In recent years, you’ve likely turned to prediction columns like this one at the start of a new calendar wondering about investing time and attention in specific platforms.
“Is this the year Snapchat becomes ubiquitous?” you might be asking today. IBM’s digital experience manager Brandi Boatner predicted in these pages last week that 2017 will be the year that Facebook Live really takes off. That’s a very reasonable prognostication given the additions Facebook has been making to this feautre. So were some of the other predictions, from Boatner and others, such as one attorney Allison Fitzpatrick of Davis & Gilbert LLP made here that envisions PR pros being involved increasingly in responding to fake news on various platforms.
The Land Rush is Done
My take on the new year is different, though: 2017 will be when we realize that the land rush associated with new channels and platforms is over, and we no longer have excuses for not focusing on the key elements that drove PR for the century before digital media: quality and credibility.
Yes, we’re at the tail end of a few years’ window when you could get ahead simply by posting more frequently to your brand journalism site than the laggards. Google rewarded sheer quantity.
And you could get a bunch of free followers by jumping onto Facebook before your competitors, and then Twitter, and to some extent Instagram. This channel-hopping seemed like the new normal. But in the grand scheme of the history of marketing, it will be viewed as an outlier on the front end of the digital revolution, where fundamental rules got bent for a while.
I bet it was the same when radio, and then again TV, first went mainstream. There was a relatively brief period while the landscape reoriented, and then things reverted such that attention went primarily to those with the biggest budgets or with the most trust.
You’re seeing that reordering happen now: You need to pay to reach your own social followers. And there is so much content available that information consumers are cloistering around the relatively few sources they trust, whether that’s their like-minded friend’s social feed or a niche news site that half your executives have never heard of.
What To Do? Put Earned in Earned Media
- Therefore, you need to double down on creating content that’s five to 10 times better than what’s already competing for your followers’ attention.
- To get the attention of new followers, you need to borrow the credibility of influencers they already trust.
- Instead of positioning yourself to chase the next new platform, get ahead by realizing that the real gold is being seen on those platforms and outlets your key audiences already trust.
- Competition for trusted platforms is fierce. You can buy your way in, if you’ve got the funds to compete and you believe that repetition will overcome wariness about paid advertising. Or you can put the earn in earned media, and work for it. This isn’t as appealing, because there are no shortcuts. You’ve got to greatly expand your vision of what constitutes “media,” and invest energy in learning what makes these new influencers tick.
- And then you’ve got to reframe your outreach for each outlet. That requires you to adapt to something that has changed permanently, and that’s the fragmentation of media. If we didn’t know it already, the 2016 presidential election taught us that there is no longer any such thing as “the national media.” Every outlet serves only a segment of the population.
For example, your boss still probably wants you to land him in the New York Times. That’s because he likely cares about the opinions of people who are similar to him. Without passing judgment and for want of a better term, we’ll categorize those people as intellectual and economic elites. And for that type of audience, the NYT likely is still a great way to target it.
But if your mandate is also to persuade masses of people in “red states” to buy your product or advocate for your issue, you’re going to need to complement those Times placements with coverage in some very different outlets.
Multiple Angles Needed
Let’s say you represent a food brand. Instead of having one angle you use for national media, you need to vary that so you have one version you can essentially pitch to the Fox News crowd and another that works for the MSNBC crowd.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you must pitch to those specific outlets, but you need to accept that the audience for the Times is different than that of the Wall Street Journal, and both are different than the audience that reads The Blaze and Refinery29.
And instead of relying on a few formerly preeminent food glossies (insert whatever your venerable trade media are here), you’ve got to do the hard work and thinking to parse your message into the ways it will be appealing to various online food personalities that different segments of your audience trust.
Don’t Worry, You Are Equipped To Do This
Exhausted? Don’t be. This reversion to the natural order of things—a crowded marketplace of ideas with no silver bullet channels—rewards the skills that set you apart from the rest of your marketing peers. You have the ability, knowledge and background to identify credible gatekeepers who have access to and are trusted by audiences you wish to reach. In addition, you know how to pitch those gatekeepers effectively so that they share your message. These abilities are going to be increasingly rare and valuable in the economy of 2017 and beyond.
That’s why I welcome the overwhelming amount of content and the proliferation of channels facing our audiences. This is because traditional media relations pros who can build on those skills to become “influencer relations” professionals will always win, no matter what the shiny new platform du jour is.
CONTACT: Michael Smart is the media pitching coach PR pros seek when they want to boost media relations success. He ad- vises everyone from Fortune 10 brands to nonprofits and sole proprietors. Learn more at: michaelsmartpr.com
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