Web Ink Now

Sun Microsystems shakes up traditional disclosure by announcing its financial results via the Web and RSS first, then via press release

Yesterday evening after the close of Wall Street trading, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW) reported results for its fourth quarter and full fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2007.

But Sun made the announcement in a new way, releasing the news first via the company IR website and RSS feeds and then ten minutes later through a news release sent to one of the press release distribution services.

While this may seem to be a small and obscure change, it signals that Sun takes Web dissemination of information very seriously. I think it also reveals to interested people (media, analysts, customers, and employees) that if you really want to know what’s going on at Sun, the most timely and comprehensive information is available on the Sun site, Sun RSS feeds, and via Sun employee bloggers.

Wow!

After talking for years about how and why marketers and PR professionals need to think like a publisher and create Web content that people want to consume, Sun provides a great example.

Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive officer and president of Sun Microsystems, announced the move on his blog in a post called Truly Fair Disclosure. Schwartz writes: "We will announce our results to the general public via Sun's IR web site before making that same information available through the third party news services that traditionally distribute such information to paying subscribers."

Neil Hershberg, Senior Vice President, Global Media at Business Wire jumped in with a blog post titled SUN'S SOLAR ECLIPSE: A Return to the Dark Age of Disclosure. Hershberg writes: "Sun’s decision to disclose via the web and RSS feeds, followed by broad wire delivery, is disclosure deja vu–a return to the bad old days before Reg FD made an earnest attempt to level the playing field."

In another twist to what this means for disclosure, Newstex, a company that distributes news and blog feeds to companies and third party information services such as LexisNexis announced that it will deliver the earnings release directly by taking it first via Sun's RSS feeds. Since Newstes also distributes PR Newswire, Larry Schwartz, Newstex President (no relation to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz) writes on his blog the obvious, that some people will receive the news twice: "Newstex will import Sun's Earning Release via Sun's RSS Feed and then distribute it in real time to our customers who receive the Newstex Press Release newsfeeds. Thus our customers will receive it in real time from Sun and then 10 minutes later from Sun via PR Newswire."

I think Sun's move is a brilliant one. I disagree that it is a move backwards in disclosure for a simple reason: Anybody can have access to Sun's RSS feeds directly (or via services like Newstex) just like anyone can have access to PR Newswire, Business Wire, and the other news release dissemination services. The bad old days of disclosure were when select Wall Street analysts got news first, leaving the average investor in the dark. This is different.

However, I do think it is critical that any company who wishes to follow Sun's lead and deliver important information via the Web and RSS ALWAYS use a news release distribution service in addition. Why? Because in order to get the news into Yahoo Finance, Google News, and many other places that people go for timely news and information you must send the press release to one of the wire services.

So while the Sun case example is certainly an important milestone, I don't think it signals danger to the news release wires. In fact I think the opposite is true. As I've said for years, news release wires are a fantastic way for companies to reach people directly because tens of millions of regular people (who are not journalists) read news releases directly via Google News, Yahoo News, vertical market sites and alerting systems.

+++++

Disclosures:
1. I am on the Newstex board of advisors and provide marketing strategy services to the company.
2. I participated on a Webinar and other marketing-related initiatives with PR Newswire and I have delivered presentations for user groups and done other promotional work for several other press release distribution companies.

Dull news release

My friend Ted Demopoulos just sent a news release via PRWeb with this headline Google Crowns Author Ted Demopoulos Dullest Person. Love it, Ted!

DULL TED

Ted discovered a Google search on "dull person" reveals the number one hit is to his blog. Ouch.

As this release shows, news can be dull and still get noticed. Here I am happily pushing Ted’s viral marketing along (silly me).

What can you say about your organization in a news release? How will you get noticed in the online marketplace of ideas? How can you get people talking about you?

PR agencies and spam

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients.

Unfortunately, way too many PR agencies are spammers.

Do you get email like this?: "I am Mrs. Ivanka Petroslovka and my late husband was oil minister of the Ukrane and I want to send you $24,000,000 (US dollar twenty four million only)."

Or like this?" "You Won the Euro Mega Lottery!"

Much of the crap I get from PR agencies is exactly the same. Spam. It is a broadcast email message sent by a PR agency to a huge number of journalists with the hope that some poor sucker is on deadline and will respond.

Ugh.

These days, you can find the e-mail addresses of reporters in seconds, either through commercial services that sell subscriptions to their databases of thousands of journalists or simply by using a search engine. Unfortunately, way too many PR people are spamming journalists with unsolicited and unrelenting commercial messages in the form of news releases and untargeted broadcast pitches.

In the last few days, I have received unsolicited broadcast spam press releases or PR pitches for:
> A new series of Latino books
> Revolutionary new user authentication technology
> A photography festival's lineup of artists
> The emerging leader in secure network access solutions opening its second development centre in Pune, India.
> How to manage today's threats to homeland security
> Somebody who is speaking at the Christians in Cable breakfast during The Cable Show '07

Some of the press releases and PR pitches are so utterly awful and so wildly off target to what I write about that I cannot even decide if they are conventional spam for the masses or spam for poor overworked journalists.

PR people need to stop shotgun-blasting news releases and blind pitches to hundreds (or even thousands) of journalists at a time—without giving any thought to what each reporter actually covers—just because the media databases make it so darn simple to do.

Please stop spamming.

Barraging large groups of journalists with indiscriminate PR materials is not a good strategy to get reporters and editors to pay attention to you.

OK, I'll admit that I didn't get as much sleep as I had hoped last night. My wife would say I was a little cranky in the morning. So, do you think maybe I am being too harsh?

I know that many PR agencies are terrific—their smart staffers craft individual pitches for reporters based on what they cover. Are you in this category? If so, your work is being dragged down by the action of the PR agency spammers.

Attention PR people: Please speak like human beings

I recently had an exchange with an agency PR person pitching me about their client: Esker. The PR person wanted me to write a profile of an Esker employee for one of my EContent Magazine columns.

As much as I tried, I just couldn't figure out what Esker does.

So I ask: Is it just me? Am I thickheaded? I've included parts of the conversation here:

Agency PR person: "In case you're not familiar, Esker is the global business document delivery company. Their flagship products are DeliveryWare, a comprehensive electronic document management platform that automates information delivery quickly and accurately, and FlyDoc, a web-based, hosted document delivery service."

Huh?

Me: "Can you please tell me what 'comprehensive electronic document management platform that automates information delivery' means?? What problems does Esker solve for clients and how do they use technology to do it?"

Agency PR person: "In response to your question, in a nutshell, Esker helps organizations simplify their business processes. Their customers save time and money-- by keeping documents electronic, companies are able to streamline processes, simplify their IT infrastructure, and increase productivity. The need to run back and forth from your desk to a printer, stand by the fax machine or stuff and label envelopes is eliminated. Other common problems that organizations experience related to their business communication — manual handling errors, increasing IT complexity, slow processes, high postage costs and competitive pressures are handled."

I still wasn’t sure exactly what Esker does or what problems they solve for clients.

I went to the Esker site and found this: "Esker enables organizations to realize all the business advantages and financial benefits of effective document management through intelligent delivery of vital business information. Esker’s customers benefit from streamlined business processes, reduced costs, simplified IT infrastructure, enhanced customer satisfaction, and quality assurance."

Ugh.

I actually agreed to an interview with someone from Esker, partly because I wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery. The PR person was also on the call. Guess what? After a half hour on the telephone, I still don’t know what the company does!

Yikes.

Attention PR people: Please eliminate the gobbledygook and try to speak like human beings. If your mother doesn't know what the company does, neither will the media that you are trying to pitch.

Note: It will be interesting to see if a representative from Esker's PR agency jumps in and comments to let us know what the company does (in English).

Terrific insights into pitching the media from Peter J. Howe, business reporter for The Boston Globe

Readers of this blog know that I have very definite ideas for the right ways and the wrong ways to pitch the media in a Web world. In particular, I feel strongly that non-targeted broadcast email media pitches are spam.

One of the many hats I wear is contributing editor at EContent Magazine, a trade publication covering the digital content industry. Most of my rants about pitching the media are based on my own experiences of people pitching me as well as my former role doing the pitching when I was VP corporate communications for NewsEdge (which was sold to The Thomson Corporation in 2002).

I wanted to learn more about good and bad pitching and media relations from other journalists and spoke to many as I was working on my upcoming book The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly which comes out in June.

One journalist, Peter J. Howe, a business reporter for The Boston Globe, provided some terrific insights and I have provided some here. (Thanks Peter).

"The single most effective thing PR people do is read what I write and send me personalized, smart pitches for stories that I am actually likely to write," says Howe, who has been at the Globe for twenty years and spent the last seven covering telecommunications, the Internet, energy, and most recently airline companies. Howe prefers to be pitched by e-mail, with a subject line that helps him to know it's not spam. "'PR pitch for Boston Globe Reporter Peter Howe' is actually a very effective way to get my attention. If you're getting literally 400 or 500 e-mails a day like I am, cute subject lines aren't going to work and in fact will likely appear to be spam."

Howe's biggest beef with how PR people operate is that so many have no idea what he writes about before they send him a pitch. "If you simply put Boston Globe Peter Howe into a Google.com/news search and read the first ten things that pop up, you would have done more work than 98 percent of the PR people who pitch me," he says. "It's maddening how many people in PR have absolutely no sense of the difference between what The Boston Globe covers and what, say, Network World or RCR Wireless News or The Nitwitville Weekly News covers. And I don't mean to sound like a whining diva; the bigger issue is that if you're not figuring out what I cover and how before you pitch me, you are really wasting your own time."

Howe also encourages people to try to think big. "If you have a small thing to pitch, pitch it. But try to also think of the bigger story that it can fit into, a page-one or a Sunday section front story," he says. "That could even wind up meaning your company is mentioned alongside three or four of your competitors, but wouldn't you rather be mentioned in a page one story than in a 120-word news brief?"

There is no doubt that mainstream media are still vital as a channel for your buyers to learn about your products. Besides all the people who will see your company, product, or executive's name, a mention in a major publication lends you legitimacy.

Reporters have a job to do, and they need the help that PR people can provide to them. But the rules have changed. To get noticed, you need to be smart about how you tell your story on the Web. And about how you tell your story to journalists.

How to Pitch the Media

As marketers know, having your company, product, or executive appear in an appropriate publication is great marketing. That's why billions of dollars are spent on PR each year (though much of it is wasted I'm afraid). When your organization appears in a story, not only do you reach the publication’s audience directly, you also can point your prospects to the piece later, using reprints or Web links. Media coverage means legitimacy.

As I've said on this blog, broadcast email spamming of the media doesn't work. But sometimes you really want to target a specific publication (your hometown paper perhaps). So what should you?

Target one reporter at a time. Taking the time to read a publication and then crafting a unique pitch to a particular journalist can work wonders. Mention a specific article he wrote and then explain why your company or product would be interesting for the journalist to look at. Make certain to target the subject line of the e-mail to help ensure that it gets opened. Recently I got a perfectly positioned pitch crafted especially for me from a company that provides a Web based sales lead qualification and management system. The PR Person had read my blog and knew what I was interested in so I emailed back within minutes to set up an interview with the company’s CEO.

Help the journalist to understand the big picture. Often it's difficult to understand how some widget or service or organization actually fits into a wider trend. You make a journalist's job much easier if you describe the big picture of why your particular product or service is interesting. Often this helps you get mentioned in the reporter’s future articles or columns about trends in your space.

Explain how customers use your product or work with your organization. Reporters hear hundreds of pitches from company spokespeople about how products work. But it’s much more useful to hear about a product in action from someone who actually uses it. If you can set up interviews with customers or provide written case studies of your products or services, it will be much easier for journalists to write about your company.

Don't send e-mail attachments unless asked. These days, it is a rare journalist indeed who opens an unexpected e-mail attachment, even from a recognized company. Yet many PR people still distribute news releases as e-mail attachments. Don't. Send plain text e-mails instead. If you're asked for other information, you can follow up with attachments, but be sure to clearly reference in the e-mail what you’re sending and why, so the journalist will remember asking for it.

Follow up promptly with potential contacts. Recently I agreed to interview a senior executive at a large company. An eager PR person set it up, and we agreed on date and time. But I never got the promised follow-up information via email, which was supposed to include the telephone number to reach the executive. Duh. Needless to say, the interview didn't happen. Make certain you follow up as promised.

Don't forget, it's a two-way street – journalists need you to pitch them! The bottom line is that reporters want to know what you have to say. It sucks that the spam problem in PR is as big as it is, because it makes journalists’ jobs more difficult. Recently, a company executive I met at a conference made a comment on a new trend that gave me a brilliant idea for my column in EContent Magazine. I was delighted, because it made my life easier. Thinking of column subjects is hard work, and I need all the help I can get. The executive’s company fit in perfectly with the column idea, and I’ll use his product as the example of the trend he told me about. Without the conversation, the column would never have been written—but a straight product pitch wouldn’t have worked. We reporters need smart ideas to do our job. Please.

The New Rules for Reaching the Media (Hint: Broadcast media pitches are spam)

As the Web has made communicating with reporters and editors extremely easy, breaking through using the online methods everyone else uses has become increasingly difficult.

These days, you can find the e-mail addresses of reporters in seconds, either through commercial services that sell subscriptions to their databases of thousands of journalists or simply by using a search engine. Unfortunately, way too many PR people are spamming journalists with unsolicited and unrelenting commercial messages in the form of news releases and untargeted broadcast pitches.

I deliver much more on this topic in my upcoming book: The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly which comes out in June 2007 from Wiley. Pre-order your copy today! (thanks.)

I hate to say it, but for me and among the many other journalists I speak with, the PR profession has become synonymous with spammers. For years, PR people have been shotgun-blasting news releases and blind pitches to hundreds (or even thousands) of journalists at a time—without giving any thought to what each reporter actually covers—just because the media databases we subscribe to make it so darn simple to do. Barraging large groups of journalists with indiscriminate PR materials is not a good strategy to get reporters and editors to pay attention to you.

NON -TARGETED, BROADCAST MEDIA PITCHES ARE SPAM

As I've said on this blog many times, I get dozens of news releases, pitches, and announcements from PR agency staffers and corporate communications people every business day because I write for EContent Magazine (I’m a contributing editor) and other publications on a freelance basis.

Like all journalists, my e-mail address is available in many places: in the articles I write, on my blog, and at magazine Web sites. That easy availability means that my address has also been added to various databases and lists of journalists. Unfortunately, my e-mail address also gets added (without my permission) to many "press lists" that PR agencies and companies compile and maintain; whenever they have a new announcement, no matter what the subject, I'm part of the broadcast message. Ugh.

The PR spam approach simply doesn't work. Worse, it brands your organization as one of the "bad guys."

OK, that’s the depressing news. The good news is that there are effective "New Rules" approaches that work very well to get your messages into the hands (and onto the screens) of reporters so they will be more likely to write about you. Don't forget that reporters are always looking for interesting companies, products, and ideas to write about. They want to find you. If you have great content on your Web site and your online media room, reporters will find you via search engines.

Try to think about ways to reach journalists that aren't just one-way spam. Pay attention to what individual reporters write about by reading their stories (and, better yet, their blogs) and write specific and targeted pitches crafted especially for them. Or start a real relationship with reporters by commenting on their blogs or sending them information that is not just a blatant pitch for your company.

Become part of journalists' network of sources, rather than simply a shill for one company's message. If you or someone in your organization writes a blog in the space that a reporter covers, let them know about it, because what you blog about may become prime fodder for the reporter’s future stories. Don't forget to pitch bloggers. Not only does a mention in a widely read blog reach your buyers, reporters and editors read these blogs for story ideas and to understand early market trends.

THE NEW RULES OF MEDIA RELATIONS

The Web has changed the rules. If you’re still following the traditional PR techniques, I'm sure you're finding that they are ineffective. So to be much more successful, consider The New Rules of Media Relations:

> Non-targeted, broadcast pitches are spam.

> News releases sent to reporters in subject areas they do not cover are spam.

> Reporters who don't know you yet are looking for organizations like yours and products like yours. Make sure they will find you on sites such as Google and Technorati.

> If you blog, reporters who cover the space will find you.

> Pitch bloggers, because being covered in important blogs will get you noticed by mainstream media.

> When was the last news release you sent? Make sure your organization is "busy."

> Journalists want a great online media room!

> Some (but not all) reporters love RSS feeds.

> Personal relationships with reporters are important.

> Don't tell journalists what your product does. Tell them how you solve customer problems.

> Does the reporter have a blog? Read it. Comment on it. Track back to it.

> Before you pitch, read (or listen to or watch) the publication (or radio program or TV show) you’ll be pitching to!

> Once you know what a reporter is interested in, send her an individualized pitch crafted especially for her needs.

The New Rules of PR ebook: Revised and updated for 2007

The New Rules of PR – a new and updated edition of the ebook for 2007 with a forward and newsmaker tips by David McInnis, founder & CEO of PRWeb, a Vocus Company.

When I first released my ebook The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly by posting it on my site and my blog and sending a press release out about it in mid-January 2006, I thought I might get a few thousand downloads. Imagine my surprise when the ebook was downloaded more than 15,000 times in just the first week!

Since then, I have been happily watching the wave of interest from this effort and am amazed by the metrics:
> When I first put it out, there was precisely one hit on Google for the exact phrase "new rules of pr." The last time I checked there were over 9,000 Google hits because hundreds of bloggers and online media outlets have written about the ebook and thousands of readers have commented on my blog and others.
> As I write this, it is nearly a year since the release of the first edition and more than 150,000 people have downloaded it (so far).
> An expanded hardcover edition The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly is due out in June 2007 from Wiley (you can pre-order the book on Amazon now).

David McInnis, founder & CEO of PRWeb, a Vocus Company, was among the very first people to download the ebook, write about it on his blog, and help push the viral marketing buzz. David suggested doing a second edition of the ebook and I am pleased that he has not only written a forward for it, but also contributed a series of newsmaker tips. David and the team at PRWeb have pioneered social media tools for press releases such as tagging and trackbacks, so he is the ideal person to put his stamp on this new and improved edition.

Download your complimentary copy of the second edition of The New Rules of PR now.

A press release about the new edition of the ebook went out today. (Hey this is an ebook about using press releases to reach buyers directly, so you should at least check out the press release about it, don’t you think!)

If you read the first edition, welcome back! If you are reading The New Rules of PR for the first time, prepare to learn about a new way to get your organization noticed on the Web.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR book cover

Big News. The cover for my newest book The New Rules of Marketing and PR is finalized and I really like it!

Thank you to my friends at Wiley who worked with me to create this cover. I was thrilled that Wiley made me a part of the process.

Many publishers force book covers on authors. One of my friends said that when she first saw her cover and was told that it could not be changed, she was so bummed that she cried.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly will be out in June 2007. Thanks to many of you who have commented on this blog and helped to make the book better.

PR Newswire Now Links Press Releases to Technorati

Readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of news releases as a form of Web content. News releases are used by smart organizations to reach buyers directly. And when a news release is interesting, timely, intriguing, or titillating it can often prompt blog posts.

For example, Apple’s news about the iPhone generated all kinds of blog posts, like this one.

So how cool is it that news release distribution company PR Newswire today announced a deal with Technorati, a blog search engine, to track blog posts about news directly from press releases.

The way it works is that press releases distributed through PR Newswire will now include a Technorati button, linking readers to a search result page hosted by Technorati that will display a list of blogs discussing and linking to the news release.

Go here to see an example of the stories discussing the PR Newswire and Technorati release. You should be able to find this blog post there. How's that for a circle of blogging!