Anybody notice how noisy it’s gotten? I mean, all of a sudden I’m being flooded by a constant flow of press releases and social media releases and sooo-much-PR… it seems endless.
It’s as if, in a mad dash to be heard, companies are cranking out more and more releases every day — whether it’s newsworthy stuff or not — just hoping, even praying they’ll get picked up. Working harder to accomplish less is never the smart business choice. Better to have a few effective campaigns under your belt than a dozen forgettable attempts.
What does your communication strategy look like? Do you even have a strategy? Or are you like many busy marketers out there firing off standalone tactics? The good news (If I can call it that) is that your competition’s probably in the same boat that you’re in — so what we’ve got here is an opportunity. A chance to get ahead of the pack and sharpen your skills at the same time.
From figuring out the goals for each campaign — to allocating the appropriate amount of resources and time — you need a plan to be effective. And believe me, the answer isn’t to write a press-release about everything just to cover your bases. It’s a lot like crying wolf — after a while your audience tunes out. You need to know what’s newsworthy in order to keep them engaged and listening.
If you’re not sure where to start, there’s an eWorkshop with Demand Metric and MarketingExperiments on April 28th that’s worth checking out. In addition to the hour-long training, you get tools and templates to use for developing your media relations strategy.
I started using the tools and played around with the templates today (My company’s producing the event) – as a package, they’re powerful indeed. During a webinar rehearsal a couple weeks back Brian Solis, Principal at Future-Works, said that “Influence is the ability to inspire action and measure it” — Optimizing my media relations strategy seems like an excellent starting point.
What do you think has caused the uptick in press releases? Do you think it’s a result of reduced marketing budgets and thus an over-reliance on traditional media strategies? Let us hear your theories in the comments.
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