Practical Marketing: Keeping your PR out of the trash
There's a lot of marketing, media and PR going on in virtual worlds, particularly in Second Life. You've probably noticed. We've talked a lot about differentiation, approach, engagement and a whole lot of other factors. Now it is time to talk about actually getting your message out. Your presence in Second Life isn't worth a dime if nobody knows you're there.
This entails a tricky process called talking to the media. Sure, you used to do this, but the media changed a couple decades ago. No really, it did, and the last thing you want is the media ignoring you.
At Massively, we get lots of media and PR contact as you'd rather expect. We've got a more than a few words of advice for flacks who need to get their message to the media outlets.
Notice
Give us some advance notice. Don't send us an Instant Message, email, press-release, or media-alert 3 minutes after your big media event has started, and hope that we'll drop what we're doing and run in to see what's happening and give you a glowing write-up.
At best, the short notice makes people cranky. No, five minutes advance notice - or ten - is not noticeably better. We have appointments, meetings, interviews, time off and much of this is booked many days in advance. Media people are probably not going to break and reshuffle commitments because you can't give a few days' notice about something you've been planning for weeks or months.
Media Alerts and Press Releases
If you're sending media alerts or press releases:
Don't send them days after the recipients have already written up the thing you're alerting about and published it. That makes you look inattentive and sloppy, and you don't want that.
Don't expect the recipient to reproduce them verbatim. Most of them are just not going to. Many releases are so overspun that they have to have a fair bit of spin taken back off them before publishing. That may mean adding thoughts and opinions, additional background and ancillary information and references to excerpts from your rewritten release.
With the above in mind, give us something we can use. It should be, above all, informative, and answer a number of obvious questions. Our readers are going to have some, and we like to try to answer them straight up. Now we've got nothing particular against (for example) Metanetwork Media but they have a history of producing press-releases that we just cannot use as is, and that can't be turned into something we can. Don't do that. Junk releases waste your time and everyone else's. Journos file releases they can't use in the bin. You don't want your PR ending up in there, instead of in front of people.
When it comes to questions - assuming we have one which you didn't take the time to cover (quite likely!), don't throw out a release and then be hard to get in touch with. Don't run off to the Nepalese highlands for a six month sabbatical within minutes of issuing a press-release. Don't attach it to an email, and then jump on a fourteen hour flight to Uzbekistan. Just don't - not unless you listed a contact who is actually both available, and is able to answer questions. You'd be surprised how many fire-and-forget press-releases we see.
List a contact email address that actually works, and not the one for (for example) your company janitor. We likely need to get in touch with you for questions, and it's nice if they get to someone who can answer them.
When we ask a question - this is a bit of a tough one - answer the question or no-comment it. We understand that there may be reasons involving legality, confidentiality or privacy why you can't answer a question, but don't try to answer some question that is quite different to what we're asking. It makes you look weasely and evasive. Yes, many politicians and business people do this. It makes them look weasely and evasive too.
A press release isn't a paid advertisement. It's a fact sheet. We're not going to say that you are the best thing since sliced bread and orgasms, just because you said so in the the release. There is an advertising unit made up of gnomes and ogres. They're happy to arrange for advertising slots - or to raze and pillage communities of terrified villagers. Honestly, I'm not sure which - we don't really talk to them or pay attention to who our advertisers are (or which villages succumb to the depredations of our elite strike ogres), so long as the money keeps flowing. That's our editorial policy, in fact. If the writers accidentally discover who our advertisers are, they're subject to drug-therapy and mindwipes. It's a riskier business than you know.
Remember that your press-release is both source-material and a starting point. Be prepared for media recipients to come back to you. If they're not, there's either something they don't like about your release, or you're doing the right thing. Check: Is it being turned into articles and newsposts? If not, rethink your strategy. Self-publishing press releases is cheap. You're easier to convince about your business and strategy than other people. You have to convince someone else to publish.
With respect to the above - if we don't have nice things to say about you, we won't say them, even if you said them about you in your release. Even if you pay us money or submit your village for a ransacking. We're funny like that. We don't do cash-for-comment, and we don't take bribes.
Don't forget to mention who the heck you are. "Zombo.com presents..." who the heck are you? Corporation? Sole-trader? Publisher? University researcher? Developer? Danish-registered merchant-marine vessel? What?
To sum up:
Send information. Buzz not buzzwords.
Send information with sufficient notice, especially if you want a media presence.
Be available by email, at least, for questions. Emails work a whole lot better for getting clarification than phone-calls when multitasking, and you get to copy and paste information to us that you already have. How good is that?
Send correct contacts. Not dead email addresses, or the email address of your janitor.
Be concise and complete. Don't embellish unnecessarily. Don't pack it with sugary filler-terms or overspin your message. If the workload required to undo all that is too high, your material will go into the bin.
Find out which outlets you want to carry your news, and do your research. How do you contact them? Many discard releases with attachments automatically. Also, make sure that they haven't already covered the material you want to provide.
