Is PR Dead? The Rise of the Professional Blogger
For those that work in the public relations field in the last 20 years, they have seen their world change considerably. Magazines, trade press, newsrooms and other media outlets used to employ lots of editorial staff and reporters. It was a busy, competitive environment, driven by print deadlines. With the change in how the public consumes news and information, many trade publications and enthusiast magazines have gone under. Today, there may be one editor, one or two staff reporters and a network of freelancers. Since media outlets are primarily online, stories can be written and posted the same day. Articles are generally half the length that they used to be. Some say it is because peoples’ attention spans are shorter.
Social media began to emerge just less than 20 years ago. With it came the blogosphere. I remember having a BlogSpot account back in the early 2000s when Google bought it and launched Blogger.com.
Today, with the vacuum in the industry trade media space, bloggers have become the authoritative “editors” in their sectors. Many have audience sizes that rival mainstream news outlets, and have grown to become equally as influential as their print media counterparts were in the previous generation.
When developing an effective media relations strategy today, forget distributing a press release on an expensive newswire. You need to study the sites where you would like to see your story covered, and prepare your media kit for each of those bloggers and media outlets as if you were a freelancer submitting a story to their editors. The good news is that they are generally open to publishing newsworthy, well written and compelling articles that they believe will resonate with their audience.
There are 3 keys to getting stories covered:
Do not be overtly “salesy”.
Your headline is the most important thing. It needs to grab readers’ attention.
Include proof-points or research citations to back any claims or statistics included in the article.
The other tip is to prepare a series of stories, that can be published every 4 weeks or so, over a span of 3 - 6 months. This way, you can remain in the news over a protracted period of time. Also, if one story gets passed on, there
