Have seen all the posts about finding lists of media people for PR
purposes. Such lists will be absolutely useless for doing Internet
PR, if your goal is to build awareness of your Web site or about
events occuring at your site, or about Internet related products.
Here's why. The traditional PR model held that third party resources
were essentially gatekeepers to the key contacts. One of those
resources, Bacon's, has been mentioned over and over and over during this
thread. Bacon's was and is useful for traditional media outlets,
but for online PR efforts related to Web site awareness building, its
worthless. Such online efforts must be targeted towards editors, writers,
publishers, and other *Internet Media People*. Go see if you can find
those in Bacon's. Nope. Never gonna happen. The medium is so fluid, so
changing, that a new Web zine or E-zine can appear today and have 25,000
readers by next week if it gets hot. "Suck" is an example. Try and find
the key contacts and email addresses for "Suck" in Bacon's. Or even
WEBster or Netsurfer Digest. Good luck. Any print publication remotely
related to the Internet is obsolete before it ships.
There are tens of thousands of Electronic publications that will never make
it to any "Bible of the Industry". Happens too fast. I conduct entire
focused campaigns aiming solely at Internet media folks, and the only way
to do it is to get busy, research, hunt for, and identify the right
people in the right places for your particular needs. No third party book
can do that for me with the Internet.
Please, take the time to compile your own list of the right
people for your content, and then individually contact them. Don't
send the obituaries editor at the Anchorage Gazette an e-press release
just because you can, and you think its possible he might actually
want a copy of WebCruncher 1.1
I have seen everyone during this thread trying to shortcut this process,
hoping to benefit from a list of names and addresses that *someone else*
put together. But that is the very crux of the problem: It is so easy to
put together a list of media contacts, and dump them into either your own
listserv or BCC field, that anyone can do it. And they are. No more
middle man, no more Bacon's needed. You or I or any college freshman can
scarf email addresses from media people via their Web pages, and in 3
hours time do a mass emailing to 1000+ media email addresses. For nearly
no cost.
This method, however, is the absolute incorrect and improper way to
do it.
Until you put yourself in the receivers shoes, you wont get it.
A year ago I posted the following. It still applies:
"There are people at the end of the pipes..."
Unsolicited, impersonal email press releases by the hundrerds are the
true viruses of the Internet, but individual messages to individuals who
are interested will make you money, or, at least win you a Tenagra
Award ;)
--Eric Ward
Personalized Internet Media Awareness Campaigns
The WardGroup/NetPOST[tm] - Internet Media/Press Services
------ netpost@netpost.com ~~ <a href="<a href="http://www.netpost.com">http://www.netpost.com</a>">http://www.netpost.com</a> -----
o 1995 Tenagra Award for Internet Marketing Excellence
o Guest- AOL's Internet InBiz show
o Speaker, Internet World International, London, 1996
---- Fortune 500 clients and references in 5 countries ----
----
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