Comments on: Five Things that Traditional PR can Learn from Online PR

By: Benjamin Wright

Benjamin Wright — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:15:43 +0000

Jed:
The Internet rearranges power in society. As Scott Brown (newly-elected United States Senator from the state of Massachusetts) demonstrated, web tools enable POPULIST messages to rise like a flood and overturn the better-financed establishment. The latest example of an ONLINE POPULIST darling winning a bit of advantage over a powerful adversary is Hillary Machinery Inc. of Plano, Texas. This small business is locked in a strange lawsuit with PlainsCapital Bank, a much larger business. What is your opinion?

http://bit.ly/public-relations --Ben

By: How to Interact with Bloggers « Annie Blewett

How to Interact with Bloggers « Annie Blewett — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:58:00 +0000

[...] PR is a blog written by Jed Hallem, an employee of Wolfstar, social media consultancy. Hallem cites 5 Things that traditional PR should learn from PR 2.0; one of which is to form a relationship with the [...]

By: Journalists, PRs and Cake « The Seldom Seen Kid

Journalists, PRs and Cake « The Seldom Seen Kid — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:22:45 +0000

[...] reading Jed Hallam’s post about this ‘full and frank discussion’ on Rock Star PR, 5 Things that Traditional PR can Learn from Online PR, and Charles Arthur’s insightful post looking at the hack/flack relationship, it reminded me [...]

By: Ruth Seeley

Ruth Seeley — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:41:34 +0000

Personally, I’ve never seen a PR person send out a bad pitch, nor have I ever seen anyone target a journalist for a pitch inappropriately, but then I only got into the biz in 1997 and the folks I worked with were brilliant.

However, as my last blog post indicates, I am getting really really tired of people equating public relations with marketing communications. It’s usually marketers who do that, as they attempt to move up the food chain, but it’s often ill-informed mainstream media.

And I’ve always refused to have a fax machine (not sure anyone ever figured out how to use them properly, they were a complicated technology with really tiny complicated buttons).

By: Matt Churchill

Matt Churchill — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:21:46 +0000

@Jed thank I think it makes sense sort of…

By: Jed

Jed — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:25:13 +0000

OK, so maybe I dropped the ball a little bit – like Stuart mentioned, and as I said to Becky McMichael and Nick Leonard on twitter – my digital beginnings have somewhat twisted my vision on how traditional PR has always operated.

God, I can’t even use a fax machine… Old school.

By: Jeremy Porter

Jeremy Porter — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:41:55 +0000

Start with #2 to see who you want to do #1 with. Use #5 and #3 and #4 will come naturally.

This is really how any interpersonal relationship is successful. Do more listening than you do talking – you’ll learn a lot more.

By: Amy Johnston

Amy Johnston — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:35:23 +0000

I have to agree with Stuart and co, these five points are pretty much the holy grail of ‘traditional’ PR or media relations.

I’ve only been working in social media for a few months, but as far as I’m concerned, you need to take the same approach whether you’re practicing traditional or new media relations.

Cultivate individual relationships – always been the case. You need to get to know your journalist, read their articles find out what they like etc if you’re ever going to work well with them.

Spend time (hours, if possible) reading through the work of the individual – as above, I always try to have read the last three things the person I’m contacting has written. It gives you an in-road and also boosts their ego a bit!

Ensure that what you’re sending to the individual is relevant to them – again, if you know your audience this should be easy.

Learn how they like to be approached – This is trial and error. Everyone is different and the only way to find out is to try or ask! Some people prefer a phone call, others an email – and in SM I suppose a Twitter message or Skype call!

Be human with them – we are all people! Take off the PR or journo hat and we all like to be spoken to like a real person, not a job title.

By: Evan Roberts

Evan Roberts — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:57:01 +0000

I think these five things are great but they have (or should have) been done in traditional PR for years! As a college student in PR, we learned this in our Intro to PR, PR Writing and Advanced PR Writing courses (repetition=retention?). The problem is that too many practicing professionals dismiss these early lessons because they might not be “expedient.” But when you think about it, it is always faster and easier to do something right the first time, than to have to go back and fix something you half-heartedly did. It’s kinda funny that you have this as “Traditional learning from Online” when in really its more like “Online doing what Traditional should have been doing (and claimed to be doing) in the first place.”

By: Danny Whatmough

Danny Whatmough — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:42:55 +0000

Agree with Stuart, these are the best bits of offline PR that anyone beginning in ‘online PR’ (still hate that term) should really get to grips with. In many ways, there have been too many wide brush-strokes in the journo/PR debate of the last week or so…