I’m a digital immigrant. When I started working at Ogilvy & Mather PR in 1983, we used IBM typewriters. I hated when my boss made edits because she wouldn’t stop making edits. Every time that she changed a word or a line, it would cost me hours of time correcting with white out or white strips. By the time the document was finalized, it looked like it had been through a war zone!
Nearly a year later, Ogilvy & Mather incorporated word processors. I remember thinking that I really didn’t want to learn how to use them because I would end up being a secretary!
Shortly thereafter, I learned it was the best thing I could have done because it made transitioning to the computer all that much easier. Our first computer that year was the original Macintosh. We purchased Macs because Lotus was our client.
After that, computers became part of our daily lives. It wasn’t until the early 1990’s that email became the thing that addicted us! Our earliest email accounts ended with aol.com.
When I first started my business in 1992, we still sent out press releases via U.S. Mail. We still called reporters to follow up and build relationships. We still faxed pitch letters and media alerts to the media for instant gratification.
That was the year my business opened in my one bedroom apartment with my infant daughter at my side. Sixteen years later, the business is in two locations – one in Westbury and the other in Manhattan. We employ 18 staff members and our firm is considered the largest on Long Island.
Today, we only use email to send out press releases and pitch letters. We also use social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace to follow up. As a marketing communications company, we also utilize Linkedin, Craig’s list and many other online vehicles. In addition, blogs have become important in trying to influence decision makers and consumers. I have a number of staff members who blog all day!
Today, public relations practitioners need to be online more than ever. The target audience is not only the digital natives (teens, twenties and thirties) it is also digital immigrants (baby boomers) who are utilizing and researching the Internet more than ever. When people make buying decisions, they refer to the Internet to search for products and services that have gotten endorsements from “regular” people – not just media folk.
Interestingly, reporters and editors search the blogs every day to come up with story ideas for their online and offline publications.
So how can you get involved and get more exposure for your clients?
• Research – Start with the fundamentals. Research various blogs that consumers of your clients may be reading. Make a database of these blogs and monitor them in Bloglines, Google or any other search engine.
• Create Your Own Blog – Whether your client is a product or service, they should consider creating a blog on a free site, on their website, or on a second website and then linking it up.
• Optimize Your Search Engines — Remember keep repeating key words in order to optimize your search engines.
• Respond to Other People’s Blogs – If you see something interesting that relates to the product or service you promote say something.
• Link, Link, Link – Make sure you link everything to your blog including your clients and articles in which they may have appeared online or offline.
• Create a Meet Up – You can use a meet up for a focus group or to encourage people to join your committees.
• Create a Facebook Page – Just as Myspace was the popular social networking tool of the late 1990’s, Facebook with more than 64 million users worldwide has become even more popular. You would be surprised who is online and it’s a great outlet to get to know your reporter friends and also to pitch them.
• Podcasts and Video Podcasts – Don’t forget how powerful these are becoming and how much exposure your client will get by doing these.
The public relations business has come a long way since I first started in 1983. While I anticipate that there will always be a place for traditional media, the use of new media tactics to market products and services will become a prime way to gain maximum exposure in the coming years.
