Creating An Effective Media Relations Plan

Presented June 24, 2009
Creating an Effective Media Relations Plan

Presenters
Eric Borsum Managing Partner PainePR
Marta Bortner Assistant Director/External Affairs CaliforniaVolunteers Kelly Huston Assistant Secretary California Emergency Management Agency Jessica Payne Social Media Strategist PainePR Alexia Allina Media Relations Strategist PainePR Mary Borrelli Media Relations Manager American Cancer Society

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

Today’s Media Landscape

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

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
6

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.

Working with Media

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

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

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

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

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)

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

Creating Your Story

What’s News?

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

What Isn’t News?

News Isn’t …
Just any event
A personal opinion or interpretation of something
Only a bunch of facts
Always news

What Media Are Looking For 20 Accurate Facts Credible Experts 3 rd Party Validation Colorful Anecdotes Audience/ Time Relevance Unique Perspective Story

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)

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?

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

The Five W’s
Good news stories need to answer:

Story Mining
What are all the related stories?
Which can I support?
Information
Impact
Immediacy
Individuals
Images

Story Mining Process National Conference on Volunteering & Service Topic Event People

Story Mining Process PEOPLE Government Staff Speakers Partners Community Participants Youth Faith Community Nonprofit Experts Volunteers Employees Corporate First Ladies

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

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

What is a Key Message?

Developing Key Messages

Sample Message

Telling Your Story

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

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

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

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

Example Media Strategy Target Audience Local Radio Blogs Online Press Release Trade Media First Ladies at the National Conference Story Newspapers in Top-20 Markets Local TV Business & News Weeklies Exclusive Embargo Local Newspapers

Traditional Approaches

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

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

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

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

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

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

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”

Online/Digital Approaches

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?

Essential social media tools
Start here for an understanding: ProCommunicator.com
Social Media Tools: Taking A Closer Look Wikis Bookmarking Forums

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
Facebook

Official Stats http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Uncovering Tastemakers http://facebook.grader.com/
Popular Facebook Forums http://forum.developers.facebook.com/
Still confused? http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking
Research: Facebook

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

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

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

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

Answers the question: “What are you doing?”
Micro-blog = express publishing of the here and now
3 rd 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
Twitter

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

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

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

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
Wikis Wikis

Still confused? http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
Research: Wikis Wikis Main Wiki Page Discussion about Page Content View Page Source (edits) See Change History

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

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

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

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 Bookmarking Bookmarking

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

Researching and monitoring posts within forums: http://boardreader.com/
Research: Discussion Forums

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

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

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.

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

Research, Education & Empowerment

For more information, please contact Eric Borsum PainePR (213) 430-0480 [email_address]

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Creating An Effective Media Relations Plan

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Creating An Effective Media Relations Plan — Presentation Transcript