Creative PR Strategies in the New Media Landscape

It’s no secret the media landscape is changing and it’s only intensifying the effect on how PR pros do media relations. In this episode we talk about taking the time to evaluate our tactics and get creative  to reach our client’s audiences.

 

Special Offer for Solos:

Lettuce is teaming up with Solo PR Pro to offer you a free, game-changing Business Assessment Program. Be one of the first 1,000 savvy PR pros to join.

 

Get News from Solo PR Pro:

Join our email list.

 

Transcript

Speaker 1:           Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2:           Hello, Michelle. I'm doing good. We are currently in the month of March. I had a client that was asking me for Q1 stuff this week and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to give it to you when Q one's over. And they were like, it's still March. And I'm like, it barely started so that many people are feeling exactly like my client.

Speaker 1:           Yes, yes. I've had to remind myself what month, wait. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2:           It seems to be running over us. It's not that it seems like it's later in the month, it just feels like it's running over us and then backing up in reverse and doing it again.

Speaker 1:           Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if it's that we're just so eager to maybe get through this calendar year for many reasons or maybe just afraid of falling behind. I don't know. There are a lot of factors at work, I think. Yeah, stuff's been a lot. It's been a lot. And to add to that, I mean we talk about this often about how our job is as the storytellers for our clients to really sing their news and their praises and their efforts and how the media landscape has changed. And it's really even changed that I've seen on the hyper-local level that what used to be the extremely low hanging fruit of Yay you gave so-and-so a something, lemme send a picture and it would be an easy get. And it's not so much anymore, which in a way it's been kind of fun to pull back and think, alright, challenge time, how do we get more creative about telling our story to the people we want to see and hear it? So we thought we'd riff about that a little bit because I'm sure many of you out there are experiencing that on a number of levels

Speaker 2:           To say the least. Media relations has undergone a significant shift and a lot of that is really due to the shrinking number of outlets and the lack of money with publications. So in addition to layoffs, there's just fewer publications altogether. And then publications that even used to be free are now charging. So you can get in there if you for a fee, but then that really harms organizations like nonprofits and smaller companies that had a fair shot at doing some of those things. And those publications targeted their audience. I mean, I think the other thing, Michelle, and I'm sure that you're seeing this, is we really do have to take a step back and say, where's our audience at these days? Because it used to be pretty clear cut, but I feel like that is changing so much. And it's because coupled with the shrinking media outlets is that consumers do not trust institutions. They don't trust employers, they don't trust companies, they don't trust media outlets. And so where are people really going for their information,

Speaker 1:           Right? Because we also know that while some may give social media as the easy answer, that's not the complete picture either. There are people that you might think, oh, I bet you're on Facebook who don't have Facebook accounts, or are you doing TikTok? Are you not doing TikTok? So you really do. It's not as simple as it was not too long ago.

Speaker 1:           And I think in many ways, perhaps the answer is in hyper targeting your digital advertising efforts, but that's a whole other conversation for a whole other day. But perhaps even doing that to an extent with your information. I mean one perhaps snooze worthy example is just the small thing of, okay, you have a client that yes, they still want to grow their Facebook page, that's great. But I have found over the last couple of years it's far more effective if I use interesting, informative content than the blah like my page ad. People don't they want. So people want to interact with your information. It's like you say, it's finding them and making sure that we are in front of them and keeping in mind that any given client's audience is in a multitude of different segments at any given time. You've got the casual people, the ready to make a move. People, I don't even know who you are people.

Speaker 2:           And I think it's also important because of all the challenges, more important than ever, this has always been true for PR pros to really take a step back and force their clients to answer the right set of questions. What's my goal with this? I have announcement, and we all know that clients think every announcement is news. A product announcement is not news. That's not something that reporters will be interested in. Product announcement will be interesting if it helps the people who buy your products and services. Yes, they will be interested in new features and new things or people that were looking at you. So potential customers, so who can use that information, your sales team, your customer's teams, and then any outreach that you have to your audience. The media is not always the answer. And PR pros really, I get it. Our clients always see this as this is the thing that's going to change our life. And that's never been true, but it's definitely not true today. I feel like in this day and age, we cannot assume that everybody's on social media. They are not.

Speaker 1:           Right?

Speaker 2:           They really are not including younger generations. This is funny, yesterday I caught 10 minutes of the news. I wanted to see the weather and they were talking about a local trial here and the jury questions and they questioned a juror that was younger and she had not heard about the trial because she doesn't watch or read the news and she's not on social media at all. And they were like, yes, she's not on social media. And they were like the anchor people were shocked.

Speaker 1:           But you know what?

Speaker 2:           Don't think that just because someone is in a demographic that they're on a social media site. Exactly. Facebook too. Facebook usage, I'm sure the daily usage has declined greatly. And if you're targeting people that are making decisions about your product, Facebook is probably not your answer today. It was 10 years ago, but in 2024, it's not the answer. If you already have a nice community there and they do engage with you, definitely you want to nurture that, but you really need to rethink these strategies. The one thing that has consistently over the years been effective and is I believe and underutilized tool is email.

Speaker 1:           I was just thinking that email and even I'm going to say it, direct mail depending where you're, but yeah, I mean your email database, that's your gold mine. Truly, these are the people that I don't care if they want to engage with you, if they hear from you once a year for a special offer depending on what your type of business is or these are the people that have said, yes, I want to hear from you and you own that land, so to speak, and you can really be effective. And

Speaker 2:           Yes, and I mean that means investing in email marketing software. We're not talking about sending emails from your company email account, whether or not a lot of companies still do. We actually want to go to the process because you need to be smart about sending emails. So you don't want to send out an email every day. That's just because people will feel like they're being spammed. You really want to use the analytics, you want to segment your audience types you want to target specifically because you want to really personalize it and tailor it for the members of your audience. So there will people that will gobble up more. There will people that maybe just want to hear from you for certain things. You need to give them options about what they receive. Email marketing software allows you to do that. But when you build a healthy list, you really have such a golden opportunity to really nurture those relationships and really build your audience and you can build community with an email.

Speaker 2:           It's funny because a lot of journalists have turned to Substack and other communities like Substack for that exact same reason. It's very focused, it's very targeted around content and a very specific type of content. It's not the noise of social groups. You really have to opt into this information to receive it and all the content is not free. So keep in mind that there are still ways to reach people today, but you really do need to think about maybe walking away from some of the broader, throw it all on the wall and see what stick strategy and getting down into more niched communities and really refining those processes that still work. And I love email for marketing. I love it. I think we're all missing out on leveraging it for the powerful tool that it remains in 2024.

Speaker 1:           Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And just remembering too, the broader integrated picture of, I forget what the number is these days. Is it 14? 27? How many times does someone have to see something to engage with it, even when asked, oh, so what made you actually contact us? Oh, I saw a billboard. It's like, well, no, we didn't do a billboard, but okay, fair enough. You saw something. So keeping that in mind too. But yeah, I mean these are certainly challenging times and you definitely need to step back and take a look and say, okay, what am I doing? What's working, what isn't? And I would hazard to guess that many of us have clients that are underusing their email marketing tools and they could be using them more to do deeper dives to engage on a deeper level with their base and grow it from there. Because how easy is it to then say, oh my goodness, I got this great piece of information from you, I'm going to forward that to a friend. Boom.

Speaker 2:           Yeah, I see this. The challenges really are an opportunity for PR posts to be more strategic, to really demonstrate the value that they have beyond media relations. And I'm not saying that media relations is dead, it is not. It just different today. And I know lots of public relations consultants who have completely left the profession because media relations and they said it's just too hard. Many of those are not, of course, our members who are well-rounded and very strategic, but I say this for anybody who's out there who really has been just pushing that lever hard because you came out of the traditional agency world and that's what you did. You got hits that it's really time to leverage your full skillset. We believe you have the skills. We know that you do. We know that you know more and you're going to have to really start to counsel your clients a bit differently and really start to make sure that you are forcing them to answer the right questions so that you can develop a strategy that's more robust than just hit, hit, hit, hit, hit.

Speaker 1:           Exactly.

Speaker 2:           That does not.

Speaker 1:           And you know what? The good news that doing this makes us all better at what we do makes the profession better. It will help our clients get better results. And we want to hear from you. What are you thinking these days? What are you experiencing? Tell us@solopro.com and maybe we'll talk about it on a future episode. We'd love to hear some feedback because it's just our brains at the moment. But we do. We so appreciate your time, we appreciate you giving us your ears every week. And please do sign up for the newsletter@soloprpro.com so you know all the goodness that is happening there. And until next time, thanks for listening to that solo life.