Tips, tools, and best practices for B2B marketers.

Social media and the press. Highlights of panel discussion.

December 11, 2008 | Posted by: Lee

I attended Welz & Weisel's panel discussion on Social media and the press yesterday at the Tower Club.  The panel included Grant Gross from IDG News Service, Wyatt Kash with Government Computer News, Bob Pegoraro with Washington Post, and Stephanie Stahl from InformationWeek and TechWeb.  

They spent about an hour talking about how they use social media in their jobs and answering some good questions from the audience.  Here are my highlights...

How the press uses social media:

Bottom line, most were still in the experimental phases of using social media for their jobs.  There was a feeling that it would be helpful, but most were still figuring out exactly how to make the best use it.

• Many were experimenting with Twitter, one was a big LinkedIn fan, and a number had Facebook accounts.  Although, some struggled with issues around personal vs. business worlds colliding.
• General consensus was social media sometimes gave them ideas for stories, but most still relied on email (because they could go back to it later to scan subject lines for good ideas). 
  
• The panel felt social media was a good way to gauge how the public would react to a story before it was written. By listening in to people's reactions they were able to add more "weight" to a story because they had a better idea what people were thinking (or if anyone cared).
  
• Social media was also seen as a way to quickly get feedback from readers on recent stories, and gauge their level of interest in the subject matter.
  
• They also felt social media would help reporters do a better job of listening in on what's going on. This in turn would help them do a better job of informing their readers. 

How you can use social media to reach out to the press:

Bottom line, you should add it to your bag of tricks, but don't rely on it alone.

• The most effective way to use social media to communicate or get ideas in front of the press is to let them know what you're working on in a casual way and to engage them in conversation about the idea.
  
• It is not effective to announce, and provide a link, to a press release. 
  
• When asked if they could trust people they came across on Twitter, they suggested having a link to your Twitter account on your corporate site so they could verify who you were.
• You can also use social media to follow a reporter to get a better sense of their interests.  So that when you do reach out to them you can do so with relevant content.
  

Other tidbits:

• When sending emails to reporters the subject line matters.  It should be short, include company name, and keywords relevant to their area of interest.  Most just deleted any that said, "Press Releases" with date. 
  
• The press release "embargo" sent to multiple journalists is dead.  All felt that the news would get out one way or another before the embargo was over and that would just make the people who honored the embargo look like slackers.  They did say approaching only one journalist with an exclusive would be effective.