Tech PR: Be Your Own Wire Service
One of my longstanding principles is to be nice to almost everybody. I do this even if they work for me and I’m in a position to lord it over them and make their lives miserable. It’s not that I’m a kindly soul imbued with bonhomie or involuntarily go around spreading good cheer. Far from it. I’m nice because it’s practical, and often the safest thing to do. Through a twist of fate you can end up working for some nincompoop who was once your employee. Ask anyone who’s worked at Crawford. Most are former clients.
The other day I got a call from Peggy, an old pal and one of the handful of ex-clients who’s managed to evade employment here. But never mind that for now. She had a legit question:
PEGGY: “I have an event coming up in Boise, Idaho and want to make sure my news gets to all the top business reporters within a 200 mile radius. The problem is I’m on a limited budget. Do you know of any free services that can identify these people and get our news out to them more cheaply than Business Wire and PR Newswire?”
JIM: “These are two separate issues. First, it can’t be all that hard to find the 5 or 6 reporters who fit that description — take an hour or so and look them up yourself. Second, there are a lot of free or low cost wire services, but I haven’t used them or the big guys in a long time because I think wire services are a waste of time and money. Just email your release to the reporters. If you really feel compelled to issue a story on the wire, then do it in one market only — Boise, in your case — never region-wide or nationwide. This is the Internet era, after all, so you should get the same push with the search engines wire services like to brag about reaching.”
Peggy went off to think about that. Meanwhile, since I’ve been in this business a long time I thought I’d reach out to someone less geezerly than myself for a second opinion, so I called Kate Schackai, who somehow got a job here without having been a former client. Kate just finished a stint managing in-state and national media for the Ron Paul Presidential campaign in the New Hampshire primary, so I thought she’d be pretty up to date.
JIM: “Kate, what do you think of using wire services like Business Wire and PRN for news releases? I see you guys were putting stories out day and night, weekends, too.”
KATE: “What do I think of WHO? . . .Oh, those guys. Nope, never needed ‘em. We just emailed our releases to media.”
JIM: “But weren’t you worried about missing some key press who might not be on your media list?”
KATE: “Never happened. We built our own lists and covered just about everybody. If we did miss someone, they’d get in touch quickly and ask to be added to the list.”
Case closed, I guess. Granted there are occasions — earnings announcements and such — where SEC requirements mandate distribution of a release via a wire. When I reminded Kate of that point she wondered aloud why such an antiquated regulation is still on the books.
I don’t know the answer to that one, but I do know why I tend to “have it in” for the wire services. Having worked many years in the telecom sector, I have a good idea of what it costs to send a single document transmission across a network. Fractions of a cent, whatever the distance and however many recipients. Knowing that, I could say that charging hundreds or thousands of dollars to distribute a press release electronically is outrageous. But that wouldn’t be nice, so instead I’ll just take a flyer and encourage people to do what I always advise clients and friends: Be your own wire service. You won’t miss a thing about the old way.
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