Published February 18th, 2010 by John Magill
As you are aware – or you should be aware if you have been reading this blog – we are currently running a programme aimed at transitioning ten of our clients from an on-premise to a SaaS business model. The company workshops, very ably run by Saaspoint, have been highly interesting and very educational. The most recent workshop that I attended covered PR in the cloud environment.
Many people perceive public relations as something less than respectable – as clever guys trying to convince the public that what’s wrong is right. Some see public relations professionals as manipulators of the public mind, rather than conveyors of truth. From what I gleaned over the last week PR professionals are coming back into their own. The rules of the game, however, have changed radically over the last ten years. If you are informing Joe Public about a web based product or service then naturally you have to use the web to do it. Using the printed word just won’t hack it.
Media coverage in the web is new and offers great possibilities to Irish software companies. If done correctly, media coverage, can generate direct enquires and web hits. More importantly by using tools such a Google Analytics you can get a reasonably direct correlation between your PR effort and new traffic to your web site.
One of the most interesting things that came out of the workshops was how relatively easy it can be for a company to commandeer the web space associated with their product or service. We were given examples of small Irish companies that had conducted research, commissioned reports or undertook surveys and with the right PR these reports/surveys became the de facto best intelligence on the topic, thus driving in-bound traffic to their sites.
The new buzz word in media appears to be disintermediation. In other words talk directly to your customers, be it B2B or B2C, through your web site and your web site links. The PR person’s job should be to ssist you to make the direct and right contacts and also to make your script readable to Joe Public. Increasingly, traditional media is being isolated by online media as well as blogs, twitter, etc. According to a recent book published by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge, “Over half of information technologists source their news from Google News or Yahoo, instead of trade journals”. Food for thought!
What is even better news is that web PR is not expensive. One note of caution, make sure the PR agency you hire knows what they are doing on the web and that they aren’t taking their old tools and old ways from traditional media and applying it to the new world. According to John Bell, MD Ogilvy PR in Washington (and adjunct Professor in John Hopkins University) the PR Pro of the Future should have 13 Skills:
- Create integrated marketing and communications strategy
- Deploy live ‘listening posts’ online and offline
- Design and deploy an advanced search engine optimization program
- Plan and run a new media relations program inclusive of head-of-the-tail and long tail “media”
- Identify & engage with influencers online and offline
- Manage communities
- Integrate new technologies into their own lives
- Model measurement and performance metrics including new “engagement” metrics
- Run quick pilot programs and evaluate on-the-fly
- Train staff and clients continuously
- Participate in conversations, not just ‘messaging’
- Create and execute content strategy including video programming (hifi and lowfi)
- Use digital crisis management
I think this would be a good list to compare your future PR agency against before you write the cheque.
I have to admit to a small amount of plagiarism in this particular blog. However, I am sure that Ronnie Simpson, of Simpson Financial and Technology Public Relations, won’t mind that I quoted some of his excellent intelligence.
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I have used Ronnie Simpson as our PR consultant in three companies now – Oracle, Salesforce.com & Saaspoint. In all cases it has been the most cost effective marketing spend we made. As you pointed out, the IT industry has moved away from analysts being the fonts of all knowledge – now it’s the internet. People find out about products through ‘buzz’, ’stories’ & ‘legends’ – published on the internet, then do their further research guess where? On the internet.
It has an enormous democratizing effect. No longer do you need to have an article printed in the Financial Times to have impact. While it’s nice and has gravitas, you are also getting search engine hits, just by having your name mentioned in people’s blogs.
Just the way I found this blog!!
Best
John Appleby
Chairman Saaspoint
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