Seat at the Table

Today’s New York Times article, “Spinning the  Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley” is a terrific read on publicizing to the Silicon Valley crowd, but only that.  There were several points in the article where I would remind people that it’s simply one example of how to match an audience to a medium, and that what applies in one market, does not work for another.  Here are a two critical topics to keep in mind before this type of hype article impact any PR strategy decision.

Match the message and audience to the medium - The approach outlined in the article is great if you are looking to reach a Silicon Valley centric audience (and Twitter is their platform de jour).  But what if you want to reach the financial or other industries?  In our recent survey of professionals on how they get their news, Twitter and blogs came in last.  What we found is that these are useful tool for very specific audiences and situations (such as reaching the Silicon Valley crowd that tends to focus on the latest platform, but the article fails to make this clear.  Our current best practices survey, to be published this summer, also shows that most PR people clearly understand this.

Confusing publicity with public relations – If the article was titled, “Publicity in Silicon Valley,” I’d have far fewer problems.   Public relations is just that, managing the relationship with the public (or, your specific publics known as audiences).  Publicity, the art of spreading awareness often through hype driven media, is but one tool that is used to manage these relationship – events, direct mail/email, speaking engagements and other approaches are all part of a tactical tool set.  I don’t blame the article, many publicity firms call themselves PR firms thus adding to the confusion.