Sure, you've done the messaging work as it relates to your products and services. In fact, you've spent a lot of time on it to ensure you've gone from best practice to business case.
So why are you picking up the shotgun? Spraying your content pellets all over the room won't buy you much other than a lucky hit here and there and a lot of backlash grief.
Is that really the attention you want to attract?
I understand, though. You're under a lot of pressure to secure visibility and generate leads. The powers that be think that if you hit an industry influencer just hard enough, you'll get his or her attention.
You will all right. But not always in a good way.
Relationship building is the critical foundation for generating organic visibility and creating evangelists. That means taking the time to identifying who you want to engage and why. Really make that time for why.
Paying for advertorials or analyst work isn't what I mean either, although that will get you visibility as well, just not necessarily the relationships that can help your business grow long-term.
My colleague Elrond Lawrence hit it right on the money this week with his post Size Isn't Everything -- Relationships Are.
Media relations in the age of social media isn’t rocket science, but it takes time and effort to ensure you’re engaging the influencers that want to hear your story. (It's all in our new white paper Social Influence – Thriving in a New World of Media Relations as well.)
In fact, I'll go a step further and call relationship building with folks who aren't by trade journalists or analysts, those we call Social Voices that we track and analyze with SocialEars -- I'll call it Influencer Relations.
These are HR and recruiting pros, solutions providers and consultants, like me. I've played all these roles on B2B TV and know what it's like to get bumbling and fumbling inappropriate pitches from time to time.
Except this week I received one from a nice young man named Ian Alas pitching the on "The Start-Up of You", a new book coming out by LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur/author Ben Casnocha.
He did his homework and even read and referred to a relevant article on my more obscure Daddy blog:
I found your blog and was impressed that your writing, particularly this post, aligns so well with our book's ideas.
Right on, Brother Ian. Well done. I will participate in the companion webinar as well as read the book when it comes out.
Influencer Relations is still relationship building. Make the time and tell the powers to be to chillax.
What? The kids don't still say that?
Labels: evangelists, influencer relations, marketing strategy, media relations, public relations, SocialEars, visibility