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The
Long Tail of PR
A guy
named Chris Anderson wrote a book called The
Long Tail. In a nutshell, it surmised that
we've gotten away from marketing a few items that
are fairly popular across the board (top 40 music)
and are now moving toward multiple niche markets
(Amazon sells thousands of books. They may sell
only 1 of 80% of them.) David Meerman Scott, in his
book, The
New Rules of Marketing and PR applies
Anderson's concept to public relations.
In the
"old days" of PR, companies would spend
thousands of dollars each month focusing on a few
high profile television stations and newspapers,
in the hopes that they'd get some good PR. Today,
we have dozens, if not thousands, of media
channels at our fingertips...and most of them
don't cost a dime. Blogs and websites help us
promote our news, releasing the hold that
traditional media once had on us.
And
the very makeup of press releases has changed too.
Used to be, our releases had to cover "big
news," something really newsworthy.
Now, Scott says, "we should be writing news
releases that highlight our expert ideas and
stories, and we should be distributing them so
that our buyers can find them on the news search
engines and vertical content sites."
Success
in PR, says Scott, has shifted. While everyone
still wants to get on Oprah or similar primetime
program, most companies recognize the unlikelihood
of achieving this level of PR, and instead focus
on the low hanging fruit, the bloggers and niche
markets.
To
review:
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Press
releases now can be successful at a number of
sources, including blogs
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You're
not tied to begging journalists for a story
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Press
releases don't have to be "big news"
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You
can get better results from niche media
markets
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