message to turn into a self-serving monologue. So what's the answer? How can you produce enough content -- but not too...

How people get their news is changing rapidly, that will forever change the face of news gathering and public relations. People are migrating to online news, whether it's on their smart phone, a tablet like the iPad, a laptop or desktop PC. According to the report: 47 percent of Americans get some form of local news on a mobile device. For the...

Once you've written a killer press release or oped, where do you send it? You'll need to be careful about how you build different media lists and what you do before you hit SEND. You'll need different media lists for different purposes and different audiences.

What's the difference between a press conference, a media availability and a photo op? A successful media event isn't necessarily what looks pretty or attracts a pack of journalists. Success defined by an event that's useful and informative to the press and public.

Three trends are building upon each other. First, people are shifting how they get their news. Second, web ad revenues now exceed newspaper ad revenues for the first time. Third, news aggregators are taking their newfound audiences and ad revenue and doing something with it: they're moving into the news gathering business themselves. These...

You've probably heard of Huffington Post, which was just bought by AOL for $315 million, or specialty sites like the Drudge Report (politics). These are popular sites for online news. With more people getting their news online, these news aggregators are becoming a huge part of the distribution of news, and some of them are getting into the news...

The mass media audience is split. Fragmented. Today, people can get their news a thousand different ways. If you want to reach more than a slice of the population, you have to get into not only newspapers, but radio, television and the internet.

So what is the news cycle, and how does it work? Newspapers, blogs, TV stations and radio all operate on completely different news cycles. The more time-sensitive a story is, the more you need to think about the news cycle and who to talk to first. The more time-sensitive a story is, the more you should lean toward radio, TV and blogs. The more complex and important a story is, the more you shoul…

Newspapers are on tighter deadlines these days. I worked at a daily where we didn't start running the presses until midnight. Today, it's not unusual for some newspapers to get printed at 6 p.m. A simple way to look at newspapers is to treat them like you'd want to be treated. The later in the day, the harder their deadlines are crushing down on them. Try to call or e-mail them in the morning whe…

Don't fall for all the doom and gloom about newspapers. They're alive and kicking, and an essential part of any nutritious media diet. Around the world, 37 percent of the population reads newspapers. Any public relations effort needs to reach out to all those readers.

Always assume that whatever you tell a reporter might wind up on the front page of a newspaper or as the lead story on the 5 o'clock news. You can't think that saying, "This is off the record" magically protects you from being quoted. Going off the record -- or on background, or any of these terms -- is an agreement between the source and the reporter. If the reporter doesn't agree, you're still …

A media availability -- journalists will say "media avail" as shorthand -- is a much simpler affair than a press conference. You see these every night on ESPN, with coaches and players dressed up in suits instead of jerseys and taking questions from reporters after the game. Public officials often have weekly media avails in their office.

The purpose of an editorial board tour is to make your case in person. Say there's a school levy on the ballot and you're part of the group of parents campaigning to pass it. You'd want to talk to the editorial boards of your local papers before they came out for or against the levy.

Conventional wisdom holds that bloggers are parasites, stealing content that reporters painstakingly dug up with their blood, sweat and tears, using all the skills they earned from journalism school and years in the trenches. But a new academic study explodes this myth, and public relations pros should take notice. You can't feed the mainstream...

Reporters and editors are increasingly making the switch from established media -- especially newspapers -- over to public relations. Here are some tips for making the transition.

Your iPhone or Droid can shoot photos or video that, with a click of a button, can directly post to Facebook or Twitter or your blog. There's no technology barrier anymore. You don't have to shoot with a camera, upload the photos, crop them, edit them and upload them one-by-one into Facebook or your blog. The question for public figures is,...

How many fans and followers do you need with social media to reach your audience? You could invest all of your time and energy into building up a list of 10,000 fans and followers, when a more effective strategy would be to get on radio stations with 100,000 listeners and newspapers with circulations of 250,000 per day.

Newspapers, the internet, radio and TV are all in flux, with everybody trying to figure out their place in the new order of things. Old mass-media powerhouses are being bought up by Silicon Valley wonders that didn't exist two years ago. Despite all the change, public relations firms worldwide are rebounding quickly, according to a new report by...