There is an old adage in marketing: Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak. But as PR professionals, we know that all the sizzle in the world isn’t going to sell mass market corn-fed beef. The steak has to be cooked to perfection and presented not just as a product but as an experience.
Today’s Special: Steak
Within PR, that steak is the foundation of traditional public relations activities; strategizing cohesive campaigns which incorporate the creation and distribution of news releases, liaising with the media to facilitate interviews and article placement, opening opportunities for presence at events and speaking engagements. All remain critical to a successful PR campaign, yet with such longstanding presence in the publicity world, some of these standards can be detrimentally treated as a reflex action rather than a precision tool.
Let’s take press releases. An oversimplified headline (think: XYZ Company Announces…) will have editors and writers snoozing in the first five seconds. An undercrafted headline will miss valuable SEO opportunities. The body of the release also needs to address the shrinking attention span and rushed pace of its recipient; numbers are old hat, while infographics make statistics pop off the page.
Directing a release properly is also a different game today than it once was. The old cropdusting approach – spread the word everywhere and hope someone picks it up – is a gamble at best. Pitching by the masses doesn’t fit today’s marketplace. In PR it used to be called “smile and dial” – the obligatory phonecall following the mass market release. Despite the seemingly endless number of media outlets today – the majority digital – content is still king. We need to know the editors well – not to mention the beat reporters, writers and bloggers – and tailor the pitch to best capture their attention and make their job easier. They need content; giving them the best fit possible puts yours ahead of the pack.
Creating the best quality steak also means sending it out of the kitchen in the best way possible. Just as it’s crucial to create press releases tailored to varied targets, the spokespeople who will back those releases up must be prepped in a similar fashion. For example, an interviewer writing for NPR will need answers to background questions to educate and inform their audience; a reporter for a trade magazine will most likely be able to surpass or minimize the background and jump further into the details for a B2B audience. Preparing a spokesperson for each individual interview will ensure the best presentation.
Sizzling Social
Now that you’ve crafted the highest quality steak possible, let’s get back to that sizzle.
The sizzle today is social media. At lightening fast speed, messages are posted, tweeted, retweeted and pinned…all in the name of drawing attention to that steak. As PR professionals, we need to be both masters and students of social media. Trends are constantly changing, and tracking them well means staying on top of the ways in which social media can be used, presented and leveraged.
Social media has also transformed publicity into a two-way street; one in which as much as traditional means can push a message out, the recipients of that message can respond directly and out loud. Relationship marketing has become crucial; knowing not only what a target customer buys, for example, but what they do for fun, where they live, what their priorities are – these are the keys to connecting. The opposite is a true danger zone as well; all the sizzle in the world is great, but if in the end you are serving up a lackluster steak, you will hear about it. Most likely at the same time everyone in the social media sphere is hearing it.
The Perfect Combo
We’ve defined the steak and the sizzle. The question now is:
How is social media integrated with the foundational components of PR so as to deliver the ideal campaign?
- Be compelling – don’t just push generic content. Create searchable press releases with no fluff and quickly digestible information.
- Be visual – Numbers in a press release make people yawn…infographics catch the eye, and make for much more viewable social media posts, tweets, and retweets.
- Know who you’re talking to every time. Via every channel and in every instance, know your editors, writers, freelancers, bloggers…and tailor information for them that they can truly use.
- Engage in multiple ways; presenting information through a twitter feed and through a LinkedIn post, for example, will draw different factions into the conversation.
- Stay in school. Continue to be both a master and a student of social media and of journalism so that your two-way communications remain relevant in the long run.
When the sizzle around your steak is crafted for not only the best presentation, but is introducing the most delicious meal on the menu, you’ve created a successful campaign. To find out how to do both for your product or service, let’s talk. Call 203.762.8833 to start making your steak.
– BML
