Keep your Audience Relevent - Not All Press is Good Press
The last few weeks have been VERY good to IndyHall and some of our other grassroots creative friends. One of the leaders of those groups, Blake Jennelle, asked me about the response from press. He asked if the recent spot on CBS Morning News, or the Philadelphia Business Journal piece, had yielded a lot of phone calls or inquiries with interest.
Frankly, they haven’t yielded much more than a bunch of congratulations from friends and family who were excited to see us recognized. And it’s something to keep my mom off my back about my lack of finishing my degree. All of which I’m EXTREMELY appreciative of. It’s ridiculously humbling to get this kind of credit when it’s due to way more people than just me. It’s also validating that the work we’re doing is being seen by a more mainstream audience. I’ve said before that I think coworking is about much more than just what we do at IndyHall, and what others do at their coworking spaces…it’s not about where people want to work, it’s about how.
But that’s not my point. At least not today.
So, what is the point?
My point is, a little spot on the email newsletter Daily Candy actually gave us WAY more response from new interested parties. Like, a lot. Tripled our highest traffic day on the blog, and more than a handful of phone calls and visits from new people who read about us and were interested in spots.
I’ve got a couple of theories why this somewhat “counterintuitive lesson in niche marketing”, as Blake so eloquently put it, occurred.
Link Love? Not here.
First is a basic fault of mainstream press, and one that I’m hardly the first to note: mainstream press does not link. Period. They keep eyeballs on their own sites, and have ZERO interest in sharing link love. It’s absurd, but it’s true, and eventually as the they’ll catch on, or they’ll die off. Either way, the problem will be solved, and nothing we do is going to change them.
Net Fishing vs. The Heavy Artillery
The more important reason, I think, simply has to do with the niche we market to, and who viewed the pieces of press. Both the CBS news, at 7:30am, and the Philadelphia Business Journal, are NOT primarily consumed by work-from-the-couch indies. So again…lots of eyeballs, little audience relevance.
It’s the difference between casting a net, and harpoon fishing. It seems that the Daily Candy piece, however, was like having a multi-harpoon-launching-fishing-gatling-gun.
We still love mainstream
Theres an immense amount of value of getting the coworking message to the masses. Ultimately, this movement is (I hope) going to shape their futures, and they should know we’re coming. Also, some messages need the attention of the masses. Mainstream press isn’t going away, don’t think that for a second. I’m just saying that in some cases, it may not be the place you should put your focus first.
If you want people to care, you have to show them that you care, first. And freaking mean it.
But apply this to your business, organization, or idea: rather than cast a net of press releases, think hard about your target(s). Casting a net takes a whole lot of energy with very little yield. Diligent and clearly targeted messaging, however, yields much greater results with the same amount of energy.
So next time you’re trying to get your idea out there, chew on this: try finding thought leaders in that target audience, and get friendly. Give them the attention they deserve. Read up on them. Hand craft emails. These people deserve your attention, since you’re asking it of them. Sending them a canned message is going to fall into the pile with all of the other canned PR. It’s worthless. It really is.
If you want these people to care, you need to prove that you give a shit about your own message. And I’m sorry, but a canned press release doesn’t scream “I care”.
Even though your target for making your message reach a widespread audience are “influencers”, because they can change winds, thought leaders tend to be more approachable, and guess who the influencers turn to for their next “big thing” to influence.
You got it. The thought leader that you planted a seed with.
Focus.
Bursting out to the masses with every little move you make, if you think about it, kinda turns into a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario. What happens when you actually DO make a move that’s notable.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t share your every move. I do it on twitter. I do it on the IndyHall blog. I do a fair amount of it here. But those are all opt in messaging, and the people who receive it are people who want to. If I’m lucky, some of those “followers” are thought leaders and influencers, and…
I guess that’s how we ended up in mainstream press in the first place.
1. May 2008 at 17:39
great point about mainstream media…. when cnn.com had the story about twitter on their website, they didn’t mention the word twitter on the homepage (see screenshot here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stellargirl/2442365045/) and in the article, they may have called it by name but they didn’t dare provide a url.
i also noticed when indyhall / coworking was on cbs 3, they made you go to their website just to find the url, which i imagine, a few days after you watch the clip is pretty hard to find the link (still showing up on http://cbs3.com/links but that may not last)
mainstream media: i hope you are listening!
2. May 2008 at 11:14
Interesting post. I just wrote a book about the Jersey Shore, and I’ve been working on promoting it online since July 2007 (before I even turned in the manuscript). So far, that’s how I’ve gotten most attention, and signing up for Twitter has helped, too.
I was linked to Philebrity.com the other day, which tripled my traffic. A link on prestonandsteve.com lead to 10 times the usual traffic. My book was mentioned in the Inquirer today. Increase in traffic? Nothing that I can see. I’m getting a lot more hits via twitter.
I think the web’s a much better way to hit that niche market of people who will want the book. More mainstream media articles will be coming out about it soon…it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
2. May 2008 at 11:41
Dude, right on post! Showing focused and target love has been my strategy as community manager at Clearspring. It’s not been about going to the biggest conferences because there is very little chance of serious engagement. I’ve been going to BarCamps all over the country and they’ve been great. There are less people but I’ve been getting them super-engaged in our brand and platform.
2. May 2008 at 12:01
Great post.
I’ve noticed the same phenomena over the past two years.
But everyone still wants that “respect” thing from the MSM.
I just want to keep paying the bills.
http://www.kraftcreation.blogspot.com
2. May 2008 at 12:58
I think the other thing is that coworking would not be interesting to your average mainstream media consumer. I think a better test would be something non-dependent on “the tubes” being reported in both ways.
Also, old media had linking way before the Internet–the “wire.” However it works in terms of rebranding rather than moving to a new site. So more often than not, if you read news on a newspaper website or google/yahoo, or cnn, you actually are reading content from another place–just rebranded. The currency of news is getting it widely distributed, not hits on one site.
It’s interesting being halfway between old and new media. The monetizing structures are pretty ingrained and at odds.
2. May 2008 at 12:59
Alex, couldn’t have said it better myself - as we’ve built myfirstpaycheck.com we’ve received all sorts of kinds of press and seen all sorts of different types of bounces from it. We haven’t been mentioned in the Inky yet, but our biggest bounce so far has come from the Philly Metro (which reached lots of part-time employees) - not our national TV appearance (which reached lots of business owners)
While we focus on The Heavy Artillery, MSM is an important ‘touch’ for us. People don’t hear about something one time and say, “Wow, that’s amazing” they need to hear it 5, 10, 20 times for it to process. I’ve found that when I make sales calls or talk about myfirstpaycheck.com after MSM pieces people are much more likely to say, “Oh yea, I’ve heard of that site, what do you do again?”