PRx Blog

Good Healthcare PR Combines New and Traditional Communications Tools

Recently a client sent to me a link to an online commentary that said “you need a blog, not a PR agency.”  This was my reply to my client:

Thanks for forwarding that online story to us. We see articles like this one quite often.  It’s almost a standard approach now for someone to stake out the provocative position of something like “PR is dead” or “all you need is social media.”  Many self-styled social media gurus take positions like this.  It gets attention but of course it ignores the realities of communicating in today's environment.

The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle.  For years we’ve been very strong believers in the communications power of online media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook, digital content creation and everything else.  We have great services to help our clients in these areas and we handle this for many of our clients. At the same time, even as the traditional media disaggregates and communications channels fragment, there is still a strong need for such traditional PR tools as press releases, media briefings, customer case studies, print articles (and their online versions), analyst briefings, executive bylines, picking up the phone and calling a reporter, and all the other ways to generate leads and reach your prospects.

Why? Here are a few reasons.

First, even today not all (perhaps not even most) prospects in some industries are getting their information online.  Think of the way you gather your information. It’s probably a somewhat random mix of newspapers, magazines, blogs, local TV news and their websites, Google feeds, AP on your iPhone, etc.…we’re omnivorous media consumers and we don’t go about it with a careful plan.  So our view is that you need to be everywhere your target buyers go to get their information.  A new survey from Middleberg and the Society for New Communications shows that 30 percent of reporters are not using social media or blogs. Fifty-two percent don’t use Twitter and 75 percent don’t listen to podcasts.

In healthcare PR more of communications is moving online, but the trade publications still exert great influence.  The ideal combination is to get a great trade or business media story, link it to your website, write a blog posting about it, Tweet it to your followers and spread it around. But often that starts with one of those old, boring, soon-to-be dead magazine placements – you know, the kind that just keep not dying.

Second, there is still some degree of “document of record” provided by press releases, particularly for public companies. In July, 2008 the SEC described some new guidelines  that expanded acceptable disclosure tools to include corporate websites. Sun was the first company to post its earnings announcement on its IR website alone, and not through a press release issued on a wire service.  That’s fine, and it’s a growing trend, but there are still many companies which prefer to issue a press release, on a wire, to announce significant news.  For any good PR agency the distribution mechanism isn’t a big deal – we use a variety of wires, direct email, blog postings, Tweets with the link…it’s the content that counts.

Third, building an online community and reaching them directly is very important, but it is not sufficient. The appeal of this is that companies can project their message directly to those who have expressed interest, and engage in a conversation (sometimes a nasty or contentious one). There’s no editorial judgment or “interference.”  But there is a role and a need for journalistic standards that produce a story researched and conveyed by a disinterested third party – in this case, a reporter.  I want it all for my clients: good, positive coverage from a presumably reliable source in which there has been some reporting and editorial discretion, along with an active, ongoing discussion through blogs, Tweets, Facebook and online communities. 

I’ve worked in business communications for a long time. I place great value on new technologies that help us communicate and I use them. But I’ve also learned that no hot new communications technology is a panacea.  You don’t replace one with another – you augment and extend your communications channels to include each new technology. I know from experience both as an agency client and as an agency guy that a good PR agency can help with all of this.  It’s not either-or – that’s too easy and too facile.  Actually, it’s harder than that. It’s this, plus this, plus this….and so on in the right mix. The chaos of the current communications environment means that now, more than ever, there are many ways that PR experts can help.

Posted by Dave Close on May 13, 2010 at 11:38 AM