Social media presents traditional PR folks with a topsy turvy kind of world.
Web hits used to be dismissed as cheap and less impressive than “real ink” on a printed page. Similarly, local media results were often looked down upon when compared with national and international coverage.
These days it is the Web hit that many prefer. It is not just the publication that counts of course, but getting into Google’s index, and living there for future reference. At the same time, coverage in local publications can often be the drivers of online conversations outside the area and rise to the surface for certain search terms.
I thought of this while reading an article in the Sunday NY Times (These Days, No Reporting Behind a Nation’s Back) which covered the changing nature of the foreign correspondent’s audience:
It is a momentous, overlooked shift in the world: Foreign correspondents no longer cover one place for the exclusive benefit of readers somewhere else. In the Internet age, we cover each place for the benefit of all places…
Also, targeting your audiences takes on a different meaning in the online world. E.g., during a new business pitch last week the client talked about the importance of the channel to their sales efforts.
In tech PR, communicating with the channel used to mean campaigns and content tailored for and targeted to the publications that are read by system integrators, distributors and VARs. There aren’t many of these left.
I pointed out that today it all comes together online. You don’t necessarily need special materials or campaigns targeted to the channel. We can now communicate directly with a range of audiences over the Web, including the channel. Sure, you can do a channel announcement and send it out, but channel folks can also of course have access to other materials about you – materials you generate or otherwise.
So getting through to resellers takes on a different shape. It can mean optimizing your content for placement in search engines and social media based on the tech key words that the resellers care about, the vendors and trends they are following, and by making sure you are publishing materials that hit the hot buttons of your channel.
This brings up another important point.
Since the Web can be a great big meat grinder for all your content, it is important to periodically take the pulse of your brand in terms of how people might see it online.
I’ll be blogging more about this topic in the coming days.
