Here's to "contented" clients

For our public relations clients, we’re recommending at least a 50/50 split of emphasis between traditional media and Internet-based media. Our King’s English business model used to look like a Mercedes-Benz logo with equal thirds advertising, public relations and Internet. Now, it’s not that clean, because the Internet is more a medium than a discipline and all of what we do needs to work on the Web, PR especially.

Traditional print and broadcast publications for the most part have Web versions, but we have to look deeper and broader than that. A public relations program needs to reach blogs, Craigs List, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Remember, too, that your audience, like you, isn’t getting any younger. This will be an old list by the time you read it!

With all due respect to the grand old tradition of glossy magazines, you can’t Google search the Southern Living print edition. When prospects are looking for something that you sell, they’re typing in generic descriptions and clicking on the top Google responses. But you know this already.

The new message to our PR clients is: self-publish. Blog technology enables you to create your OWN glossy magazine. However, don’t assume you can just pump out your usual brochure copy or traditional Web site content.

If you’re going to self-publish and you want any readership, you have to achieve some level of:
1) Engaging writing—on the Web, you have to balance the consumer demand for fast facts with style. Online content is the easiest message to share and if your message is easy to read and entertaining it’s more likely to get pass-along readership.
2) Objectivity—consumers are jaded, especially Web consumers. While you don’t have to write good things about your competitors, you should avoid blatant sales pitches. And the more you can support your proposition with links and examples, the better.
3) Value—your content has to have value in and of itself. Your readers need to learn something or get a new idea from your content.

On the precipice of 2010, here’s what I see: a media opportunity that is more or less free and wide open to you and all of your competitors BUT the point of difference is your content

One caveat: we STILL NEED THE OLD PRINT MEDIA. What self-publishing and some lesser online properties lack is third-party credibility. Better Homes and Gardens, for example, has a big editorial staff in Des Moines, whose job it is to make sure they don’t print lame information and those are still the kinds of media you want to be seen in. So you should keep half of your PR emphasis on the traditional media to build credibility for your brand.

Editors Note: Dave McLean (BSC '81 Radio-TV), Principal at the King's English, is still making music, as many who knew him at Ohio University may remember. Now living in the Greensboro, NC area he is with The Raving Knaves, check out and listen to some of their music, or see them at some upcoming dates if you are in the area.