[Enjoy this true story from SWMS contributor and PR pro Anton Molodetskiy -Ed.] You may think that journalists would rather talk to a telemarketer than answer your phone call, but the phone is still a key tool for both reporters and PR. I learned this hard way a few years ago while managing outreach for a B2B startup coming out of stealth.
We recently conducted a video meeting with a subscriber who sought SWMS POV on the following media relations questions. With the subscriber’s permission, here are the questions and our responses. Hope you find them useful.
The best-written pitch is the one that works. Your style is “good” when it leads to a hit. That said, there are all too many ways to go wrong. Our subscribers continually say that the crickets are chirping like never before. Is your pitch as good as it can be?
Picture this. It’s Sunday morning. You have no plans. You roll out of bed and grab a cup of coffee. Now… what’s in your other hand? For most of us these days, the answer is “my phone.” But are you scrolling Instagram with that time? Or –- alternatively -– are you reading a magazine?
TechCrunch Extra Crunch this week posted a pair of articles containing admonishment and advice for tech PR pros. The top portion of the posts does appear for free in regular TechCrunch. The full text is available only to TC EC subscribers. We hereby excerpt (in fair-use fashion) what our readers most need to know.
Invest 15 minutes in last week’s LA Times profile of Huawei and you’ll appreciate the power of candor. The Chinese telecom giant had every reason to expect a grilling from legendary journalist Norman Pearlstine and his team. Instead, Huawei received fair treatment in context useful for both parties.
RSA Conference (RSAC) has come and gone, and hopefully the email flow has finally stopped. As usual, the conference and its associated 300 or so emails shows what the best and worst PR practices are. This time I asked Sam if I could share with you my analysis of these inquiries, in the hope that we (we being the trade press) can work better with you.
SWMS subscriber Amanda Orr writes:
Thank you for bringing this topic to the light in Media Survey, Sam, as it’s been on my professional mind for quite some time. Anecdotally, about three quarters of my clients over the past two to three years have had “social good” corporate missions.
I’ve previously written about managing difficult clients and maintaining profitability – two daily challenges in the life of PR leadership. While these are critical to your everyday role, there’s another key factor that will help or hurt you while juggling the work: your team.
It’s time to address the big bad B word: Budget. Oh, and that O word, too: Overservice. Budgets are one of the most important aspects of any client/agency relationship: they help set the basis for the scope, and without the dollars, an agency can’t operate.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Here’s how Mike Isaac presents himself. A single perfunctory paragraph doesn’t cut it anymore in a world of disinformation and synthetic, AI-generated content where no one really knows the agenda. The NYT wants to get out in front of that, especially before the 2024 elections heat up. Read the background behind this in Vanity Fair.
Legendary journalist Louise Story reveals how the smartest edit shops are using AI. Here come the flexicles.
Sara Fischer of Axios nails another scoop: Time is merging its Time Ideas section into a new one, called Time100 Voices. It doesn’t promise big opportunity for tech PR — it aims so high that only the Benioffs and Nadellas stand a chance.
Recent research from Semrush, a data partner of ours, reveals the most searched societal issues based on average monthly Google searches between January 2019 and June 2023, and how they rank across 35 countries. Searches related to mental health are skyrocketing.
It is now called AI Time To Impact, and if you care about what’s real in AI and when we need to care about it, AI Time To impact is a must-read.
Says Digiday today: 40 percent of Gen Z uses TikTok or Instagram when searching for lunch recommendations. The younger you go, the tighter the grip held by platforms. Musk’s calculation that few will ever leave X might not be too far off in the long run.
