Josh Bernoff of Forrester has “a new model for PR and influencers.” It’s a fantastic idea and one that I really hope will take off. Actually, I wished it had taken off two years ago.
You see, back in 2007 I started researching ways to improve the quality and relevance of PR pitches. I spent 6 months interviewing journalists and bloggers about how PR pros could serve them better. Based on that research I built Newsvetter, an online platform (not this blog) that improves the quality of PR pitches by asking users to answer ten basic questions every time they share news with the media.
But that’s not all. Journalists could also create their own profiles and specify how they liked to be pitched. They could also direct all pitches through the Newsvetter platform and then rate and comment on the pitches. I even created a profile badge so bloggers could feature it on their site to encourage on-target pitching. It was all quite wonderful.
The site launched in 2008 and had the fortune of getting some initial positive reviews from influential PR people like Shel Holtz, Sam Whitmore, Jon Greer and Kevin Dugan. But it was short lived.
Only a few journalists took the time to fill out their profiles. PR people started using it as a free press release site paying little attention to the quality of their pitches. A few PR people complained that the questions were too hard (they are not). In other words, laziness killed it. So I took it off line.
Now Josh Bernoff has HIRPS (Herpes?) which stands for Highly Relevant Pitching System. It proposes a profile system for influencers, a pitching system and ratings for PR people. Already he has floated the idea to the big wigs at Cision, one of the largest PR database companies. Cision would be an obvious choice and they would certainly have the resources to build and market it. Personally, I think this approach would be better suited to HARO, where this would be a nice add-on service for the journalists.
But the problem of laziness remains. If they build it, will PR and journalists come?
I wouldn’t count on journalists and bloggers to participate in any great numbers. That said, they would certainly welcome higher quality content from PR people.
It will be up to the PR pros to take the first step. Unfortunately, I have seen little movement on that front since 2007.
Maybe all that is needed is for a well-connected person like Bernoff to get things moving in the right direction. I sure hope so.
P.S. For those curious, here’s a slimmed down version of my PR pitching platform.
If you want to poke around without registering, use:
un: johndoe
pw: johndoe
419.730.3040
andrew [at] newsvetter [dot] com
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Our teams of interns spend many, many minutes researching and preparing high quality pitches that they then deliver — often to reporters’ voicemail boxes to great levels of success. And as the most dynamically strategic and digital agency in the world, why would we consider changing a strategy that continues to work?
If there was a way to pre-populate the journalist and blogger profiles and leave the actual people to only edit if they see something inaccurate, half the battle is won.
Interesting idea, really unfortunate acronym. Sounds like it might be a kluge. What is needed IMO is something light, loosely coupled and crowdsourced.
Interesting to hear about your experience. I am hoping that the participation of somebody like Cision or Vocus would give this a head start. Looking at Brian’s comment, they could easily do what he suggests. Maybe we’re on to something!
Andrew, you were on the forefront here. The general concept of Newsvetter and, um, HIRPS is great. Give journalists more relevant leads to help place client news in print.
But the traditional journalists don’t want to bother. They think they have the power and so you should come to them. Then, the concept of who is a journalist has evolved, so now you have thousands of people — bloggers and all the rest — to try to organize. On the PR side, they are billing by the hour and trying to keep three clients happy so they want to move fast — too fast to really connect with media.
I think what will happen is there will be a technological solution, a marriage of coverage and media tracking services like Cision with the social media listening/monitoring tools of Radian6 and Visible Technologies. Some algorithm will soon be able to assess the recent coverage of journalists and postings of company news and PR pitches and automatically connect the two based on certain settings and preferences. It sounds like futuristic artificial intellegence, but it’s almost already here with the tools we have for monitoring coverage and sentiment scoring.
If you also apply some human oversight with a crowdsourced Wiki model or the About.com/eHow approach, then you can make it that much more relevant.
I expect some deep pocketed corporation will make this happen by acquiring these services, or some large agency is probably already attempting to build something similar.
Of course, nothing will replace a long-term trusted relationship with a reporter or the chance to share a hands-on demo. In a race for shortcuts, the PR industry sometimes forgets the value of face to face or creating real experiences. Don’t be lazy, people.
Thanks for sharing your experience Andrew. It’ll help others who try to solve this problem learn, and adapt.
Brian, you’re exactly right. The issue is that to understand how an individual blogger would like to be pitched, you have to hear it from them. Other information about the blogger can be provided however.
Corey: The short cuts are okay as long as it’s in the research process. Tools can be created to help PR pros find the most relevant influencers, in less time. In actually building a relationship, and connecting with a blogger, you cannot take shortcuts.
David, Scribnia
Hi Anderw –
Newsvetter sounds like an interesting idea. The problem you’ve run across is the same one I see on the knowledge management (KM) system front…how do you entice people to use a system that is useful but would change their workflow.
My research on the KM front follows something similar to what Brian says above. Find ways to make these systems seamless and make the ’switching costs’ (as Chris Brogran puts it) as close to zero as possible.
You bring up the classic journalist dilemma (and as a former newspaper reporter and editor, I can vouch personally for this): Reporters need story ideas all the time, but hate being pitched. I don’t know if it’s some hidden desire to “uncover” a good story or reporters feel “icky” getting a pitch, like we’re accepting an ad or something. Or, it’s just good old laziness, which can even describe amazingly hard-working reporters who put in ridiculous hours.
Good luck with your projects. I enjoy your blog.
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