Delivering Your News with Impact

Delivering Your News with Impact
Laurie Smith. Vice President, Culture & Communications

Delivering your news with impact

The web has changed everything

1. Know your audience

The New Newsroom
55% are now required to file for their outlet’s online edition, along with their regular duties
Reporters file throughout the day on the same story; updating the latest on a breaking news piece as well as providing additional reporting and analysis to give that story depth

Compressed news cycles
“We live in this era of compressed news cycles in which the first day of an event, the second day of a reaction, the third day of a follow-up news feature, the fourth day of analysis are all collapsed into one moment.”
- Kirk Lapointe (as Editor-in-Chief Vancouver Sun – now CBC Ombudsman)

News breaks on the web
“A reporter’s job is now very different than it was ten years ago. They go to work in the morning, they birth a story on the Web, they develop it through the day and then hopefully have something that’s significantly different for the paper the next morning.”
- Scott Anderson, senior vice president of Content, Postmedia Network

The deadline is now
“There are no deadlines anymore. The concept of a deadline is something that was oh, so six months ago. The deadline is now.”
– David Akin, National Bureau Chief, Sun Media

The story never ends
“The public relations business is even more important now. Reporting is more of a process, in that the story is going to continue to evolve, and PR people need stay involved. Be aware that the story never ends.”
– Mathew Ingram, senior writer at the GigaOm blog network

Listen carefully to what your audiences are saying
It’s easy to get started:
Set up Google Alerts
Conduct Twitter searches
Use social bookmarking
Develop rules of engagement for how to respond
Consider more intelligent, automated platforms that can lighten the load

Be social
“I’ve had people contact me and pitch a story that I just wrote about. So that shows: a) they haven’t read the publication; and b) they have no clue who I am or what I write about.”
– Mathew Ingram senior writer at the GigaOm blog network

Tips for targeting reporters and bloggers
Monitor mainstream media, blogs, and social networks for your keywords
Read relevant articles, publications, blogs, twitter feeds, and engage on those channels
Pay attention to the by-lines –who is writing about you or your competitors
Bookmark relevant articles – refer to them later in pitches
Use a media database to qualify your contacts and save time

2. Decide what good looks like

Decide what good looks like
Many tools, free and paid, are available to measure the success of your campaigns
Create tangible objectives linked to measurable metrics
Establish a baseline for the metrics you plan to measure
Then measure!

Sample objectives
Drive traffic to the site with the goal of reaching 1 million unique visitors by December 2011
Secure quality branded coverage with campaign messaging. Seventy-five per cent of coverage should include branding and campaign messaging.
Increase subscription to e-newsletter by 30 per cent.
Reach 4 million Canadians through the online video within the month of December
Garner at least 400 views of video on YouTube by month-end with the majority of views coming from Canada

3. Be resourceful

Use a newswire service!

Give reporters what they need
“I get a lot of press releases through email, which is very difficult to manage and its hard to filter the kind of information that I really need."
- Sean Stanleigh, Your Business Editor, The Globe and Mail

Tailor content to suit the opportunity
Toronto Hydro customers can see their Earth Hour Impact online today

4. Create an advantage with multimedia

Newsrooms need multimedia
“Journalists are not looking for just a print press release now. They’re being asked by their editors for multimedia – whether there is a photo or a video and what is the potential for social media. You need to think about this when putting out a package for reporters.”
– Scott Anderson

Create an advantage with multimedia
Clarify your message and draw attention to your news withphotos, videos and audio files
39% of journalists said multimedia helped them better understand a story
11% of journalists said multimedia is helpful when pitching a story to an editor
19% of journalists said multimedia assets get used in the outlet’s digital, print or broadcast editions.

Photography
Liberal Party of Canada

Photography
Merck Frosst Canada

Video
Heart and Stroke Foundationof Canada

Know your audience
“Just received a 10-minute video a PR person sent me. By courier. On videotape. Seriously.”
- Philip Moscovitch, CBC Radio, Halifax

A complete news package

Introducing the Social Newswire

Delivering your news with impact
Know your audience
Decide what good looks like
Be resourceful
Create an advantage with multimedia

Delivering Your News with Impact

by CNW Group on Mar 30, 2011

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