The most valuable skill in media relations is a keen sense of the news cycle. Knowing what drives it is the key to starting one yourself and sending it in the direction of an audience you want to influence. Over years of practice, these skills get honed into instincts that reliably contribute to a company’s reputation and bottom line. They’re also a recipe for failure when deployed in B2B social media efforts.
Its difficult to ignore these instincts if you’ve been brought up in traditional PR. But as more flacks are tasked with social media, the need to unlearn some past lessons has never been more important. Here are three to start with:
1. Urgency of Now: Consider that with the traditional media, news breaks, the coverage cycle spikes and then quickly declines. But B2B social media communities are more deliberative. So instead of a spike, you’ll see a conversation trend line shaped more like a gentle upward slope. If you’re reading the situation like a traditional media relations pro, you’ll think the news is a dud and abandon outreach. In fact, the conversation is just getting started, and can go on for months or even years, flaring up, dying down to embers, and then catching fire again. In fact, right now, there may be customers talking about a product you launched long ago. Are you listening for it? Are you engaging them?
2. Criticality of “New:” For a regular person, the definition of “new” is something that’s new to them. For journalists, nothing’s “new” unless no one else has heard it before. So if you’re a PR person doing social media, and you’re tasked with promoting products (and especially professional services) that have been around a while, you’re apt to think no one will care because it’s “old.” But in B2B circles, you’re dealing with regular people; the bar is lower. The trick is to not promote the offering like it’s something new, but find people who are currently having a problem that your solution solves but they just don’t know it yet. There’s also the fanbase/nostalgia/historical perspective buttons that can be pressed in B2B communities that journalists covering the same sector will shun. Go on…press them.
3. Big push, big measure: Given the rapid expiration date on “news,” PR campaigns typically do a big push on announcements and then sit back and measure the results. But in social media, the community’s responses are measured in real time. That means you can do a small push, measure the results, and change your pitch based on what worked to get a better result. This “slow burn” approach to disseminating news online is a real challenge for the adrenaline junkies that tend to thrive in media relations. But I promise, the satisfaction of bigger ROIs makes it worth the effort.
What other media relations approaches fair or outright backfire in social media? Your thoughts/comments are welcome!
