“Social media” is the shiny new tool in the PR tool box right now, and while some marketers embrace new media as a dream come true, others diligently stick with only tried-and-true traditional media. While you may be tempted to put all your efforts into one basket, it’s important to realize that traditional media and new media actually go hand-in-hand. Rather than competing with each other, they elevate each other—reaching a larger audience.
Traditional media stories appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio and TV are still the heavy weight champions of PR —even a small newspaper audience is huge compared to most social media audiences. But while social media audiences are smaller, it doesn’t cost you much more to reach those extra people. Another benefit of social media is that you can control when and how often you are trying to reach your target market. After all, a smart marketing mix involves turning over every rock you find to reach your market, and new media is just another way to spread the word, and captures an emerging audience that your traditional placements may miss.
My team of talented publicists is securing newspaper, magazine, radio and TV placements every day. In fact, most of what they secure for our clients has an online presence as well, so those traditional media placements just got legs to reach even larger audiences. My team then puts running shoes on our clients’ successful media placements by re-posting them to their Facebook, Twitter and blog, along with some extra content to explain the placement. Another advantage to this scenario is that traditional media weighs in heavy with consumers as a credible third-party source of the information, so repurposing successful media placements as social media posts has a leg up on typical new media content.
Traditional media and new media isn’t an either-or scenario, you should be using both. New media is an extension of your PR activities—and no matter how you slice and dice it, social media is part of PR and therefore should be part of your media mix! Traditional media and new media should work in harmony: think of new media as the online presence of your traditional media placements, your Mrs. Pac-Man to your Pac-Man, your Robin to your Batman.
As you can probably tell, I have a great team and we like to have fun with PR. I would love the chance to talk to you about how to utilize new media and traditional PR activities to reach your sales goals. Give me a call at 952-697-5269.
Sincerely, Heather Champine VP of Media Production Media Relations Agency
