Erica Morris from PR Week wrote an article about a 2010 Media Survey they worked with CA Walker to conduct. Data is based on completed surveys from 268 media professionals and 285 PR professionals during January 11-19. Results were tested at a confidence level of 90%.
The article can be accessed here (need to purchase or be a subscriber to PR Week).
The findings were very very interesting. A few findings stood out for me:
- Growing importance (and acceptance) of pitching to journalists through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
- Half of surveyed journalists say that only 0-25% of pitches they receive are related to what they cover.
- Nearly 40% of journalists say pitches incorporating multimedia and high res photos help them better understand a story.
- 84% of journalists consider email the best way to receive pitches.
- Nearly 60% of journalists expect a further decline in print circulation and growing importance on the Web and other online channels. A blog post I made yesterday discussed how the S.F. Chronicle circulation dropped 22 percent in last year! While there are exceptions we are seeing a definite trend of dropping circulations amongst print media and our own HR Marketing Trend surveys confirm the fact that fewer HR decision makers read print media.
My reaction to these points:
- HR Vendors must do a better job at connecting, following and using social media in their media relations. Our HRmarketer customers have plenty of tools available to facilitate this including our database of social networking account information for HR media and our real-time feeds of HR media tweets. But they are not being used to there maximum value by most HR vendors.
- Knowing journalists prefer email is a plus for HR vendors using HRmarketer because they can send media releases to HR journalists via HRmarketer.com. But many vendors still do not engage in ongoing media relations. This is a missed opportunity. And some new tools we have coming at HRmarketer will allow HR vendors to embed high res images and videos in their search optimized and social media releases. Vendors need to use these tools - they work.
- Finally, the fact that 50% of journalists say that only 0-25% of pitches they receive are related to what they cover is shocking to me. Elrond Lawrence, one of our media relations experts at HRmarketer, wrote several articles on effective media relations - read them here. And HRmarketer.com customers should review the notes we compile for HR journalists before sending them news releases (e.g., what they cover, what they want, etc.).
Our HR Content Library has lots of free articles and e-books on these subjects that I encourage you to read. I have included a few at the end of this post..
The bottom line is that print media is dying a slow death as online visibility grows in importance. More and more data is confirming this fact. As a result, companies targeting human resource departments must aggressively invest in social media, SEO, SEM and other tactics that result in online visibility, web site traffic and sales leads.
Some useful human resource marketing resources:
Labels: online vs. print