THE PRACTITIONER

The holidays are over: the presents have been unwrapped, the decorations put back in their boxes, the feast has been devoured, life is slowly returning to normal. When I look back on Christmas 2009 (the holiday my family celebrates), it won’t be remembered for the gifts I gave or received. I won’t remember it for the food either, even though my mother’s roast is something I look forward to all year long. I’ll remember the holiday for the people that surrounded me, because when it’s all over, it’s the relationships that matter the most.

Just like in my personal and familial life, strong relationships are critical to my work. As a PR professional working with B2B technology companies, my clients have exciting products that help businesses run more efficiently and become more profitable. It is my job to help tell those stories, and I do this utilizing my relationships with people in the media.

There are some people that think sending a press release over email to a reporter counts as outreach. While I guess that’s true in the most literal sense, it’s hardly effective. Think of the emails you get from strangers – do you even bother to open them? At the agency, we make it a point to continually reach out to communicate with the key members of the media that influence my clients’ customers, so that our relationship is strong. We don’t just approach them when we have news, we call to check in on them, to see if we can help them. As a result, they often reach out to us, unprompted, to ask for our clients’ input or to see if we have an expert who can offer insight to help shape a story. We credit our approach to media relationships to the majority of strong feature coverage we generate for my clients.

In my early professional career, I worked in showbiz. My job was to help my clients (actors) get work and to shape their career. It was during this period that I came to understand the importance of strong relationships. There are a lot of actors in Hollywood struggling to get noticed. Just because some of them do not succeed does not mean that they are without talent. The most talented actor in the world wouldn’t get anywhere if he/she didn’t have a representative with the trusted relationships to get the key producers, directors and casting directors on the phone. This is how agents came to be an essential cog in the Hollywood machine – and it’s really no different in B2B technology PR.

I use the same skills that helped those actors get work to gain media coverage for my clients today. I build trusted relationships with media by demonstrating a clear understanding of my clients’ products, their customers’ pain points, industry trends, the editor’s or reporter’s interests, and the publication’s targets.

As we start 2010 ask yourself, “Are we losing opportunities to be covered in our target publications because we don’t have strong enough relationships with our key media?”  If the answer is yes, give me a call.  I’d be happy to help.