Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog

Joan Stewart, affectionately known as The Publicity Hound, has spotted 4 new trends in public relations.  They are reprinted from "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week," a free ezine featuring tips, tricks and tools for generating free publicity.  You can subscribe at www.PublicityHound.com and receive free by email the handy list "89 Reaons to Send a News Release."  Here are the trends:

Trend #1: Blogging

By far, this is the most important development in the last year, and not just for PR people. Even though blogs have been around for several years, they're growing at the rate of at least 30,000 new blogs a day. Yes, a DAY. You no longer have to rely only on the media to get your message to the masses. You can create your own blog (short for web log) in an hour or two, and communicate directly with your customers and the public. Blog expert Peter Blackshaw of Inteliseek said blogs are like "megaphones on steroids." He told a group of about 130 PR people: "Whether you think bloggers are crackpots or not, many consumers trust them more than they trust you." (Stay tuned next week as I introduce The Publicity Hound's blog.)

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It means you automatically send your blog posts or new content at your website to those who ask for it. That might include everybody from your customers and shareholders to journalists who cover your topic. You, too, can use RSS feeds as a valuable research tool, and a great way to check up on what your competitors are doing if you subscribe to RSS feeds from their sites and from blogs that keep you up to date on industry trends.

Surveys show an increasing number of journalists are doing research online. Yet they're frustrated by the inability of companies to post up-to-date, relevant information at their websites. Reporters are bothered by things such as flash sites, poor navigation, no immediate contact information, forms they're asked to fill out, no print-quality images, and things they must download. Remember that many of them are still on slow dial-up connections.

Gone are the days when people measured the success of their PR campaigns by a bucket full of clippings. These days, smart promoters are measuring business outcomes. They're asking questions like: Did our publicity change minds? Move markets? Influence people's decisions? Did we sell more? Did we increase market share? In other words, before you begin a PR campaign, carefully define your goals. Then launch the campaign. Then judge the success of the campaign by whether or not the publicity helped you reach your goals.