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Public relations (PR) in the world of new media (blogging, podcasting) doesn’t work the same as it has for the print world. When you did something noteworthy in the old days, you’d write up a press release and send it to the relevant media outlets: newspapers, radio, TV, etc. That doesn’t work any more. In Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, co-authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel write:

…a large number of people see the PR practitioner intentionally blocking the path to the truth, someone who guides company spokespeople to manipulate the message around the actual facts to the advantage of the company and at the expense of the public’s right to know (100).

And it’s no wonder: we’ve suffered from so much spin and message-massaging in the last two decades that we’ve simply come to expect it. So if you’ve got something to say or want someone’s help, what’s the alternative in a post-press-release age?

Have a blogging strategy

The blogosphere is a free market for information: the best, most valuable stuff rises to the top while the dregs remain at the bottom. Because people have become accustomed to filtering spin, they can tell when they’re reading a credible site or not. It won’t do to send out a bunch of press releases to top blogs and podcasts. If you’re looking for positive press in the blogosphere, then, you have to work within the rules of new media, not old.

Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling The 4-Hour Workweek (review forthcoming), did just that. He cultivated relationships with influential bloggers for a year prior to publishing his book. When the book came out, he asked those same bloggers if he could send them review copies. They said, "Sure," and his book was well-received (Robert Scoble has all the details of Ferriss’ strategy in a new FastCompany article).

New media means new rules.

Tags: blogging, marketing, new media

Filed under: Blogging, Marketing, New media by Michael