5 Media Relations Tips from Boston Globe Columnist, Scott Kirsner

Posted in Strategy and Analysis by Matt Carter on June 24th, 2010

 

At yesterday’s Momentum Summit, I had the good fortune of finding a spot at Scott Kirsner’s table during the lunch/round-table sessions.  For the few left in New England who aren’t familiar with him, Scott Kirsner is an accomplished journalist/author with a new book,  Fans, Friends and Followers, a Boston Globe Column, Innovation Economy, and several of New England’s best start-up events to his credit.

Scott was incredibly accessible and shared some open and honest advice for start-ups looking to establish relationships with journalists.  Here are some of the highlights from that discussion (please note that these are not direct quotes, but my own summation — woe to them that misquotes a journalist!)

1. Be open!

Many start-ups border on paranoia when it comes to sharing their story during the more delicate stages of their development. They often cite proprietary or competitive concerns to justify this reticence. Yet, telling their story early and often can actually help safeguard an idea and ensure that the right people receive full credit for it.

2. Be seen!

Walking up to a reporter and introducing yourself at a local event is one of the best ways of attracting their attention. Journalists receive a flood of emails, faxes, phone calls and twitter DMs a day.  Being able to associate a face and a remembered conversation with one of those communications is often enough to separate it from the flood.

3. Be an unselfish resource!

People, particularly in start-ups, can be fantastic resources for journalists.  No one knows more about what’s going on in your category than you.  If you find an interesting fact, hear a unique story or discover a noteworthy trend, (even if it isn’t about you or your company) give a journalist the heads up.

4. Create a dialogue, not a press release!

Press releases might help your company’s SEO and can result in short published briefs/updates, but they can be a bit of a turn-off to a more in-depth journalist.  A press release is instant notification that several journalists have just received the exact same information. All of the time, money and energy spent writing and sending that release to 20 reporters would’ve been better spent by starting a meaningful dialogue with one (that actually references the information’s relevance to a reporter’s current focus).

5. Never make this call!

“Hi, this is Blank from Blank Company, I was just calling to see if you got our press release.” Yes, the reporter received it and would certainly have called you themselves, if the information had been of emergent concern or newsworthy.

Yesterday’s Momentum Summit was a great event and provided value in both speaker line-up and opportunities to connect with successful veterans in the start-up space.  Thank you to Scott Kirsner, the speakers, interviewers and all of the volunteers who made it possible.  If you missed the event, Jason Evanish of Greenhorn Connect did a great job of capturing the content in a live blog post or search #mosum on twitter.

Tags: Media Relations, Momentum Summit, Scott Kirsner
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Social Intelligence is Picking Up Steam

Posted in Uncategorized by Matt Carter on June 16th, 2010

 

The concept of Social Intelligence seems to be gathering some steam lately.  We first discussed the concept of Social Intelligence in our 1/25/2010 blog post called, “What the @%# is a Social Intelligence Engine”.

In this posting, we published the chart below, which pairs a company’s social media development with the tool that is most relevant to their needs.

As a company’s understanding and social media needs mature, they require an increasingly more sophisticated means of integrating social media into their marketing channel measurement mix.

Social Intelligence isn’t measuring social media in terms of social media impact alone(share of voice, conversation index, etc.)  That’s what happens in Stages 2 (monitoring) and Stage 3(Listening).  When we speak of Social Intelligence, we mean using social media and its sea of relevant customer data as a way to better measure and optimize marketing channels and total marketing performance.  We gave the name “Social Intelligence Engine” to our own tool, which is designed to do just that.

On March 12, Forrester Analyst, Zach Hofer-Shall presented a report called “Defining Social Intelligence“.  Zach talked about “monitoring” as a passive or reactive practice and the development of social intelligence as a pathway to proactive marketing optimization.  In this report, Zach defined the concept of Social Intelligence much more succinctly than us:

“Social intelligence is defined as the management and analysis of customer data from social sources, used to activate and recalibrate marketing or business programs.”

Since March, the concept of Social Intelligence has slowly begun to take hold and companies are beginning to accept the methodology’s validity — using data from social media to analyze and quantify marketing performance and dial it in accordingly.  In fact, only yesterday, global ratings firm Neilsen announced a joint venture with research giant, Mckinsey to create NM Incite, a marketing consulting group powered by social intelligence.

These developments can only be good news for us here at Terametric.  We’ve come through our initial pilot engagements and have used the learning to further refine our Social Intelligence Engine.  Stay tuned as we’ll soon begin our limited beta.  If your organization is interested in being a part of that beta and getting ahead of the Social Intelligence curve, please sign up here.

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Tags: customer analytics, Social Intelligence, Social Intelligence Engine
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