Dear Mr. CEO of Tech-Widget Corp:
No longer will you just make widgets, you will also be a publisher. With the the attrition of the news media – the closing of magazines and newspapers – you’ll find fewer remaining reporters to tell your story. In essence you’ll have an even smaller keyhole to pass through to get your story delivered. The good news is: you now also have the opportunity to take control of your own narrative – to go directly to your audiences through any number of social media channels.
Not only that, but carefully done, you can even package your content so that the remaining time-crunched media can offer it up as their own.
If anyone says that PR has died, they can be reminded of the need to create good compelling content through blogs, videos, forums and yes, even press releases. But not all of this is good as we’re reminded in an article “PR fills vacuum as media shrinks” on ProPublica. In fact, the blurred lines of where ‘news’ is originating is becoming more shady as ‘front’ organizations step out to advance their sponsors interest. But this is more a problem of political candidates and PACs, than B2B and technology companies.
Part of the lesson here is that today’s skeptical and cynical masses are becoming wary even of the press. Nor do they want to be sold or marketed to. Their mute buttons and mouses are at the ready to switch to that next web page or channel if they sniff too much corporate speak or hidden agenda.
Today, companies need to be more interesting, entertaining and informative if only to not be tuned out.
PR is still about telling, rather than selling What will your content strategy be? In further posts we'll address different types of content - from micro-messaging on twitter to long form blog content - and how they map to different audiences.