How to Get Your Boss to Let You Play by the New Rules of PR

How to Get Your Boss to Let You Play by the New Rules of PR

by Peter G. Pollak, chairman, readMedia, Inc.

David Meerman Scott has a message for PR professionals – the rules for issuing press releases have changed (You can download his article “The New Rules of PR” at www.davidmeermanscott.com) and, he’s not the only one who thinks so. Blogs, magazine articles, conference workshops and, of course, press releases are flooding the marketplace with this theme. But Scott forgot one step in the process. Most PR professionals have to answer to someone who has never heard of Web 2.0 and may think blogs have something to do with iPods. Let’s review Scott’s argument and then suggest some strategies for getting your boss to let you play by the new rules.

The thesis of the New Rules of PR is that the power of search has transformed the press release into a direct sales tool. Releases, therefore, should be written differently than they were in the past as well as issued for additional reasons. Scott’s argument applies equally to the public sector – government and special interest PR. While not throwing out the goal of getting the media to use your press releases, pr professionals are missing a huge opportunity if they ignore the potential of using releases to reach target audiences directly.

Here are Scott’s new rules:

• Find good reasons to issue press releases regularly; not just when “big news” occurs.
• Create press releases that appeal directly to your target audience.
• Write releases “replete with keyword-rich copy”.
• Include links to your website.
• Optimize release delivery for searching and browsing.
• Drive people into the sales process.

While you can read Scott’s piece if you have questions about any of the specifics, a central issue for people in the public sector is the need to re-think the opportunities for issuing releases. Because government agencies and associations tend to have complex approval processes, opportunities are regularly missed both for getting press coverage as well as getting one’s views onto the Web. Decision makers need to understand the implications of the online news cycle – the fact that major newspapers are geared up to post news to their websites in real time and therefore you don’t have 24 hours to respond to a blog or opponent’s press release.

A second key takeaway is that you can no longer rely on your in-house fax and email blast system as your primary means of issuing press releases. (Disclosure: readMedia offers RSS, Google News indexing and search engine optimized press release distribution.) Writing releases for the online reader is only one part of the recipe for online visibility. The other essential component is getting them into Google News’ database along with Topix, Newstex and the other news aggregators. That can ONLY be accomplished if you issue your releases through a newswire that has a relationship with these organizations.

Decision-makers tend to be pragmatic. Therefore, show them how quickly press releases issued over readMedia appear on Google News (within seconds) by doing a search on “New York State” any weekday. You can also show them the potential to communicate directly with your target audience by offering an RSS feed of your releases and by tracking the hits to your releases by posting them to your website simultaneously with issuing them to the media. By including links to other pages such as a petition, conference registration, report download, etc., you’ll be able to document the efficacy of playing by the new rules of PR.

David Meerman Scott warns that some people will resist the new rules of PR. That echoes what happened 20 years ago when Empire Information Services – the predecessor to readMedia – first offered electronic distribution of press releases. In those days people were comfortable with mailing out press releases because they thought they would get the same results and they didn’t have to alter their spending habits. They finally switched over when they discovered no one else was playing by the old rules. The same pattern is taking place today –– however, change is taking place at a faster pace.

So email your boss that you need to set up a meeting. Be prepared to show h/h how you can improve the results of your activities by using readMedia to issue your releases. We have plenty of testimonials and references to back up our claims. And don’t forget to print out a copy of David Meerman Scott’s article for your boss to read.