Customer case studies  have been part of my job for longer than I have been doing media relations. When I started out as a trade journalist reporting for publications like Educational & Industrial Television and Video Trade News, end user stories were the mainstay of our editorial. Readers want to hear from peers who have “been there, done that,” which is why customer relations continues to be such an important part of any PR program.

Of course, customers aren’t always willing to talk, especially in high-tech. Trying to get a financial services company or insurance company to open up about the inner workings of their CRM system or their security systems can be challenging. Customer companies don’t usually have much inventive to share information about how they do what they do; there usually isn’t much in it for them. That’s why you want to enlist customers as allies, not just topics for case studies. You want to find incentives to help them with their own sales and marketing so they will help your clients by serving as case study candidates.

That’s part of the reason I was so pleased to place a profile of Stoops Freightliner in Heavy Duty Trucking this month for my client, FaceTime Communications. The story profiles how Stoops Freightliner is using FaceTime’s Unified Security Gateway to promote a secure social media marketing program to reach truck drivers across the Midwest. When I had an opportunity to place the story, I thought of Heavy Duty Trucking for a number of reasons:

• Heavy Duty Trucking is one of the biggest titles reaching trucking executives and decision-makers.
• A profile in Heavy Duty Trucking would help Stoops reach its customer base as well as new prospective customers for FaceTime – a win-win for everyone.
• I have a soft spot for Heavy Duty Trucking since my dad sold advertising for them for a number of years.

The strategy worked. Not only did Stoops get a great profile of their social media success at work, the article also brought in a new prospect for FaceTime.

When I develop a customer relations program for a client, I like to develop an integrated program that benefits both my clients and their customers. As part of the sourcing process, I work with end users to determine what their marketing objectives are and how far we can carry their application story for mutual benefit. The result is, at minimum, a published case study with supporting sales collateral, content to feed social media outlets, anecdotal data for press briefings, and Web content. With a cooperative customer, you can extend the program to include webinars, speaking engagements, and more. The key is to make sure that all the participants come out ahead.

An important part of media relations that many agencies and PR professionals tend to overlook is industry analyst relations. From my earliest days working in high-tech public relations, I have worked with the industry analysts at Gartner, IDC, Forrester Research, Yankee Group, and even those big firms that are no longer with us, like Dataquest, Meta Group, and Jupiter Research. And I work with a variety of specialty firms like Nemertes Research, Osterman Research, and MobileTrax.

I advise my clients that industry analysts are an invaluable media resource for a number of reasons:

First, of course, they write reports about emerging technology, and there are a number of IT managers and CIOs who won’t make a buying decision without first referencing a Gartner Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave report.

Second, analysts are great resources of industry insight, and they aren’t shy about poking holes in your product or your go-to-market strategy. I find that too often clients become so immersed in a new product or concept that they can’t see the flaws, and analyst briefings often can point out a lot of challenges before you go public with a story.

And third, analysts are invaluable when it comes to talking to reporters. Enthusiastic start-ups and product managers have been known to be, shall we say, premature in announcing a product that may not be quite ready for market. Over the years reporters have become wary of “vaporware.” Analyst and customer references have become essential for any new technology product launch, and by briefing analysts in advance, we can offer reporters references who can give an unbiased opinion about my client’s product and its impact on the market.

I want to thank Gerry Purdy, principal analyst at MobileTrax, for offering a simple, and cogent explanation of what he calls the Press-Analyst Cycle (see Gerry’s diagram above), which was the topic of this week’s Inside Mobile newsletter, and Gerry’s blog. Gerry has done a terrific job of explaining how the analyst briefing process works, and how it fits in his world from the analyst’s perspective.

I have worked with Gerry for a number of years, and whenever I have a client with a new product in the mobile telecommunications market, Gerry is at the top of my analyst contact list. He is always open and frank with my clients – which is important, especially if there are flaws in a product or go-to-market strategy – and I know I can always count on Gerry’s cooperation in the Press-Analyst Cycle, and to be a fair and well-informed editorial reference. As Gerry explains:

Vendors have to live with the results of the writings of the press and analysts like me.  Often, positive stories greatly influence the decision to buy that product or service.  A number of bad reviews or stories can also hurt.  However, with the Press-Analyst Cycle, vendors are most often able to maximize the awareness and build credibility for their mobile and wireless product or service. 

And the great thing about working with analysts is they are usually happy to serve as references, even if your client is not one of their clients. After all, analysts have to build their own market credibility and promote their own personal brand, and being asked to comment as an independent expert is a great way to keep your name in front of the market.

So the next time you see an interesting story about a new product or technology, or you see a quote from an IDC or Forrester Research expert, think of the process behind that story to deliver that opinion. It’s all part of media relations.

I recently ran across a blog post at BigNewsBiz.com, one of the free news sites, which, albeit biased had some interesting insights. Phil Davies of BigNews.biz LLC notes that free press releases sites have a real impact on rankings. As he posted to one of my LinkedIn groups:

“I kept seeing press releases from these free press release sites showing up in page 1 Google search results and page 1 on Google News. In some cases beating out results from major media outlets.”

Davies cites some specific criteria he uses to determine the value of free web sites, including page rank, Google News tracking, the amount of traffic, and how complex the rules are for acceptance (i.e. releases rejected for various reasons). He then lists his top 15 free press release sites based on their Alexa ratings.

I actually just completed an exercise for a client that demonstrates the value of free press release sites. This client is a small start-up that just completed a second round of seed funding – rather small by venture capital standards. To save money, we decided to bypass the conventional paid wire service (which can run into thousands of dollars if you’re not careful). Instead, I used a combination of e-mail pitches to targeted media outlets and we got some great results, including a pickup by Dow Jones. I am still waiting to see how the search rankings fall out among the major search engines, but I’m confident that, based on the early results, the free release site strategy is going to pay off.

All that said, the paid wire services also have real value, depending on your requirements. If you are a publicly traded company and disclosure is a concern, you can’t beat using one of the big three – PR Newswire, BusinessWire, or MarketWire. I have been following another LinkedIn discussion about which is the best wire service, and one of the contributors from China, Jonah Guo, sums up some of the value of the paid services quiet well:

“It depends what your clients’ need. If they just want some results while you research Google, you can use any wire. You do not even need to pay if you write a search-engine-friendly press releases. However, if your clients want serious PR, the commercial wires can help you. For example, SEOpressreleases.com and other cheap wires cannot feed Factiva, where most researchers find their info, and which archives your press releases for 20 years.”

Do you have hard and fast rules for using release wire services? What are your PR objectives and how do you use wire services to achieve them? How do you build the paid and free wire services into your best PR practices?

“These days, the odd, stilted prose lurking in most anything issued by the PR department stands out more than ever because few people talk or write with much formality anymore. Yet in Press Release Land, people converse like the narrators of Eisenhower-era educational films. Of course, strip away that Conehead syntax and you realize that these automatons aren’t saying much anyway.”

To make his point, Wasserman deconstructs an AT&T press release, pointing out that after you get past the verbal flourishes and the complex sentence structures, there’s really no news in the news release in any case. Why not just state your case? Why can’t you just say, “Sales fell last quarter by 5%” or “We think our new product is easy to use”? His point is that journalists in general hate press releases, and that they will uncover the real story in the release no matter how hard you try to hide it, assuming there is a story to be told.

“Journalists generally hate press releases, and for good reason. The quotes in them are so bizarrely written that they bring a false note to any story. Yet, if the quote was in plain English, reporters might be more apt to cite it.”

I don’t think so. I have never seen a journalist worth his salt take a quote from a press release. Beside, the major point that Todd is missing is that press releases are no longer written for journalists, and they haven’t been for some time. Although reporters can still get all the background details they need from a news release, even if they have to read around the superlatives and obfuscation, news announcements are aimed at a different audience.

Let’s consider the evolution of the press release.

Originally, in the days before e-mail and the Web, press releases actually were written for reporters. They were handed out at news events, distributed at trade shows, and I even remember spending countless hours stuffing envelopes to mail releases to press contacts. Then things changed. With the coming of the Web, consumers, prospects, and shareholders no longer waited for the press to digest and regurgitate press releases. Now they go right to the source, using Google or Yahoo or Bing to hone in on the news they want. Of course, the journalist’s role as interpreter is still essential; their job is to remove the obfuscation and reveal the true meaning under the painted prose. But for those who write them, press releases have become an effective tool to present their message directly to their audience. The form has evolved so even when you have to report bad news, you try to put a happy spin on the tidings to please your market.

So while the basic framework of the press release has remained intact, the content has evolved. Quotes aren’t supposed to be quotable; they are for posturing or injecting your opinion into a document that is supposed to be largely factual.

It has also become commonplace to use more adjectives and superlatives in news announcements, injecting phrases like “first” or “biggest” or industry jargon like “best of breed.” This is part of the evolution of the press release as sales tool. Many of my clients now look at press releases as a means to reach customers and contacts, not the press. So they want to see some sizzle in the copy, even if it detracts from the facts.

And these days, the news is being driven by the Web, and news release writing is being shaped by search engine optimization and key word search. In theory, a well-written press release is more searchable and SEO-friendly than a badly written release, but that doesn’t prevent the marketing team from adding key phrases and key words to try to improve search, which just obscures things even further.

Which brings me to probably the primary reason that press releases are so badly written; because they are written by committee. No matter how solid your training as a writer or journalist, no matter how lucid your headline, no matter how concise your lead, you know that somewhere along the chain of approval someone with a different perspective or agenda is going to introduce a different slant, add an adjective, or find some way to spin the message. The more sensitive the information, such as a drop in sales or a less-than-sterling product announcement, the harder the committee will attempt to bury their disappointment in obscure language.

I would like to think that the art of writing a clear, concise, informative news announcement is not dead. Even though the press release has taken on a wide range of new responsibilities, I hope that the form still retains value as a way to disseminate objective information to people who truly need to know. However, I also know that as long as the press continues to have an impact on society, my clients will continue to use press releases as a means to spin the news and tell their story in their own way with their own rules.

I remembered this saying again this week when I was following a thread from one of my LinkedIn Groups discussing fees for service. The originator of the thread was discussing the fact that he had a project that had now take about three times the amount of time he had anticipated, and would it be appropriate to go back to the client to adjust the fees for service. The overwhelming response from those on the threads was, “No, you can’t go back and ask for more money.” It’s up to you to determine the cost for your services, in advance, and then live with the consequences. The client should be expected to pay for the end result, not your process to achieve that result.

That said there are tools you can use to limit your exposure, and educate your client about the process at the same time. I usually try to separate the contract from the actually scope of work. The contract should be the binding agreement that reflects the legal commitment for each party, basically, I will work for you and you will pay me, and if we disagree this is how we will resolve it. Separate from contract you need to define the actually scope of the project, including outlining steps, deadlines, and associated fees (either as a lump sum or as incremental sums, depending on how much visibility you want to give the client into your process). The idea is to make sure the client understands exactly what you are willing to do for your fee, and helps set parameters that are binding to the contract. I usually refer to the scope of work as Exhibit A in the contract and have the client sign the scope of work to demonstrate they understand what, specifically, they are buying.

How you have a defense mechanism against “scope creep.” If the client comes back and asks you for something that is clearly outside the scope of the defined project, then you can point to your scope of work and say, “sorry, you didn’t contract for that.” There are some specific steps you can undertake to make sure that you have properly defined your project so you don’t “under bill,” and your client knows he or she is getting value for their money.

1. Set clearly defined objectives for the project in advance – Make sure you know what the outcome of the project is supposed to look like. How does your client define success?
2. Create a step-by-step plan – You don’t have to share all the details of the plan with your client, but make sure that your spreadsheet includes all the steps to achieve success. You don’t want to charge your client for process, so you better have your process buttoned up so you can make an accurate estimate.
3. Be specific in outlining the scope of work – One of the challenges of marketing and communications projects is that the process is often ill-defined. For example, if you are planning a media tour, you may have to be flexible on deadlines to accommodate editorial schedules, and you may or may not want to define the number of meetings you plan to deliver, e.g. “a minimum of X and a maximum of Y.” Or when dealing with press release development, it’s not uncommon for release revisions to get out of control so you may want to define release development, e.g. one draft and two revisions. How specific you want to be about your work is a matter of your experience and your knowledge of your client.
4. Use a change in scope as an opportunity to redefine the project. If the client wants more from you, that’s great! It gives you an opportunity to revise your proposal and demonstrate how you can deliver more value, more results, for a little more money. Use a change in scope as a bargaining point. The trick is to not be too rigid so you alienate your client.

Of course, you can’t always account for every contingency. For example, if you commit to helping a client launch a new product at a trade show, there may be unexpected elements or steps that you can’t anticipate, such as having to support a show guide, an unexpected partner announcement, or some other last-minute opportunity. You can’t always go back and says, “Sorry, that’s extra,” especially if a few hours or extra work to cover the unexpected will make you look like a hero. You have to be prepared to go the extra mile for the sake of good client relations.

Some of those commenting on the original LinkedIn Group thread say they believe that the client/contractor relationship is adversarial by necessity; that the client is always trying to get as much work as he or she can for free. I disagree. A good client relationship is a partnership, where you want to give maximum value by delivering for a fair rate. If the client underpays you, or tries to take advantage of you, then they know you won’t deliver your best work. If you adopt a policy of underpromise and overdeliver, then you can maintain a solid relationship with any client, without having to invest unpaid hours that fall outside the scope of the project.

That’s when the real creativity kicks in. Sometimes you have to find a way to uncover or even create the news hook, even when there doesn’t seem to be one. I find these kinds of “non-news” release the absolute hardest to write, but I also understand their value. These days you often want to use a press release to tell a story designed to reach an audience other than the press. You may want to reach prospects, or customers, or employees, or the board of directors, or simply put something out on the wire to attract web traffic and pump up your keyword or SEO strategy (remember that press releases almost always rank higher with search engines). And even though this may seem to be a bastardization of the press release format, a news release is often the best format to instill some urgency and legitimacy into a story that really doesn’t have much news value.

So how do you approach this problem (other than with fire tongs)? Well, you use the same steps as you would with any news announcement, but with a few nuances:

1. Reverse engineer the story – The best place to start is with the desired outcome. Think about how you would want the final story to read? What’s the big idea you want readers to take away with them? What’s your headline? Once you grasp the main theme it will be easy to build a story around it.
2. Suspend your news judgment – Remember that this kind of announcement is for general readership and not necessary for the press. That means you can bend the rules a little, especially in the use of adjectives, superlatives, and elements you might not include in most news announcements. Your objective here is to imbue enthusiasm as much as to impart information.
3. Research helps – You often can shore up a poor press release topic with facts, facts, and more facts. Do some digging and find research and numbers that will legitimize your release. If someone has statistics, the topic must be important.
4. Practice good journalistic style – Just because you may think the release has little or no news value doesn’t mean you should be sloppy. Use good journalistic techniques. Open with a lead and use the inverted pyramid to build your story. Follow AP style. It all helps to lend credence to the tale you have to tell.
5. Review, revise, and optimize – The best writing is about rewriting, and when you have a tough assignment writing a non-news release, it’s even more important to review your work for style and tone, as well as errors. Also optimize your press release for SEO, Twitter, Facebook, and other uses. This kind of press release is usually written to help build awareness, and that means building in key search terms and phrase to promote SEO.
6. Distribute appropriately – Don’t undermine your own credibility by trying to sell a bad news story to the media. Instead, use alternate distribution strategies to promote online presence and support Web search. Use the paid wire services and post it to the free news sites that will accept it. But don’t make the mistake of trying to pass it off as legitimate news.

The rules of public relations are changing with the Internet, and how we use the tools of the trade has to evolve as well. The press release is still an incredibly valuable tool when it comes to getting hard news to journalists looking for information they can print or post. It also can be a useful tool to build a market presence. The most important thing to remember is who is your target audience and what format and information will best meet their information needs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I use service providers all the time, and I respect what they do, and the fees that they charge. Whether they are doctors, lawyers, accountants, or Indian chiefs, you discuss their fees in advance and come to an understanding – you pay for their services. Even if you ultimately feel their service was inferior, if they fulfilled their contract, they need to be paid.

Which is why it constantly perplexes me when people approach me and offer a piece of the gate or to share in the profits. I’ve had two such offers in two weeks. Clearly, the power of public relations and online marketing is proven, otherwise these types of companies wouldn’t seek out marketing communications assistance, no matter what the price. Naturally, you don’t want to overcharge for your services, but you also can’t work for free.

So stop offering us a piece of your dream or promises of riches to come (assuming you get your funding, or the sales team meets their quota, or the market doesn’t tank, or there isn’t some form of fire, flood, or pestilence). Be prepared to pay a fair rate for quality work. If you are concerned about quality or performance, then check the references. In today’s online world you can learn almost anything about a prospective contractor. Use your resources, and trust your instincts. That’ s what I do before taking on a new client – I check them out to make sure they are worth representing. (Oh, yes, this game is played both ways.)

If you need professional help to market your company or products, then prepare to pay the going rate. You wouldn’t ask a doctor to discount his fees, especially if he is getting ready to conduct surgery. So why trust your marcomm campaign to a hack for hire? Find the right resource and pay the fee. That’s the best way to assure you get quality attention and service.

And with the economic downturn, I have seen a flood seasoned professionals turn to consulting as a means to pay the bills. When the going gets tough and full-time jobs become scarce, creative executives rent their skills, at ths same time cultivating the connections they are looking for to land their next full-time gig. In the short-term, this means a glut on the consulting market, so rates adjust and work becomes harder to find.

For those of us in PR and marketing who love our work, selling ourselves is an ongoing challenge. If you have a small consulting practice (read, party of one), then you are primarily focused on client service and getting the job done, which means business development too often takes a back seat. You need to make time to build your own marketing program.

Build your marketing network. Use LinkedIn. Talk to your clients. (I get some of my best leads from existing clients.) Work the trade shows. Get yourself out there. Practice your own social media strategy, even though it’s hard to find the time to market your own services when you are working so hard for your clients.

And in these times, Marc offers some sage advice about going about building your own business. You not only have to sell what you know, but you have to find buyers willing to pay for your services.  PR professionals, like freelance writers (since there are as many or more unemployed journalists as unemployed marketing professionals), tend to take the low bids in a tough market to get work coming in the door. It doesn’t take long until accepting those low bids starts to yield negative returns. It gets harder to make a livable wage because you are competing with the lowest common denominator.

When bidding for contract work you need to not only find someone with the cash to pay the freight, but you need to stand firm on your rates. Sure, running your own business gives you the freedom to accept and turn down the work you want, and to set the rates and terms you want. However, discounting your services to land a contract that may offer bigger bucks later never works. Once you come in as the low bidder, you will never be able to sell your services for a premium, even when you know you are worth it.

Don’t fall into the trap that many consultants indulge in – underselling yourself. There never is a payoff later, and those discounted or worse, free contracts seldom bring in new business. Loss leader contracts are just that, a loss, so stand your ground and stand behind your rates. And if you are using your network appropriately, you’ll know if your rates are out of line with the market.

• More consolidation of PR agencies as big agencies gobble up smaller ones;
• Growth will return, although with a cautious optimism as the year starts out slowly for some; and most interesting
• The current boom in social media will morph into something more substantial and more sustainable.

Some PR pundits are predicting a social media gold rush as new social media players flood the market seeing attention, which could mean a boom for PR as well. Here’s Lou Hoffman’s prediction as cited in Media Bistro:

“Virtually every Ph.D. student who can say ‘algorithm’ and chew gum at the same time devotes their thesis to building a social media monitoring tool. Each is convinced he or she has cracked the code on the best way to capture every word, visual and action that transpires in this alternative universe called social media. These 500+ companies scamper to find a PR agency, creating a dotcom-like boom for the PR industry.” –Lou Hoffman, CEO, The Hoffman Agency

I believe that we will see the luster of social media start to dim as companies start looking to get more from social media branding. As David Mullen points out in his blog, Communications Catalyst, PR professionals will start to learn that the blog/Facebook/Twitter holy trinity is what he calls a “three-trick pony” for social media. PR professionals will have to go beyond the social media basics and dig deeper into their clients’ business and their brand to drive awareness and create value.

I agree with Mullen that if PR agencies don’t crack the code on social media soon, the emerging new media ad agencies are going to dominate here. I have already seen a number of agencies successfully step into the social media arena and offer very effective programs as an extension of pay-per-click and web marketing programs.

Once again, PR is going to have to demonstrate its real value to stay in the game in 2010. If you have been reading this blog, then you know that traditional media outlets like newspapers are either going under or struggling to survive, which means our role as media professionals has to evolve with the times. Mullen predicts that the lines between advertising and PR will start blurring. They are already are. In tough times, you have to be able to demonstrate that your communications program will add to your clients’ bottom line. Smart ad agencies and marketing agencies are creating programs that do just that, and they are using tactics like social media to do it. With the value of media relations increasingly in question, I see a turf war brewing between PR and other marketing and advertising agencies for client programs.

So it looks like old fashioned values are going to be new again. It’s up to smart PR people to take a hard look at their clients’ programs to identify where they can provide that deeper value that has a positive impact on sales. And they have to be able to show that value by measuring the results. We all will need to improve our game and remind ourselves the rules haven’t really changed with the  New Year.

If you look at the numbers, the decline and fall of the printed newspaper seems inevitable. According to Reflections of a Newsosaur, a blog site started by Alan D. Mutter, a Silicon Valley CEO, college professor, new media pundit, and former journalist, newspapers are dropping like the proverbial flies. In his latest post, Mutter notes that 142 newspapers ceased publication in 2009, compared to 37 in 2008. Not only does that reflect the loss of 90,000 jobs, but it also means that some communities no longer have access to a local news resource. In other, larger markets, it means that where there were conflicting voices debating in print and offering alternative viewpoints, now there is one newspaper reporting events and shaping public opinion. (Does anyone else remember when the New York Times was actually a local paper and there were a dozen dailies competing for newsstand space in New York City?)

Of course, hope springs eternal in the publishing business. As Mutter points out, the power of the newspaper monopoly and the magic of the bankruptcy court have kept a number of newspapers afloat. I have heard some second-hand stories from those laid off from the San Francisco Chronicle that while the Hearst Corporation does its best to create a profitable newspaper/Web hybrid, it may only be a matter of time before union demands kill the dream.

But as Mutter and the numbers indicate, the optimism of newspaper publishers seems unquashable. As Mutter notes in his previous post:

“A positively effervescent survey of more than 500 newspaper publishers yesterday predicted that advertising sales would drop only 0.2% in 2010 after plunging 28.4% in the first nine months of this year.”

Of course, this is magical thinking on the part of newspaper publishers. Print advertising revenue is drying up as more brands move online. And why not? Isn’t it more efficient to drive a banner ad/pay-per-click marketing strategy with social media support? Shoppers are increasingly going online first, and so is the advertising.

So what are newspapers going to do to survive? I have been watching the experiment that the San Francisco Chronicle, my home town newspaper, has been conducting for more than a decade. SFGate was one of the first online newspaper sites (it recently celebrated its 15th anniversary), and as the Chronicle’s print circulation has slowly been eroding, SFGate has been picking up online momentum. The SFGate site had 124.6 million page hits in September of this year. At the same, the number of regular contributors from the printed newspaper writing for the online site is dwindling. A number or regular columnists and reporters have moved on, and SFGate is bringing in more newswire content, freelance contributors and community leaders to provide content; sources that are cheap or free. And there is still no guarantee Hearst Newspapers will find a way to make SFGate profitable.

Still, I am confident that a new form of successful newspaper will emerge from the current chaos. You may remember the birth of USA Today? At the time, the concept of launching a national news daily seemed revolutionary. That’s nothing compared to the revolution we are witnessing today. And as with most revolutions, those who are flexible and can adapt to changing times will thrive, including professional journalists and public relations professionals.