As regular readers will know, I've done the odd spot of PR this year and it's been character-building, as my mother would put it.
I recently found myself being schmoozed by press release distribution services. I’ve issued two press releases for the client with Response Source and it’s pretty simple. Upload the release, pay £65, and the release has been picked up by some local papers and niche websites I wouldn’t have bothered to pitch myself.
The first release I put out did well – it got picked up by quite a lot of local papers, some quarterly regional mags and a couple of radio stations. My pitching had also got the client covered in a couple of national newspapers, and the major websites in the client’s sector. All good.
The second release? Not quite so good. It got picked up by the websites, but not the papers. They got a couple of BBC radio interviews out of it. Still, the client said, it was only £65 and they’d have paid a lot more than that for advertising on those sites and stations.
Except then the client gets a call from PR Newswire. The salesman tells them he saw their release, that he’s just been in a meeting with PA and the guy there really liked their press release! He thinks it should have got a lot more coverage than it did. And for just 10 times the price of the Response Source distribution, he can ensure their release is sent to PA, every national and international newspaper, plus thousands of ACCREDITED journalists. They will QUALITY CHECK the release to make sure it’s exactly what those journalists need.
The client asks me what I think. “Hmm,” I say (I like to say hmm, I think it makes me sound thoughtful when in reality I’m usually just covering gaps in my knowledge). “I sent the release to PA and it didn’t get picked up. Perhaps it’s just the wrong angle. And I sent it to the papers. I just wonder if it’s too similar to other stories they’ve run.”
So I go back to the salesman and says no thanks, we sent it to PA already. “Oh no,” says the salesman. “You sent it to one person at PA. We send it to everyone, all the desks. Also, it’s a really good press release. Very well written. I can definitely see it going into Metro and that sort of thing.”
I talk to the salesman some more and when he tells me the price of distribution, I seriously nearly fall off my chair. The first figure was the starting price - since our release is 700 words it cost even more. Blimey. Fortunately, turns out PR Newswire is quite flexible on price, so we negotiate a sensible discount and agree they can send out the release on the basis that we don’t have a lot to lose by trying.
At 8.30am the next morning, once the accounts people have taken the fee from my debit card details because the client doesn’t have three years of audited company accounts, the release goes out. The result? A big, fat nothing. Nothing the next day. Or the day after.
Lessons learned?
I’ve been hearing about job losses, redundancies and cancelled contracts all over the place in recent weeks, and I’m hoping that my current packed schedule will continue well into 09. But at the same time, I think it’s important to be smart about a recession when you’re self-employed. Here’s some mistakes I’m promising myself I won’t make (again) next year:
What have I missed?
I've got two good friends who have had babies in the last couple of weeks, and both little ones are now in special care - Leo is less than a week old; has a congenital heart defect and is now recovering from surgery. Ella has a serious oesophageal problem and is in hospital preparing for surgery.
At the risk of sounding hokey, it does you good sometimes to count your blessings, so this week Flea (my three year old) and I took the weekend off and spent some time together. It's the first weekend in a long time I haven't opened the laptop until after 7pm and I can't get over how happy Flea was to have me to herself. There was quite a lot of lying on the floor making small toys talk, and for some reason my child has decided she is called "thomas" and spent the entire weekend saying things like: "Excuse me, Thomas' Mummy, please can I have a sandwich?" All good for the soul.
Of course, this does mean I didn't finish the major book project I was planning on doing, and that quick newsletter thing? I'll have to get up early tomorrow to finish that. Oh, and that case study for the American client. I'll have to do that in the morning after the school run, I guess. And I've got a supplement thing for a broadsheet to work on. I'm gonna spend the next month really paying for that weekend off, aren't I? Still worth it, though.
Must admit, I don't often go to industry parties, but I always get invited to loads around this time of year.
Back in my staffer days, parties seemed to kick in around November 20th and the next four weeks would be a round of Claridges,Cafe de Paris and Sugar Reef, with some private members' clubs thrown in for good measure. There was never much work to do, but it didn't seem to matter as most of us spent the month in a drunken haze, having ill-advised liaisons with colleagues and assorted PR types. PR parties gave me my first experience of the Gimlet, and introduced me to the joys of the Cheshire Cheese.
This year, two solitary invites: the Bill Moores party (now run by Sourcewire) and Skype.
What gives? Are my invites lost in the post? Did I eat too much garlic? Or are we facing a Christmas without free USB sticks and a few too many glasses of house red because of the wretched credit crunch?
Yeah, I know, it’s one of those “Cor, it’s not like the old days” posts.
But good grief, does anyone write anything any more just because it’s, like, interesting? Does anyone write a blog they feel strongly about, and fill it with stuff they think might be useful to people, or at least give them a couple of moments entertainment during the morning coffee break? Does anyone spend time linking, building a community presence and learning about stuff?
No. It’s all about SEO and the Great God Google (GGG).
As mentioned previously my PR client is launching a blog. Every single piece of advice seems to be about pleasing the GGG. Use Wordpress so GGG can see you, says one advisor. Another says remember to use keywords in all your headlines. Then someone rings up and says you need a long list of keywords, a Google sitemap and Google friendly meta-tags.
For what it’s worth, I use Typepad as a blogging platform because I find Wordpress unwieldy. A quick Google search (other search engines are available) for Sally Whittle or Getting Ink turns up this blog very easily, so I don’t feel I lose visibility by not bowing to the GGG twice a day. I have been won over by AdWords, I think they’ve been really useful to the PR client, and it’s been fascinating to see it work so well.
It’s tough for a small business and a slight technophobe pretend PR person to split the advice from the snake oil. In my gut, I still believe writing engaging content with relevant language and which is useful to other people is the best way to build a blog audience. And commenting on other blogs and getting links in and out is the best way to build visibility. The Google stuff is just icing, surely?
I’ve been updating my blog bookmarks, and was looking at the PR blogs in my Reader when I realised that there are an awful lot of PR blogs that are, well, a bit boring.
Given how important the whole social media phenomenon is, and the rate newspapers are cutting staff, I’d imagined somehow that PR agencies would be all over blogs, and Twittering their little socks off. Except, a look through Google Reader shows me that Ogilvy hasn’t updated its blog since August and even then it was mostly filled with company news. Cohne and Wolfe hasn’t updated for even longer – since May – while Text is up to date but not tremendously exciting. Oh, and its Twitter feed shows that it hasn’t updated its Twitter post for 58 days. Oops.
Does it matter if a company blogs, or how well it blogs? Perhaps. I can’t imagine being filled with confidence if an agency that hasn’t updated its blog in six months offered to help my business with blogger outreach. But what about companies in other areas, with other specialisms? Why divert resources?
The last week or so, I’ve been working with my PR client to help build them a blog. It seems obvious to me that the blog will only suceed if the client devotes time to it - it's more than simply popping up new company announcements once a week, and a few photos of the Christmas party.
But how much more? What are the blog must-do's? My provisional list is:
Anything else? What do you need to make your blog a success and, indeed, what constitutes "success"?