Want to get your clients covered? Start pitching other people’s clients

It might sound crazy, but if we want to get our clients media coverage maybe we should consider pitching people who aren’t our clients.

The way our relationships traditionally work with the media is that we pitch them with relevant story ideas – related to our clients, their work or products, etc. – and when we’re lucky and it’s a right fit, they write about it. Succeed at getting coverage a few times with a given reporter and we’re on our way to a strong sustained media relationship. But as reporters’ schedules become increasingly hectic, how do we stand out and prove ourselves a valuable asset?

By providing our media contacts with valuable tips or story support – regardless of if it correlates with our client list -  we can build a strong relationship built on value provided. A clear benefit to any busy reporter, this type of pitching also means the next time we have a newsworthy pitch on behalf of a client we’ll find an open ear.

So what does a non-client pitch look like?

It’s as simple as sending a few sentence email offering a story that fits a reporters beat, or a quick phone call suggesting a logical follow up to a story they wrote, with a tip on a potentially valuable contact. Let the reporter know you have no vested interest in the pitch itself, but that you are happy to help if it’s an angle they’d like to pursue. And the key – as with all pitching – is brevity and selectivity.

Utilizing this technique, I’ve managed to build several key media relationships over the past years that have proved increasingly valuable for both myself and my clients.

So what do you think? Is the best way to get your clients covered by pitching outside your client list?

How to Stop Paying for your Broadcast Media Clips and Start Getting them for Free

Anyone who has worked in PR knows ordering copies of broadcast media clips from a monitoring company can get expensive fast. At $50-100 a pop, a short broadcast clip can really break a budget. The good news? It’s 2011. You shouldn’t be paying for those broadcast media clips. Take the time to make a minimum investment into the below technology and you’ll never have to pay for those clips again.

Record and Edit Live TV Yourself
When I worked for UCLA media relations I set our office up with a TiVo to record television programming. I wired the TiVo up to a DVD burner and we were able to quickly and easily copy and duplicate DVDs of the coverage we received. Want to take it a step further? You can utilize TiVo’s Desktop for PC (or MAC) to transfer recordings over your network to a computer for easy editing.

While the TiVo is pretty cool and easy to use, my personal favorite product for the job is EyeTV, from Elgato. This product lets you plug your cable signal directly into your Mac. On top of that, it also has a great editing interface built in, which includes the ability to export your edited video into just about any format. Using EyeTV I could record a news clip as it aired live, edit it and have it in an email going out to the team in under 10 minutes. Yes, 10 minutes. No more waiting a week for that DVD to arrive.

Save Video Off Just About Any Site
Maybe you didn’t know you were getting media coverage. What should you do then? Well, chances are the media outlet will post the video on their website within a day or two. If they do, there are plenty of ways for you to download and save the clip for your private archives. NOTE: You can download it, but it doesn’t mean you can publicly share it or post it to YouTube

For PC users, the easiest tool for the job is CamStudio. CamStudio is a free screen recording program that can capture both the video and audio of a video clip being played on any website. Just drag a box around the video in question, click to record and you’re all set.

For Mac users, my suggestion is iShowU HD. It’s $29.95, but has a great interface and is totally worth the cost. Like CamStudio, you can quickly and easily record any video from any website. Again, just drag a box around the video, select record and that’s it. Looking to save yourself $30? If you’ve got a Mac utilizing Snow Leopard or Lion operating systems you can use QuickTime to record screen captures for free. More details here.

Capturing Missed Media Coverage
But what if you didn’t record the coverage as it happened AND the media outlet never posted the video to their site? Well, don’t forget to check YouTube! You’d be surprised how many times media coverage finds its way to the video sharing site. The easiest way to download videos from YouTube is via a Firefox add-on. Install an add-on, like my favorite 1-Click YouTube Video Download, and you can quickly and easily download any YouTube video to your computer. If Firefox isn’t your browser of choice, check out this article that outlines 18 ways to download YouTube videos for free.

Conclusion
There’s always a chance that the above info won’t help and a piece of coverage might slip through the cracks. If that’s the case, you can still use your tried and true video monitoring services. But I’m happy to report that by utilizing some of the above info I haven’t had to purchase a single broadcast media clip in over three years! Try it out, save yourself some cash and let me know what you think.

Manage your Twitter Followers with Formulists

We all know social media isn’t a megaphone, but once your Twitter follower numbers reach the thousands how do you actually connect and engage with your audience on a meaningful level? Enter Formulists, a list creation and management tool that allows users to generate customized Twitter lists that continuously self-update.

With Formulist you can filter and create lists by people who you follow, people who follow you, bio keywords, track interactions, and more. This is Twitter lists on steroids.

The biggest benefit I see for public relations is the ability to create customized lists by geographic region. Previously if you wanted to target your community by city or state you’d either blast everyone or spend hours reading bios to see where folks were from. Now anyone can create lists for each city, state or country, connecting those individuals to events or campaigns in their area, all with just a few clicks.

Filtering by geographic region isn’t the only benefit either. For instance, using “Custom-Lists” you can also add, intersect or subtract existing lists from each other. So another possibility would be to get a list of fans, who mention your brand in their bio, and intersect this list with a “People Who RTed Me” to help both acknowledge and keep track of those that are actively helping to promote you. This would ideally get at a segment of followers/following that are especially interested in issues related to you. You can also simultaneously tweak for follower-following ratio or number of followers to get at people who potentially have more reach.

There are a lot of tools out there that help you organize Twitter followers, but the depth of Formulists and its ability to completely customize and cater to your needs via filters is seriously awesome. The auto update feature is great too. If someone in one of your lists changes their geographic region, bio keywords, etc. your list will automatically take note so you’ll never have to manually filter it.

Formulists currently offers both free and paid accounts. The free accounts come with access to 2 customized lists and daily updates. $1.99 a month gets you 20 customized lists, 6x faster list updates and the ability to update lists on demand.

It obviously takes a bit of work up front, but filtering and managing your followers is a great way to help you target and directly engage key members of your community.

Welcome

Welcome.

As you’ll discover as you explore this site, Connect & Engage is a digital marketing company specializing in web video, public relations and live streaming. Founded by my wife Jillian and I, we exist to support highly creative and innovative companies connect and engage their community.

In addition to the work we do, it’s our hope to utilize this blog to share valuable insights into market trends, digital strategy and best practices. We’ll be consolidating some of our current blogging efforts to support this, most notably AsMediaChanges.com.

Thank you for the support.