No surprise here.. although press releases are more frequently shared on Facebook, shares on Twitter drive significantly more traffic back to releases than shares on Facebook.  Read the details here from CrowdFactory....

I work for journalists, analysts, and bloggers.  

Photo by me shot somewhere in West Virginia (c) 2011

My goal is to bring them really great stories, that come from companies with great technology, platforms and products.  

Behind those companies are great people who are passionate and really give a shit about delivering something disruptive, significantly better, possibly (but not not always) less expensive, that in all cases delievery a superb experience.

Yes, I work for journalists, analysts and bloggers.

My clients pay me (and the team I build) to do this.  

I think like a journalist, and provide content, information, data, case studies, end user profiles, access to the client and more.  

I work to help to increase the journalist, analyst, and bloggers of coverage because I've done my homework and prepared them for the best story they can cover.

When you work to serve the journalist, analyst, and blogger you get an inverse rate of success.  

It goes way up.

Time for A Re-Set

Re-set your thinking to not being about you or your company, but how you can help make the journalist, analyst or blogger more successful in their work, not yours.

I am a believer in contributed stories.  Publications need them and it sets you apart from just pitching your news.  It helps establish your thought leadership, and you can re-purpose these contributions for your business development and sales teams.

Here's an example of a piece that just published yesterday in CSO Online from my client, John Dickson, CISSP, at Denim Group, and here's some simple rules to follow so you can pitch, and place your contributed story.

1.  Match your expertise to the right media.  This is a security angle, so it was pitched to a security related publication.

2.  Make sure there is an appropriate section (even if it's an industry specific site) to your content.  In this case, the focus being Data Protection.

3.  Identify the right journalist who handles these sections, or the particular subject.  

4.  Read previous contributions and see what is written, the style, the length, the subject matter, the vision.

5.  Send a brief (repeat - brief) pitch.  Something like:  Hi John, my client, (or my company) would like to contribute a piece to XYZ Magazine on the subject of XXXX.  The story would be written by XXX, who is the XXXX at our company.  We have 3 subjects in mind which include - (list the subjects).  Would you consider our submitting an abstract on one or all three for your consideration?  Anything we contribute would be original to your publication and in the context of your editorial themes.

6.  Send you pitch and wait five working days.  If you don't hear back, send it again.  The realities are that journalists are pitched to death and have very full inboxes with lots of other things to do.

7.  Assuming you get a yes, it's your task to then submit an abstract - generally a paragraph or two on the subject matter.  Make sure your content and proposed story is unique, does not overstate the obvious and is useful.  Don't make it a sales pitch.

8.  Send the abstract and wait another five days.  If you don't hear back, make another inquiry.  This can take time, but it's worth the wait. The cycle on this article that I pointed to took 90 days. 

9.  If the abstract is accepted, then get going on the article.  Make sure your article length is in accord with what the journalist want you to adhere to.

10. Once the article is live, share your content.  And rejoice!

So... how about you?  

Have you pitched contributed stories before?  

Share your experiences in how you did this.

Business cards are important.  I get mine from Moo and just recently, Meet-Meme.com.  I want my cards to be memorable - beyond the initial meeting or chance encounter at a trade show or conference.  

Have you taken a look at your positioning lately?

Before deploying a successful public relations campaign, certain groundwork must be done.  Planning must occur, but even before tactical planning, strategic planning should take place.  Essential to the strategic planning process is the positioning exercise.  Public relations programs are based on messages and those messages emerge from an understanding of one's position in the marketplace.  Solid positioning is the very foundation of the campaign.  A public relations program is an awful lot of work to go through if the underlying messages are not sound and relevant to the market.

Louis Vuitton (well positioned) shot in Paris by Alan Weinkrantz

Positioning is the act of defining your place among your peers and identifying the unique value you offer within that competitive landscape.  It is both a goal and a process.  It is ongoing and above all, it is proactive. If you don't position yourself, the competition and other market factors will do it for you.  Good positioning is the heart and soul of an effective public relations campaign.  If done properly, it begets effective messaging -- messaging that makes sense within the larger context of the marketplace, addresses important issues within that market, and demonstrates a vision for the future.  Thus, through its relevance to a given market, good positioning helps build credibility with press, analysts, investors, channel partners and customers. 

Too many people think that public relations is simply a matter of pumping out news releases and hounding the press.  Ill-prepared, they wage an uphill battle, trying to penetrate a press corps already defending itself against such tactics.  In fact, effective PR occurs through having a credible, newsworthy story to tell in the first place and convincing the press of that story's significance.  Positioning is about sorting through everything you know about yourself and unearthing that newsworthy story.  Companies who take the time to engage in the positioning process -- evaluating their competitive landscape, putting a fine point on the unique value their product offers, and thoughtfully establishing how that capability is critical for their market's future -- will reap the benefits of more coherent messaging, greater credibility with the press, and improved authority in the marketplace.

Speaking With One Voice

Completing a formal positioning exercise not only leads to effective messaging -- it also assures consistency in messaging.  A company has multiple audiences and one of the most important of these is its own employees.  Involving employees in the positioning process fuels the exercise with rich input and helps the organization to speak in unison.

This means bringing to the table a panel of key employees from across the organization and working with that group to build consensus on questions of what your place in the market really is, what it should be, and how to get there.  Enlisting the opinions of this group assures the creation of a positioning that your own people will accept and articulate, thus empowering the organization to speak with one voice.  This is essential if the organization is to successfully relay its messages to customers and the press.

The Need for Consensus

When representatives of a company sit down with an objective strategist and take up the task of defining who they are, what their product is, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and how it stacks up against the competition, they often witness a surprising array of responses.  In fact, the extent to which representatives of the same company disagree on key positioning issues is not so surprising.  In all likelihood, they have probably never been assembled for the specific purpose of discussing and evaluating the company's positioning.  For this reason, the positioning exercise is often a groundbreaking event, where participants disclose their opinions on positioning issues for the first time.  Even though companies get product out the door every day while disagreeing on big-picture issues, doing so incurs certain risks.  Without consensus, you risk deploying an ill-founded communications program.  You risk alienating an already skeptical and unapproachable media.  You risk the fragmentation of your marketing and communications efforts, as departments undermine each other with conflicting strategies.  Fortunately, a positioning exercise is a great way to build consensus and gain valuable feedback in the process.

Leveraging Feedback

One of the most valuable benefits of the formal positioning exercise is feedback, specifically incongruous feedback.  Once at the positioning table, companies often realize that their marketing and communications efforts have been hobbled for too long by internal disagreement on critical issues.  The positioning exercise creates the opportunity to examine these disagreements and the underlying issues that cause them.

The idea is not to silence these voices, but to leverage what they reveal to address problems and build better, stronger positioning.  In their direct dealings with customers and channel partners, rank and file employees are often privy to candid feedback about product performance that higher - level executives are not.  Enlisting a diverse panel of company representatives allows decision-makers to elicit this feedback in an organized setting in order to help evaluate the company's present position, establish its desired position, and chart the course to get there.

It is no mistake that the most successful public relations campaigns begin with a formal positioning exercise.   The benefits are numerous; a proactive positioning process creates the foundation for successful communications and public relations efforts; it helps establish credibility with press and analysts; it engenders constructive dialogue, and helps achieve a shared vision across the organization; it helps companies identify the unique value their products offer and communicate that message effectively to the right audience.  Good positioning also needs upkeep.  Market influencers, your competitors, and product features change over time; so too your positioning needs to be revisited and modified along with the changing market. 

Have you taken a look at your positioning lately? 

If not, position yourself before someone else does it for you. 

How To Follow Leading Technology Journalists on Twitter?  Easy.  Click here.

The State of NOW welcomes you to the State of Texas

Friends attending SXSW Interactive are invited to join the mini #140conf taking place the afternoon of March 16th from 2 PM to 6 PM.

Members of the media wanting to interview Jeff Pulver prior to, or during SXSW, please reach out to me - alan at weinkrantz dot com or @alanweinkrantz

The following is the latest draft of the #140conf @ SXSW 2010 Schedule

#140conf @ SXSW 2010 (draft 1.5.0)

2:00 Welcome - Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver)
2:05 Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver) - “The State of NOW”
2:20 The twitter Kids of Tanzinia (panel): @StaceyMonk, @AJLeon, @MelissaLeon
2:35 Marlooz (@marlooz) - Love 2.0
2:45 Digital Producers and Disruptors (panel): (Natalie Lent (@natalielent), Director, Emerging Platforms, ID PR; Sarah Ross (@sarah_ross) - Katalyst Media, Head of Digital) 
3:00 break

3:30 Jeff Sass (@sass) - Listen and Hear
3:45 Hank Wasiak (@hankwasiak) - Time To Change The Way We See Social Media.
4:00 twitter and Photography - Wm Marc Salsberry
4:10 Bowen Payson (@virginamerica) - Manager of Online and Digital Marketing, Virgin America - "twitter and an Airline. Our story" 
4:20 Andy Dixon (@AndyDixn) - twitter and Integrity
4:30 break 
5:00 twitter and Music: (Panel): (Steve Greenberg, (@steviegpro) CEO, S-Curve Records, +TBA)
5:30 Adam Wallace (@adwal), New Media Manager, The Roger Smith Hotel, "It's All About The People."
5:40 The effects of twitter on News Gathering (panel): Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox); James Imajes (@Imajes); Brian Stelter (@brianstelter, New York Times.
6:00 End

(schedule is subject to change without notice)

Strategic Communications and Personal Branding