DWPub Sporadic

Online PR - it's about people, not technology

I wandered along to the latest E-consultancy.com roundtable on online PR yesterday and witnessed a real consensus that the disciplines of PR and search marketing have a lot to gain from each other.

E-consultancy.com's primary audience is e-commerce and internet marketing people, so it was really encouraging to see that about a third of the 22 attendees were 'traditional' PR professionals.

Kate Williams from online PR agency headstream showed how it was possible to adapt PR skills to the online world with great tenacity. And Andrew Girdwood from bigmouthmedia showed how search engine optimisation (SEO) companies are becoming very savvy when it comes to PR. But we need to see more members of the 'traditional' PR community learning about online techniques.

Prior to the event E-consultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein illustrated the issue well when he said: "Our online PR training courses are currently our most popular courses. Not surprisingly we get loads of SEO types on these courses. My impression is that search people are much more eager to learn about PR than the other way round – PR people beware."

Find and contact target press with enhanced FeaturesExec service

You can now quickly generate target press lists and contact journalists directly using our improved Press Lists Express service on FeaturesExec.
The new Press Lists Express, which will go live next week, is based on enhancements suggested by users since the original service launched in mid-2005 when we also launched FeaturesExec for all sectors.
You’ll find the new version faster and easier to use. You are now able to incorporate freelance journalists (if you also subscribe to our Freelance Journalist Directory) and your own private contacts in addition to staffers. And once you have created your press list you can email multiple journalist contacts at the same time.
For more details about the new Press Lists Express and the Freelance Journalist Directory call 0845 370 7777 or email sales@dwpub.com.
The link between Press Lists Express and the Freelance Journalist Directory can help to boost your media coverage over time - see my earlier story on working with freelance journalists.

Get your message across at CeBIT

Make the most of this year’s CeBIT technology show with the dedicated SourceWire Press Release Wire section.
Press releases submitted to the Response Source/SourceWire Press Release Wire which include a reference to ‘CeBIT’ will be featured on a special section on the SourceWire site in the lead-up to the event and for a period afterwards, enabling journalists to quickly find releases relevant to the show. The section also features releases related to the 3GSM World Congress.
If you’re going to be at CeBIT this year, two members of our team will be around in case you need a break from talking to clients and journalists! UK account manager Tanya and German market specialist Katja will be at the show for the first two days. They can be contacted on +44 7769 712381 while they are there.

Assess journalist enquiries more quickly

It's now easier to assess the merits of each individual Response Source journalist enquiry thanks to changes to the format of the emails. We’re now sending more journalist enquiries (see our journalist enquiries usage graph) to a greater number of recipients than ever before, so it has become critical for recipients to be able to scan each one they receive quickly. We’ve cut out some unnecessary text and brought the critical elements of each enquiry further up the email. We hope you like it. If you have any feedback on Response Source please let us know - email admin@dwpub.com or call 0845 370 7777. If you’re not yet a subscriber to the Response Source Journalist Enquiries System then call 0845 370 7777 or email sales@dwpub.com for more information.

Online news consumption rising

For people who don't like to believe anything until they've seen the stats, there have been a few reports out recently supporting the widely-held perception that online news consumption is now significant.

Heather Hopkins at Hitwise has revealed some early nuggets from the forcoming Hitwise UK Online News and Media report. It shows that 'news and media' experienced 28 per cent year-on-year growth in market share of UK internet visits in January (also see the Journalism.co.uk report on this).

Meanwhile, a KPMG report found that 26 per cent of UK 18- to 24-year-olds  get their news online rather than from TV, newspapers or radio. Though the headline saying 'traditional media resilient' is an interesting spin - it's really only showing resilience in the higher age groups.

All this rather supports my argument that PR professionals must start engaging much more in online PR.