Flash Mob PR

I got to thinking about the crazy times in my life. One of them was the flash mobs times. Some think is stupid; however, I think that, on the contrary, it’s not stupid at all. It is actually a new kind of media!!!

What are flash mobs? Flash Mobs are seemingly unplanned gatherings of large groups of people that converge in public (or semipublic) places for brief periods of time. All members of a Flash Mob simultaneously converge to form the mob and then quickly disperse again at a given time, all members departing in different directions.[Flash mobs London]

I remember taking part at one of these “events” and it was really one of the craziest times. A large group of people gathering at a place acting strangely is something that definitely attracts attention. I start searching to find the London website of flash mobs to see what’s new and I noticed that it’s not just a funny think. It could be public relations tool. As the one of the aims of Public relations is to maintain media coverage somehow “flash mobs” is the way to go. Why?

The answer is really easy. The events always attract the attention of those passing by and more importantly they attract the attention of the news. Newspapers like the Guardian, and the Telegraph or even BBC actually published photos and stories about “Flash mobs”.

How I see it, flash mobs are a new kind of “media” and a new PR tool on attracting the journalists and publics attention to write stories and publish photos about it.

UK Flash mobs: http://www.flashmob.co.uk/

The impact of new technology in the Media on Public Relations

The consolidations of the internet, in professional life and the occurrence of new technologies have meant a radical change to the way public relations industry practice media relations. Professionals of the industry modified the way of communicating with journalists, and more is on the way.

For many Public Relations practitioners, “Media Relations” takes up much of their time. They spend a lot of time dealing with press, writing press releases and trying to get them publish, writing feature articles, and communicate with journalists. What are you going to send, to who are you going to send it, when and how, matters a lot. Effective media Relations rely on these aspects. Technology is improved radically every day.

Technology has developed new ways of communication, we no longer send letters as much as we used to, instead we send e-mails, we don’t call to each other but we “chat”. Technological development did not have impact only on personal life it has also changed professional life as well. In what way and how much did the new technology affect Public relations and the way practitioners communicate with journalist, maintaining effective Media Relations?

The answer to that question is simple. Public relations not only had they change the way of communicating with journalist, but also Media Relations has changed rapidly. New trends such as blogs, e-mails, online media rooms RSS feed and lots more refashioned the relationship of Public relations with the Media.

Stop faxing start e-mailing!!!

Hundreds of Press releases tucked in a fax machine, and a journalist looking through them, frustrated, to find the right one, is a picture that we no longer see in newspapers. Now instead of full fax machine boxes, journalists have a full “inbox”.

Stacy King refers to e-mail as a great boon to the modern Public Relations professional. Rather than the old days spending hours faxing out press releases to individual media outlets, a distribution list can allow you to blanket many publications in a single click.

Journalists are busy people with little time in searching to find press releases in fax machine boxes. If a press release is delivered directly to the inbox of the journalists it’s more likely that it will be given better attention. However it is as easy to send an e-mail as it is to delete it. Simplicity of this process can be tricky.

Distributing releases in this way avoids clogging up journalists’ fax machines with reams of paper, while targeting worldwide. This is what Alison Thicker in the CIPR book “Effective Media Relations: How to get Results”. However, Thicker, puts out a warning that some users build an automatic delete facility for certain kinds of material from certain sources. E-mailing Press Releases can be an easy way of distribution but it can also be deceptive.

Moreover, it is very easy to miss the target of the press release, simply by sending the e-mail to the wrong address. This New Technology can make the Public Relations professionals’ life easier; however it can also make it more complicated.

Find it Online!!!

Journalists are really busy people. Everyday they receive hundreds of press releases and they chose for which of them they will write a story about. Apart from the quality of the press release, that will catch the attention of the journalists, it is as much important how easily Journalists find information.

Journalists are looking for variety of information and they work in deadlines. They are always in a hurry to find it. If they don’t have easy access to what they are looking for in a website, they easily move to the next one. They need Online Media Rooms, where all the data is easily accessible.

An online Media Room according to Gina Seamans APR Accent Relations LLC “An online Media Room is a “mini-site” that resides at a separate secure domain, but with seamless access to and from the main site. The Media Room is primarily dedicated to communicating media-specific information to reporters and journalists. But, it is available to the public as a resource for basic company information.

How Journalists Receive and Prefer Information

Marshall Krantz, senior editor for Meeting News and PRSA teleconference presenter setting the basic elements of an Online Media Room points out that
“Journalists are not interested in hype – all we want is a quick, simple message that gets the point across.”

Basic Elements of an online Media Room (according to Marshall Krantz)
1) Quick and Easy
2) Link from Homepage
3) List Staff Contacts
4) List News Releases
5) Post breaking news immediately
6) Provide Fact Sheet, Bios
7) Post Print-Quality Images
8) Offer E-Mail Media List Sign-Up
9) Use Copy-Friendly Formats

The advantages of online media rooms are many, although there are also some disadvantages. Online Media Rooms can sometime be complicated causing the frustration of journalists and failure to find the right information. Other problems are: photographs that sometimes lack of quality, or even out of date contact information, unsearchable press archive and last but not least the need to register before viewing some information.

Public Relations are very connected or even depended by the Media. Media relations is the unique selling point of the industry, therefore any changes happening in the media affects public relations as a profession and as a discipline. Technology is in the root of many current trends in the Media sector, therefore which influence automatically Public Relations industry.

Everyone goes Blogging !!!

Blogs is a fast growing trend the past couple of years. It has become a very popular way of communicating. Many organizations and public relations professionals or agencies create their own blog as a new way of communication with the public, as a New Media. What exactly is a Blog?

The online Encyclopedia www.wikipedia.com refers to the blogs as a website in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis and generally displayed in reverse chronological order. The term is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts," or "entries". A person who posts these entries is called a "blogger". A blog may include any commentary or reporting on the chosen subject of the blogger and may also include hypertext, images and links to video, audio and other files. Blogs Are now part of a lot of professional Fields such as politics, economics, marketing, public relations and so on.

Blogs are used by Media to cover News stories and opinions. The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2. The influence blogs can gain, changes opinion and influences decisions. In 2002 blogs helped to create a political crisis that forced U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to step down as majority leader. Bloggers supported their blogs on documents and live interviews. That showed Blogs are reliable sources. “The shaping of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light” Wikipedia

Public Relations practitioners apart from journalists they also have to reach and get the attention of bloggers as they have made firm their position in media family. However, reaching a blogger can be more challenging than reaching a reporter. Lloyd Trufelman and Laura Goldberg writing for the PRCA highlight that “The most important thing a publicist can do before pitching a blogger is to carefully read his or her blog. Unlike beat reporters at typical news outlets, bloggers are extremely idiosyncratic in choice of subject matter and slant.”

Journalists also have blogs either in groups or personal, in which they cover variety of stories and subjects. PRSA also advice that, “the ability to check out journalists' blogs offers an invaluable opportunity to gain insight into their true interests and viewpoints”. Journalists-bloggers in addition to their job they also read and comment other blogs. This New Media requires a new approach and a new way of reaching the media target by the public relations practitioners. It can be also an opportunity to reach the wishing target more effectively since blogs as a new media have gained enormous influence.

RSS Feed

This New Technology allowed journalists as well as individuals to keep updated on news, without lots of searching. Instead of having to go to websites to see if there's a new story or feature, you can use RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) to tell you every time the news you want is updated. PRWeek

According to the Wikipedia.com, the technology of RSS allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to many printed newspapers and magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.
RSS allows, sending automatically your blog posts or new content at your website to those who ask for it. Who that might be? They can be journalists, customers, stakeholders, and everyone else. It is a valuable tool for searching. In-house public relations departments or public relations agencies, can use RSS feed to make the Media Relations process easier and quicker. News or even press releases can be sent to journalists. This New Technology solves the problem of going into thousands of websites and searching for information and news. In this way the information is send to the person that is interested directly and automatically.

Eric Schwartzman, former director of promotions at Rogers & Cowan and founder of Schwartzman & Associates in Los Angeles, at his Blog “Spinfluencer” writes that “RSS makes it possible for public relations agencies and corporate pr professionals to leverage the Net as their own custom electronic media distribution network. It is, for PR, the first practical solution for establishing and maintaining your own 24/7 network for the distribution of text, audio and video.

In addition, RSS Feed is an economical way to distribute information internally and externally. A case study on the Company Triple Point Technology proves that RSS is a cheap way of communicating, according to Anne Chen on e-week.com. In public Relations, practitioners do not buy space or time in the media, and budgets are usually tight. RSS gives an easy and cheap way of communicating.

Ron Miller on Network World highlights that “big firms all have some budget for public relations — not only to generate media hits, but also to track references made about the business or its products. Many small firms can’t afford to hire a professional and are too busy to track company buzz themselves. So many are turning to news aggregators”

News Aggregator is a a type of software that retrieves syndicated Web content that is supplied in the form of a web feed (RSS, Atom and other XML formats), and that are published by weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites.Wikipedia

RSS feed, as mentioned previously, can be a useful tool for Public Relations and especially on Media Relations, on the other Hand, it can also be tricky and sometimes not effective in that area of PR practice. In communication terms, RSS might be impersonal and indirect. An article by Case Stevens in the "All I Need" website believes that, “It’s not a one -to-one communication medium. You cannot build a relationship with your readers, you can’t personalize it and you cannot reward your subscribers for trusting you, simply because you don’t know who they are.”
Apart from it’s disadvantages, RSS feed is a new technology used in Public Relations creating a new trend in communicating with the Media, and making the Media Relations process easier and more effective. The technology, whether it is or isn’t acceptable to all practitioners, influences the industry and causing necessary changes.

New Media... New Public Relations!!!

Internet, e-mails, blogging, online media rooms and RSS feed are some of the New Media with which the Public Relations industry is called to cope. Practitioners need not only to be aware of the New Media and the current trends but also to know how to use them effectively.

The job of a public relations’ professional has changed and keeps changing as the technology moves forward to improvements. New technological tools are applied in the Media industry every day affecting all the other related or co-operative industries such as public relations. Professionals of the industry should try to be up-to-date and follow up the current trends of the media industry.