Knowing Your Trades

So, I'm still alive. Just needed a bit of a break from blogging while I recovered my enthusiasm for sharing random thoughts and over-opinionated rants with a bunch of hyper-critical strangers.

Seriously, thanks for all the comments and emails over the last week or so. I'd like to say the great advice, lovely sentiments and wise thoughts prompted me into blogging again. Well, I'd like to say that, but actually the reason for blogging again was that I couldn't wait to share this gem:

I trained a B2B agency this week in media relations - how to turn fleeting email exchanges with hacks into long-term working relationships. We started by chatting about differentiating between titles - how magazines can all look the same, but they see themselves as very distinct products. So, I asked, what's the difference between Computer Weekly and Computing?  After a long pause, one PR ventured: "Is only one of them a weekly?"*

It's an easy mistake to make - nobody is born knowing about trade publications, after all. But if your job is pitching trades, there are three things you have to know:

1. Who reads it (job titles, circulation figures)
2. When it's published (day and frequency)
3. Who does it compete with, and how?

If you want to have long-term working relationships with hacks, a good story is vital. But so is knowing that my magazine has a bigger public sector readership than its competitor, or that our features section goes to press on a Tuesday.

* This is the wrong answer, obviously.

Comments

[Kerry GaffneyKerry]

I remember a hack from CW many, many moons ago, telling me that they'd run a reader survey asking what the difference was between CW and Computing. The most popular answer was that Computing ran Dilbert.

[Sally Whittle]

That's genius. And presumably explains why my editor at Computing almost passed out when a publisher suggested moving Dilbert from the back cover to inside the paper...

[johnbagnall]

I'm gob-smacked, and - yet - not... I was last a pure PR nearly a decade ago. Since then, I've been a marketer (mantra: know your customers). Back in my formative, hot metal years, you couldn't escape from needing to know, to the minute, what page went to bed in which publication, at what time. But then there was only real as opposed to virtual ink to aim for. It's easy to assume that it's tougher now, given the multiplicity of channels available to ambitious PRs. But the same, basic (marketing) rules apply: know your market, and give the customer - in this case, the hack - what they're looking for.

[Wordsmith_for_Hire]

Good to see you back!

[Chris Green]

Never underestimate the power of Dilbert.

It is also worth noting that one of the two Dilbert-publishing mags started printing a white-filled rectangle on the plastic bag its mag was mailed in.....to stop people reading Dilbert and tossing the mag in the bin without even unbagging it.

[Kate Hartley]

The ex-travel editor of the Sunday Mirror once told me that a junior PR exec called her to ask what day her paper came out on...

[rob]

@ Kate: Genius

@ Sally: Good to see you back