from Christopher Simmons, member: PRSA, ASCAP
CEO Neotrope; founder, Send2Press
Understanding Media Response:
The response your news receives is directly related to how “newsworthy” the receiving media outlet considers it to their respective audience, and is NOT related to the high quality of our distribution service. Note that magazines have 1-3 month lead times for print editions, newspapers can sometimes post online if no print space and need 14-21 days for event news, broadcast outlets tend to take only human interest or offbeat news, and online sources are difficult to measure (some “clone” stories, some make short mention on a page with ten other news snippets, and so forth). So-called “advertorial” news gets very little – if any – response (“we’re having a sale/promotion/giveaway”).
Your release should be considered an invitation to the media to consider your news, and it’s entirely up to the receiving person to decide what, if anything, to do with it.
Remember it can take hours, days, weeks for somebody to actually use your news in many cases; it doesn’t often “explode” in the first couple of hours unless it’s truly remarkable or unless one major outlet like AP runs with it.
The Rise of Lazy Media:
Over the past several years we have seen a dramatic rise in what I call “lazy media,” which are folk who no longer call you to fact check your information, or request a unique quote. Under pressure to pump as much click-bait content online daily as possible, separate from any traditional print or broadcast work, a lot of media writers may simply take one paragraph, one quote and add one or two pithy paragraphs of their own, dump your news online and call it a day; on to the next one. They don’t send you clip, or otherwise reach out, and you’d never know about it unless doing regular Google searches. This has happened to me several times including a major east coast daily newspaper, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. The upshot is that getting a phone call is no longer as likely as it once was, and you may be getting “pick-ups” without any contact from a media person.
Readership Numbers with a Grain of Salt:
Please be aware that readership of your news is a combined “hit counter” record of a mixture of media, public, researchers, competitors, and others (e.g., marketing people and company data mining). PR is not direct marketing, where a percentage of reads translates into conversions in quite the same way; in many ways it’s incremental marketing. Put another way, having 1,200 reads in 48 hours doesn’t imply that all of those are media folk desperately interested in your news.
Copr. © 2010-2015 Christopher Simmons – all rights reserved.