As the web has made communicating with reporters and editors extremely easy, breaking through using the online methods everyone else uses has become increasingly difficult. These days, you can find the email addresses of reporters in seconds, either through commercial services that sell subscriptions to their databases of thousands of journalists or simply by using a search engine. Unfortunately, way too many PR people are spamming journalists with unsolicited and unrelenting commercial messages in the form of news releases and untargeted broadcast pitches. I hate to say it, but among the many journalists I speak with, the PR profession has become synonymous with spammers. For years, PR people have been shotgun-blasting news releases and blind pitches to hundreds (or even thousands) of journalists at a time—without giving any thought to what each reporter actually covers—just because the media databases the PR people subscribe to make it so darn simple to do.

“Re:,” Nontargeted Pitches, and Other Sleazy Tactics

As I’ve said, I get dozens of news releases, pitches, and announcements from PR agency staffers and corporate communications people every week. Like all journalists, my email address is available in many places: in the articles I write, on my blog, in my books, and in the articles I write for the HuffPost and other publications. That easy availability means that my address has also been added to various databases and lists of journalists. Unfortunately, my email address also gets added (without my permission) to many press lists that PR agencies and companies compile and maintain; whenever they have a new announcement, no matter what the subject, I’m part of the broadcast message. Ugh. The PR spam approach simply doesn’t work. Worse, it brands your organization as one of the bad guys.

Here’s a specific example of a PR spam trick that has grown in popularity in recent years: the use of “re:” in subject lines. For years, spam artists have used “re:” in their subject lines to try to trick people into opening the email. The trick is effective because the email now looks to the receiver like a reply to an email he or she originally sent. Many phishing attempts use this tactic.

Here are some examples of this unscrupulous practice, all drawn from my inbox in just the past few days:

• Re: HomeDepot Replacement-Windows-Special
• Re: AUTO-DEALS – Cars-Below Kelly-Blue Book Value
• RE: Your-Energy Bill-was recently-lowered-by 80%
• Re: Automobile Bonanza Sales

It’s annoying enough to receive messages like this from spam artists. But it’s downright sad to see that many PR agencies and marketing firms are following spammers’ lead.

Your approach to PR shouldn’t rely on deliberately confusing your reader. Sure, in normal usage, “re:” does mean “in regard to.” However, we all know that at the beginning of an email subject line, the only correct use of “re:” is in reply to an email.

Here are a few I’ve received in the past week or so. Remember, these aren’t from petty criminals; they’re from PR people:

• Re: What’s the “Secret Sauce” to Social Media Marketing?
• RE: Story Idea: 5 Steps to Make Your Ad ‘Go Viral’
• RE: Interested in featuring ‘The Value of Coupons in Digital Marketing’ [Infographic]
• RE: Hope you received my last email
• RE: Mad Men vs. Mad Math: How Data (Not Dimensions) is the Future of Online Advertising
• Re: Update on social media content optimization survey

Don’t send spam email to journalists, and don’t use sleazy tactics like disguising your message as a reply to something the receiver said.

The New Rules of Media Relations

Okay, that’s the depressing news. The good news is that there are effective new rules that work very well to get your messages into the hands (and onto the screens) of reporters so they will be more likely to write about you. Don’t forget that reporters are looking for interesting companies, products, and ideas to write about. They want to find you. If you have great content on your website and in your online media room, reporters will find you via search engines.

Try to think about reaching journalists with ways that aren’t just one-way spam. Pay attention to what individual reporters write about by reading their stories (and, better yet, their blogs), and write specific and targeted pitches crafted especially for them. Or start a real relationship with reporters by commenting on their blogs, interacting with them on Twitter, or sending them information that is not just a blatant pitch for your company. Become part of their network of sources, rather than simply a shill for one company’s message. If you or someone in your organization writes a blog in the market category that a reporter covers, let him know about it, because what you blog about may become prime fodder for the reporter’s future stories. Don’t forget to pitch bloggers. Not only does a mention in a widely read blog reach your buyers, but reporters and editors also read these blogs for story ideas and to understand early market trends.

The web has changed the rules. If you’re still following the traditional PR techniques, I’m sure you’re finding that they are much less effective. To be more successful, consider and use the new rules of media relations:

• Nontargeted, broadcast pitches are spam.
• News releases sent to reporters in subject areas they do not cover are spam.
• Reporters who don’t know you yet are looking for organizations like yours and products like yours—make sure they will find you with search engines such as Google and on industry sites.
• If you blog, reporters who cover the space will find you.
• Pitch bloggers, because being covered in important blogs will get you noticed by mainstream media.
• When was the last news release you sent? Make sure your organization is busy.
• Use newsjacking to get your ideas into the marketplace of ideas when the moment is right.
• Journalists want a great online media room.
• Include video and photos in your online media room.
• Some (but not all) reporters love RSS feeds.
• Personal relationships with reporters are important.
• Don’t tell journalists what your product does. Tell them how you solve customer problems.
• Follow journalists on Twitter to learn what interests them.
• Does the reporter have a blog? Read it. Comment on it. Before you pitch, read (or listen to or watch) the publication (or radio program or TV show) you’ll be pitching to.
• Once you know what a reporter is interested in, send her an individualized pitch crafted especially for her needs.

Blogs and Media Relations

Getting your organization visible on blogs is an increasingly important way not only to reach your buyers but also to reach the mainstream media that cover your industry, because reporters and editors read blogs for story ideas. Treat influential bloggers exactly as you treat influential reporters: Read their stuff, and send them specifically targeted information that might be useful to them. Offer them interviews with your executives and demonstrations or samples of your products. Offer to take them to lunch.

Pitching influential bloggers as you would pitch mainstream media is an important way to get noticed in the crowded marketplace of ideas. But even more effective is having your own blog so that bloggers and reporters find you. “Blogging gives me a place in the media community to stand out,” says John Blossom, president of Shore Communications Inc., a research and analysis company. Blossom has been blogging since 2003 and writes about enterprise publishing and media markets. “In ways that I didn’t expect, my blog has allowed me to become a bit of a media personality. I’ve been picked up by some big bloggers, and that makes me aware that blogging is a terrific way to get exposure, because the rate of pickup and amplification is remarkable. The press reads my blog and reaches out to me for quotes. Sometimes I’m quoted in the media by a reporter who doesn’t even speak with me. For example, a reporter from the Financial Times recently picked up a quote and used it in a story—based on my blog alone.”

How Blog Mentions Drive Mainstream Media Stories

Promoting a valuable, one-of-a-kind object for sale at the best price requires a seller to be clever and utilize both traditional public relations and new media.

This study in extreme cleverness begins with Richard Jurek. Jurek is a marketing and communication professional, as well as a space enthusiast and collector and my co-author on our 2014 book Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program. When he decided to part with a few unique and treasured items from his collection, Jurek put his 20 years of professional experience to work. He knew that one of his items needed special attention.

That item was the unofficial fourth crewmate of Apollo 12.

In a prank of lunar proportions, a vintage November 1969 color calendar photo of Playboy Playmate Miss August 1967, DeDe Lind, was stowed away in the Apollo 12 command module Yankee Clipper during its November 1969 voyage to the moon.

The photo was affixed to a cardboard cue card and, unbeknownst to the crew, secreted onboard their spacecraft. The iconic piece of 1960s pop culture made the 475,000-mile round-trip to the moon and back and still retains the Velcro strips used to affix it inside the spacecraft for easy viewing.

Jurek acquired the item directly from Apollo 12 astronaut Richard Gordon. “This is an absolutely singular item, unique in the space-collecting world,” Jurek says. “But it also has tremendous crossover appeal. I figured that DeDe would appeal not only to space collectors but collectors of 1970s pop culture, because Playboy was at its peak in 1970s America. There are also collectors of erotica and collectors of Playboy items. So it appeals to a lot of audiences.”

Jurek knew that he wanted to sell DeDe through a recognized auction house, and he had narrowed the choice down to a handful. “I selected RRAuction for the sale because the auction house has a phenomenal Internet and social media platform, and they leverage it in their marketing,” he says.

Working in the auction business is an incredibly old profession, having been around, well, almost as long as the so-called oldest profession. The idea that you can apply new forms of marketing to an ancient business is fascinating to me, and I wanted to learn more.

I spoke with Bobby Livingston, an auctioneer with a traditional PR background. Livingston is vice president of sales and marketing at RRAuction. He worked with Jurek to write the catalog description for the item and promote the auction itself.

“The Apollo 12 calendar has a great story,” Livingston says. “It has a bunch of things going for it: It’s Apollo, it’s flown, and it’s cheesecake, so it’s easy to understand and easily translates around the world. It brings back the 1969 time frame. It’s just a remarkable piece.”

Livingston worked with Mike Graff of the Investor Relations Group in New York City to craft a press release and get it directly to bloggers who write about current events and technology. Graff also made follow-up phone calls. Very quickly, sites like Gawker, Nerdist, and io9 picked up on the story.

“When Gizmodo talked about the auction, suddenly we got 20,000 visitors,” Livingston says. “We got 40 new auction registrations. On the best day, we [typically] do seven to 10 registrations. Then we got 30 the next day. Well, this is all coming from viral and new media.”

Soon, the international media got news of DeDe from the blogs. Stories appeared in Australia, Brazil, France, China, Japan, and a dozen other countries. Large outlets like BBC, CNN, the Discovery Channel, the Sun, Daily Mail, UPI, Toronto Star, and Time wrote about the Apollo Playmate stowaway. Even the Playboy Satellite Radio Channel and website got in on the fun.

As Livingston was working the media, Jurek was helping things along by contacting appropriate bloggers via social networking. “Every time I would see an article, I would push it out using appropriate hashtags and try for crossover appeal,” Jurek says. The strategy was to target related audiences, so Jurek tagged his tweets with things like #playboy, #photography, #space, #NASA, #auction, #apollo, #moon, #porn, and more. “I wanted to reach not only space collectors but also Playboy folks or, hell, even pornography people!”

Jurek says many tweets came from women who run their own webcam businesses and have thousands of followers. “Others were tweeting about space porn and moon porn and so on,” he says. “It’s hilarious, but I viewed DeDe as perfect for social media and the Internet, because porn is a huge business on the Internet, and so are collectibles, and so is history. It was right in the center of all of that, and people were picking up on it.”

The story even made “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live. I’ve got to say, I’ve worked in and around PR for 20 years, and this is the first time I’ve known anyone who’s made “Weekend Update”!

Jurek says he’s learned some valuable lessons from this marketing effort. “Content drives marketing,” he says. “DeDe, from a content perspective, is perfect. She has appeal not just as a moon-flown artifact for space geeks like me but for collectors of Americana, collectors of erotica, and collectors of unique niche pop culture items. Once you have the content, it is connecting it with the right audience, making sure the pitch is real and right on.”

All of these efforts drove large volumes of traffic to the RRAuction site. Visitors were up 350 percent over the previous month and the DeDe Lind item received 30 bids and sold to a high bidder at $17,511.

“DeDe realized phenomenal results,” Jurek says. “From a marketing perspective, she also achieved the goal because she drove lots of traffic to the auction. So much so that DeDe, while beating the estimate on where she would sell, also helped many, many other lots realize record results. The knock-off effect of the DeDe media coverage expanded the pool of global bidders and collectors of this material by a dramatic amount, and bidding was healthy across all lots.”

Launching Ideas with the U.S. Air Force

The websites of the U.S. Air Force are chock-full of photos, video, and articles written by Air Force Public Affairs officers, all serving to provide the media with information they need to craft a story. These officers don’t sit around all day writing press releases and pitching the media with story ideas. Rather, they publish information themselves, information that generates interest from reporters.

“Instead of pushing things out, people are finding us and our information,” says Captain Nathan Broshear, director of public affairs at 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern), the Air Force component to U.S. Southern Command and based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. Broshear is no stranger to working with mainstream media representatives, having previously managed hundreds of Iraq- and Afghanistan-based reporters in that high-pressure war zone environment.

“People are finding our websites to be valuable. For example, many reporters are currently interested in the Predator, Global Hawk, and Reaper systems, our unmanned aerial vehicles. And when they see the pages on our site about Predator and Reaper, then they know whom to contact.”

For example, Technical Sergeant Eric Petosky, who works with Broshear in public affairs, wrote a story called “Global Hawk Flying Environmental Mapping Missions in Latin America, Caribbean,” which he posted on the site with photos. When a reporter becomes interested in a system like the Global Hawk, he or she can find the information on the site. “The Air Force is a big organization, and if a reporter goes to the Pentagon, it is hard to find the right person. We write stories so reporters can envision what their angle might look like.” And together with the stories, photos, and videos is the necessary contact information for getting in touch with the appropriate Air Force Public Affairs staff member.

The published information about unmanned aerial systems proved valuable when 60 Minutes, the weekly CBS television magazine, became interested in the story. Broshear teamed with Captain Brooke Brander, chief of public affairs at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada (where the pilots of the unmanned systems are based), to help lay the groundwork for the story. They worked with 60 Minutes producers for more than five months. “Drones: America’s New Air Force” aired on 60 Minutes, with Lara Logan reporting on the increasing use of drones in the battlefield.

Another success story from Broshear’s use of online content to help reporters involves Operation New Horizons in Guyana. Operation New Horizons is part of an Air Force program to build infrastructure, partnerships, and relationships in other countries. “The Air Force is building a school and a clinic while providing free medical care for about 100,000 people,” Broshear says. “We partner with nongovernmental organizations to make certain the local school, clinics, and doctors have what they need to continue providing services even after U.S. military members depart.”

To get the story out to both the local community in Guyana and people back in the United States, Broshear works with those on the ground to create content that reporters can draw from to craft their stories—without the need for constant contact from public affairs staff. “We post photos onto Flickr¹ and have a Facebook page² and a blog³ written by people on the ground. And what’s interesting is that the blogs get three times more traffic than our main pages. The newspapers in the local communities are pulling photographs from the sites. After we introduce the projects and key military personalities to the local media the first time through a press release or visit to the construction sites, we don’t need to do anything, because the media are pulling information from the blog that we created.”

As you know if you’ve read this far, the importance of creating valuable content (photos, video, news stories) and posting it on your site is the theme of this book. When you create that content, you reach people who are looking for what you have to offer. Broshear reminds us how sometimes those people are members of the mainstream media, and great content can serve as the catalyst to getting the coverage your organization desires. “Here in U.S. Air Force Public Affairs, we’re not launching missiles,” he says. “We’re launching ideas.” And those ideas lead to major stories in top-tier media.

How to Pitch the Media

As marketers know, having your company, product, or executive appear in an appropriate publication is great marketing. That’s why billions of dollars are spent on PR each year (though much of it’s wasted, I’m afraid). When your organization appears in a story, not only do you reach the publication’s audience directly, but you also can point your prospects to the piece later, using reprints or web links. Media coverage means legitimacy. As I’ve said, broadcast spamming of the media doesn’t work so well and can actually be harmful to your brand. But sometimes you really want to target a specific publication (your hometown paper, perhaps). So what should you do?

• Target one reporter at a time. Taking the time to read a publication and then crafting a unique pitch to a particular journalist can work wonders. Mention a specific article he wrote, and then explain why your company or product would be interesting for the journalist to look at. Reporters are individuals, so find out what they are interested in and writing about, and feed them stories that are not related to you. Make certain to target the subject line of the email to help ensure that it gets opened. For example, I recall getting a perfectly positioned pitch crafted especially for me from a company that provides a web-based sales-lead qualification and management system. The PR person had read my blog and knew what I was interested in, so I emailed back within minutes to set up an interview with the company’s CEO.
• Use the tip line if the media outlet you are targeting has one. Many news sites maintain tip lines that you should take advantage of when you have important news. For example, the TechCrunch homepage features a prominent tip/pitch invitation. When you click the link, you’re taken to a web form: “So you’ve got the inside scoop on a story or topic that we cover? Please let us know in the form below or email us directly at [email protected]. We will respect your anonymity.”
• Help the journalist to understand the big picture. Often it’s difficult to understand how some product or service or organization actually fits into a wider trend. You make a journalist’s job much easier if you describe the big picture of why your particular product or service is interesting. Often this helps you get mentioned in the reporter’s future articles or columns about trends in your space.
• Keep it simple. If you can’t explain what you do crisply and intelligently without using three-letter acronyms, few reporters will engage with you. Work on your cocktail party explanation, and don’t assume every reporter is an insider.
• Try newsjacking! Use current events as hooks to show how people in your organization can comment on breaking news. Newsjacking is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story to generate tons of media coverage. We will cover it in detail in the next chapter.
• Explain how customers use your product or work with your organization. Reporters hear hundreds of pitches from company spokespeople about how products work. But it’s much more useful to hear about a product in action from someone who actually uses it. If you can set up interviews with customers or provide written case studies of your products or services, it will be much easier for journalists to write about your company.
• Don’t send email attachments unless asked. These days, it is a rare journalist indeed who opens an unexpected email attachment, even from a recognized company. Yet many PR people still distribute news releases as email attachments. Don’t do it. Send plain-text emails instead. If you’re asked for other information, you can follow up with attachments, but be sure to clearly reference in the email what you’re sending and why, so the journalist will remember asking for it.
• Follow up promptly with potential contacts. Recently I agreed to interview a senior executive at a large company. An eager PR person set it up, and we agreed on date and time. But I never got the promised follow-up information via email, which was supposed to include the telephone number to reach the executive. Needless to say, the interview didn’t happen. Make certain you follow up as promised.
• Don’t forget, it’s a two-way street—journalists need you to pitch them! The bottom line is that reporters want to know what you have to say. It is unfortunate that the spam problem in PR is as big as it is, because it makes journalists’ jobs more difficult.

As an illustration of this last point, a company executive I met at a conference made a comment on a new trend that gave me a brilliant idea for a magazine article I was working on. I was delighted because it made my life easier. Thinking of subjects is hard work, and I need all the help I can get. The executive’s company fit in perfectly with the column idea, and I used his product as the example of the trend he told me about. Without the conversation, the story would never have been written—but a straight product pitch wouldn’t have worked. We reporters need smart ideas to do our job. Please.

“The single most effective thing PR people do is watch and read my stories and send me personalized, smart pitches for stories that I am actually likely to cover,” says Peter J. Howe, business editor for New England Cable News (NECN), a regional channel serving 3.6 million cable homes. Howe was also a business, technology, and political reporter for the Boston Globe for 22 years before joining NECN. In both jobs, Howe said, he’s preferred to be pitched by email. “‘PR pitch for Boston Globe reporter Peter Howe’ or ‘Tuesday story idea for NECN’ is actually a very effective way to get my attention. If you’re getting literally four or five hundred emails a day like I am, cute subject lines aren’t going to work and in fact will likely appear to be spam.”

Howe’s biggest beef with how PR people operate is that so many have no idea what he writes about before they send him a pitch. “If you simply put ‘Peter Howe NECN’ into a Google.com/news search and read the first 10 things that pop up, you would have done more work than 98 percent of the PR people who pitch me,” he says. “It’s maddening how many people in PR have absolutely no sense of what NECN puts on air or the difference between what the Boston Globe covers and a trade publication does. And I don’t mean to sound like a whining diva; the bigger issue is that if you’re not figuring out what I cover and how before you pitch me, you are really wasting your time and your clients’ time.”

Howe also encourages people to try to think big. “If you have a small thing to pitch, pitch it. But try to also think of the bigger story or roundup package that it can fit into,” he says. “That could even wind up meaning your company is mentioned alongside three or four of your competitors, but wouldn’t you rather have thousands of people see and hear your company name on TV or read it in a page 1 story?”

There is no doubt that mainstream media are still vital as a channel for your buyers to learn about your products. Besides all the people who will see your company’s, product’s, or executive’s name, a mention in a major publication lends you legitimacy. Reporters have a job to do, and they need the help that PR people can provide to them. But the rules have changed. To get noticed, you need to be smart about how you tell your story on the web—and about how you tell your story to journalists.