Amy Rosenberg will be speaking on Digital PR at Engage which will take place March 7–8 in Portland Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and let us know what you do for a living.
After working at a few local PR shops, I founded my firm, Veracity, 10 years ago. I now run that firm with my partner, Mike Rosenberg. I mostly handle client strategy, leading a team of professionals in our quest to achieve results for our clients. In doing so, a newfound passion for education has emerged, bringing me to host and produce a podcast called PR Talk. Through interviews with media and industry influencers, I’m expanding my own knowledge base as well as helping up-and-coming marketers. I am also writing a book to explain the hands on practice of PR, bringing our heads out of the clouds and back down into the weeds so that people can actually learn the unnecessarily mysterious art of PR.
2) Many people at our conference might not see PR as related to search marketing in any manner. Can you set them straight?
It’s pretty straightforward. All the media outlets we pitch have websites. If they didn’t have websites why would we pitch them? Therefore, the stories we generate through traditional PR actions also result in online coverage, often incorporating strong links, bringing powerful search results to our clients. Some SEO’s may be surprised to learn that they have been performing PR functions all along.
3) How would you craft a pitch to somebody to whom you have no prior relationship (and who likely doesn’t know you)
Prior relationships are not necessary if you follow some key PR principals. First, do a little research to ensure the contact/outlet fits your pitch topic.
What should your pitch topic be? Make sure it is:
a) timely (fits into something that is going on in the world, whether it is a national holiday or key event) and/or
b) newsworthy (it is new and/or fits with what your key press demographic is already writing about).
The most important part of the outreach is the email subject line and the first sentence of the email. Do not get bogged down with niceties. The press is not nice and being polite is a waste time. Get straight to the newsworthy or timely item. You might not even name-drop your company/client until way down in the email. In PR it is not always about your company/client, it is about getting the press to cover a newsworthy/timely story idea that somehow incorporates your company/client even if it’s just a side-note.
Go to Amy’s Session on the Agenda
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.