Tom Foremski’s Silicon Valley Watcher post titled, ‘The Killer Pitch? – When PR Agencies Can Do This – Look Out…‘ has this ponder-worthy sentence,
While there are lots of bad pitches out there, there are also lots of good pitches. Even with a perfect pitch, sometimes a reporter won’t write the story because there is not enough time, there’s too much else to do.
But here’s a killer pitch. It’s one that I haven’t heard yet but it’s only a matter of time.
” … and we have the ability to drive a lot of traffic to your story.”
In a world where reporters are increasingly rewarded not on the quality of their work but on how much traffic their stories attract — this becomes the killer pitch.
The pitch wouldn’t have to be spelled out directly, agencies that show they can drive traffic, will be able to imply that they will drive traffic to specific news stories.
Fortunately, PR agencies don’t know how to drive traffic to news stories.
Two specific lines of thought here – authenticity and feasibility.
Authenticity
I’ve often heard Indian PR (and other social media) agencies approach social media engagement using similar numbers. Start a twitter profile for a client (for whatever purpose or the lack of it) and promise the client ‘enough traction’ on follower count and page hits to news updates.
I’ve also heard internal, agency diktats/ requests to colleagues…to follow client Twitter profiles, retweet assorted client-specific tweets and Facebook fan pages, among others. Happens everywhere, I know.
If in the physical world, we (as PR agencies) showcase the number of editions a client’s news appears as a yardstick for PR reach/ success, what is the online equivalent? No wait, I do understand all about key messages…I’m just using that one yardstick that usually gives the client a high.
Page hits? In case of print/ TV, it cannot be gamed – technically, that is. Let us leave medianet and paid insertions out of the discussion for the time being. Can unique page views be gamed online? Facebook fan page members and Twitter followers can be gamed, using internal resources, though the fact is that it may be utterly pointless to the client.
Feasibility
Assuming page views cannot be gamed, can PR agencies use it as a yardstick for success in the online space?
Right now, many of them merely aggregate online news site mentions as part of a larger ‘coverage report’. Given that page views can come from non-agency sources too (Google search, for instance), we do have slightly better tools like bit.ly stats and can use a shortened URL to track hits to a page. Can agencies use such tactics during the planning stage?
Second, is it viable for an agency to promise/ commit numbers? Think about it, should/ can an agency commit to a client that they’d get them 300 twitter followers in 90 days? I’ve had a few clients ask for such pointed commitments, but I’ve managed to direct such conversations to other feasible and organic modes of success – a top 10 relevant tweeter list based on the clients’ industry and commitment that they would be following the client’s twitter profile in 90 days. This, I can assure you, can be achieved organically using targeted strategies to attract the top 10’s attention, gaining their trust and work towards building a meaningful twitter profile page.
In the print medium, if an agency promises ‘coverage’ in 25 dailies without getting into details of relevancy, it amounts to the same thing. The effort is akin to spreading the net and not fish where the bigger fishes are. Instead, if the agency stands up to relevancy and assures that the top 5 most-relevant journalists would cover/ be informed about a specific announcement, that would add a lot more value to the client’s budget.
What’s your take on Tom’s post? And the questions of authenticity and feasibility?