New Opportunities for PR

With the decline of traditional media outlets – newspaper circulation fell 4.8 percent in the past year and an estimated 5,000 reporters lost their jobs – PR practitioners are looking for new ways to get their messages out. Traditional public relations involves sending a press release to the major newspapers, TV and radio stations in a market, making follow-up calls and waiting for the clips to come in. Now, decreasing numbers of newspaper jobs mean that there may no longer be a contact dedicated to your company’s or client’s beat, and you have to cut through even more clutter to generate interest in your company’s news.

While print coverage may be increasingly difficult to come by, opportunities for online coverage are ever-increasing. More than 60 million people are blogging; reporters are contacting people through Facebook and Twitter to obtain information; you can post your own content on blogtalkradio.com and YouTube, in addition to opportunities to live-stream content through Kyte, UStream and other online applications. It’s simply a matter of finding these outlets, providing quality content and using them to your benefit.

c21i – c21’s interactive marketing team – recently helped the Atlanta Botanical Garden enhance its online presence and secured outstanding traditional media coverage for the Moore in America exhibition as well. Through the Garden’s Facebook page and online media portal, we provided robust content, including press releases and media alerts to bloggers and online editors, as well as traditional print editors. The result was more than 19 million online media impressions for the exhibit.