Category Archives: Digital (Social) Media
The Twitter Advantage in Media Relations
There are a few cardinal rules of media relations; in particular you must know what is newsworthy and to whom you are pitching. A 
great way to try and get a feel for the personality of the journalist to whom you’ll be sending your pitch is to follow them on Twitter. By following what material a journalist chooses to tweet and retweet, it is easier to get a sense of their interests and what they cover so as to better tailor your pitch to them.
However, you can’t just follow a journalist and immediately expect them to be running your news releases. You have to pay your dues a bit before you can expect them to help you out in return. The best way to make that happen to is to engage with them on Twitter but don’t push your agenda upon them until you have had some good solid interaction.
There are many online resources that allow you find journalists on Twitter, specifically:
Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
HARO is a social media service that aims to “To heal the rift between journalists and publicists, to allow journalists to find the sources they need, while allowing sources to reach journalists in a SPAM-free, socially-connected way.” Essentially it is a forum for journalists to find quote-worthy experts and for PR pros to post their pitches.
JournalistTweets
Powered by Cision, JournalistTweets makes all the tweets in their database of journalists searchable. Also the site is designed so that you can tweet directly to a journalist when using it, without even having to go through twitter.com. This site allows you to reap the media relations benefits of twitter without needing an account. Though as a PR professional you should definitely have one. They “provid[e] a real-time snapshot of what thousands of reporters, editors, bloggers and broadcasters are discussing in the areas of business, technology, lifestyle/entertainment and health.”
Muck Rack
The main point of Muck Rack is to “[verify] the journalists on social media who do the muckraking for major media outlets and [analyze what they say in real time, Muck Rack delivers a glimpse of tomorrow’s newspaper to you today.” They list the Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Quora, Google+, LinkedIn information for thousands of journalists. The content is analyzed by a group of editors and they send out their findings in a daily email called the Muck Rack Daily. The email focuses on the “tweetworthy” stories that are trending amongst journalists. I have Groupon and Living Social too, the last thing I am trying to do is allow more spam into you inbox. However this “daily deal” seems to be pretty good. Anthony De Rosa, Social Media Editor at Reuters, said, “There are a lot of daily digest emails out there, both curated and automated, but @muckrack continues to be the one I learn the most from.” You can subscribe to the email, here.
There are many benefits from following journalists on Twitter and too much potential to expand your networks, go take advantage of the Twitter advantage! You will improve your media relations skills and be a much better public relations professional as a result.
The Impact of the Web on Communications According to Edward Boches
I had the opportunity to speak with Edward Boches, Chief Innovation Officer at Mullen and a BU COM alumnus. We spoke about the impact of the web on advertising and public relations. In the video below, Boches explains how the web has blurred the lines between advertising and PR and gives some helpful advice for combatting this “blurring.”
In addition Mr. Boches gave 3 tips on how students can brand themselves successfully online.
What are your thoughts on how the web is changing the communications field?
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Employer of the Week: Likeable Media
This post is part of our Employer of the Week series, where we will be highlighting a different company in PR/Communications every Monday.
Overview
Likeable Media is an award-winning social media marketing firm with over 200 clients and offices in 3 cities, including New York City. Likeable is a three time WOMMY (Word of Mouth Marketing) Award Winner and the #118 fastest growing U.S. company according to The INC 500/500.
They consult on, build and execute plans to best leverage social media for brands such as 1800-Flowers.com, Verizon FiOS and Neutrogena.
Why Are They Interesting?
Likeable is notable because they are one of the only solely social media based marketing firms in the world. As a full service social agency, Likeable helps their brand customers create, distribute, cultivate and respond to text, pictures and videos, essentially “likeable media.”
Every company is a social publisher and through Facebook and other social media mediums, they help their clients produce and respond to great text updates, images, videos, and other content.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Likeable posts, monitors, and responds on social sites of their customers and keep Facebook and Twitter streams engaging. With proper social media management, brands can successfully market themselves. Read the rest of this entry
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Why Computer Coding is Important for PR
Because the field of public relations uses many online outlets such as the various social media sites and blogging platforms, computer coding is an incredibly valuable skill in the PR world.
Coding includes designing, writing and testing computer programs. The purpose of coding is to create a set of instructions that tell computers specific operations, or how to behave in certain desired manners. There are also different languages of coding, from which you would choose depending on the task you’re looking to complete.
Here are 4 ways PR fits into the equation:
- Coding can make your life quicker and easier. Imagine compiling a list of hundreds of blogs by industry to reach out to for press coverage. Non-technical people would be compiling a list of blogs from a directory into Excel and then visiting each to figure out whether it was relevant for your pitch. This process is long and tedious. Instead, writing a script in a programming language like Java or Python would allow you to easily and quickly pull blogs and their descriptions from Technorati along with their site descriptions.
- Knowing code can help you improve your blog. For example, you should know how to add alt tags to images (ie keywords to represent images), which helps bring traffic through websites by improving search engine optimization. Without knowing how to add these alt-tags to images, it makes it harder for people searching online to find you. Read the rest of this entry
