How the Media Landscape Is Evolving

The PR world is shifting fast. The coaches and experts who are getting known for what they do are evolving with it 🤩

In this episode of Dauntless PR Unfiltered, we share the actual data of what is and isn’t working right now. 

And what the journalists and producers you want to book you are saying behind the scenes. 

--
Take our Media Icon Archetype Quiz that shows you the media version of you 🤩

Shows you exactly how your energy lands best in the media and how to use that to your advantage.

Click here - https://dauntlesspr.com/dauntless-pr-personality-quiz

Transcript

Why The Media Is Shifting

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Dauntless PR and Filtered. What we're going to be talking about today is how the media landscape is evolving.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

So I've been a bit of a nerd this week and I've been delving into some research that into the media landscape, what other PR professionals are saying, and then Mukra, which is a bit of a funny sort of website. It kind of collects lots and lots of like things to do with like journalists, who they write for, things like that. They've done a load of research. I won't bore you with everything that they say in it because it's lots and lots of reports. But there were some really interesting things. And I was like, actually, let's not gatekeep this stuff, let's talk about it on the podcast. And a lot of things that I was like wholeheartedly agreeing with, or like, yes, we've seen this too. And it's kind of good to know that it's a collective experience. You know, other people are seeing the same things that we are at Dauntless. So I'm going to start with a few things, and I'll I'll come to you for your response a lot of these things. These are things other people have said, so this isn't stuff that us, but that I like this phrase. Someone

Marketing Sells And PR Tells

SPEAKER_01 1:19

said that they think of the confusion about PR and marketing, which we've talked about lots and lots of times. Yeah. But the way they explain it to people is they say marketing sells and PR tells. And I was like, oh, I like that. But what they were really saying is again very similar to what we're saying, but it's nice to hear somebody else saying it. Is that really with PR, it's about editorial relevance, it's about newsworthiness, it's about whether you're interesting to the audience of the outlet. Whereas obviously your marketing is all about selling what you're doing, selling your business, focusing in on that. So they were sort of saying that a big part of what brands, what people, whether it's a commercial brand, whether it's a personal brand, whether it's just somebody wanting to build their own PR, is realizing that the sweet spot is discovering what's interesting to the reader or the TV viewer or the radio listener, what's interesting to them rather than what you want to push. That was how they kind of said it's not about what you want to push, it's about what is interesting. And I feel like that's something we talk about a lot, isn't it? To our clients, to on here. Like that's a really big point.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

I like the way you put it, Catherine, where you talk about the Venn diagram where the journalist has got what they want, the client has got what they want, or the expert has got what they want, and then they've got to meet in the middle. And it's not about it, it's like it's giving everything, isn't it? You know, it's yeah, you're gonna get promoted, but you're not there just to sell your thing. You know, if that's what you want, then you have to buy an ad space. But I think a lot of people confuse media pitching with sales pitching. So they go in and approach a journalist as though they're a potential client, you know, and obviously that's not what they're looking for. It's a completely different skill, isn't it? So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

And I think sometimes it's about letting go of the idea that everything you want to say has to be in the media. So, like there might be some things that actually save that for your social media, you know, things like a new program you've got, it starts in whatever a couple of weeks, this is what you're gonna do. The very like marketing-specific stuff, maybe that is just gonna stay on your social media, but there will be parts of that, like some of the things you're gonna cover in that might be topics you can talk about in the media. Some of the tools and the techniques you teach could be things that you talk about in the media. So completely sometimes about letting go of this idea that, well, I have this list of 10 things that I want to say and I need to pursue all of them, and actually kind of having a little bit of selective that's like, oh, okay, well, this is going to be my social media campaign, but what in here will also work for the media, and let's have a look at that rather than getting support up.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

We can

Turning Offers Into Editorial Angles

SPEAKER_00 4:35

give an example here, can't we? Because we're just doing this right now. So I've just written an article for a magazine about five questions that help you make decisions faster. And of course, making decisions faster is something that really helps people in the media, and that's also a part of the media icon program that we've got launching soon. So it's like it I don't go into the media and say, hey, promote Media Icon. I've got this thing coming. But what I am gonna do is I'm gonna pull bits that are valuable from Media Icon and I'm gonna go and share them as a little taster in this magazine or on that podcast or on that radio or TV show. And then that entices people to come and pay more attention to media icons. So I go, let's say that magazine goes out, we get extra eyes on our marketing through that because that's what they're interested in. They come back to our socials where we're also talking about, you know, that kind of thing, the visibility, and then they get offered our lead magnet, which then takes them into an email series, which takes them into a sale.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah. I think as soon as people realize that they are two PR and marketing are two separate strategies that help each other. That's usually when it starts to be effective. When it's not effective for people, it's when they are mixing up the two, or they're saying, well, PR isn't working, but actually they were expecting PR to do the job of marketing.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Oh that drives me absolutely mad, right? Because it's like I said to somebody only a couple of days ago, tracking, like insisting on tracking PR like marketing isn't going to make it marketing. It's not going to change what it is. And this wasn't a client, by the way, but it's, you know, somebody I was talking to and we were discussing PR, but they couldn't let go of trying to track it like marketing and then claiming it wasn't working. They were with a different agency claiming it wasn't working. But they were getting amazing placements, you know. So I was like, well, why are you saying your PR isn't working? And I was trying to explain with to them, you know, but they just kept kept doing it. And so yeah, in the end, I was just like, look, it's not gonna make it marketing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

My analogy is if you think of PR and marketing as being like, say, the heart surgeon and the anaesthetist, you need both if you were gonna make it through having cardiac surgery. But if you expect the anaesthetist to do the surgery and the surgeon to do your put you to sleep and keep you safe and keep you alive, because I mean, anaesthetist, by the way, equally important. So, you know, you need that person keeping you alive. They are doing different jobs, but they are working together to get you from that. And that is what PR and marketing are doing. Obviously, hopefully, not in a life or death way, but you know, there is your strategy. They need to get it. Really great PR will fall flat if there is no marketing. You know, if they come and find you and your website has nothing about how they can work with you, nothing about what you're doing. But equally, marketing can only get so far on its own because it needs that push that PR gives to drive more people. So as soon as you see them as members of the same team doing completely different jobs, that's where I think it starts to click for people.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

I really like that analogy. And um, I'm glad you brought that up because you know it's not it's not PR or marketing, it's absolutely both.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah. And that's and they do often get, you know, you will find a lot of companies will have a department that does both. And that's where I think a lot of the confusion comes because they'll see PR and marketing department, but there'll be different people, I would imagine, in the departments doing those jobs. They've just been put in the same in the same rooms as each other.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, it's because of how a lot of pay to play is sold. And I'm not saying if every pay-to-play play seller does this, but a lot of them do imply that it's gonna get them a ton of sales. Like if they get this one feature, they're gonna be overrun with leaves, they're gonna get a bunch of sales out of it, it's gonna explode their business. So then they do it, that doesn't happen, and then they think PR doesn't work, but they haven't done PR.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Um,

Smaller Newsrooms And Higher Standards

SPEAKER_01 9:10

I'm gonna move to a different, a different topic that was discussed in this report that I thought was interesting. And it was about how the media landscape is changing, how it's evolving, and newsrooms are getting smaller. And this is something I know from from my own experience. So when I started, I'm gonna make myself sound like I'm ancient old, but when I started around sort of the millennium, um, there were huge numbers of people working for newspapers, like huge numbers. We didn't think it was a huge number at the time, that was just the normal amount of people. We even had people like runners, like you would have on like a TV show. We had that in newspapers. We had basically people taking messages between people and like helping it run like that. You know, obviously the internet has changed so much for so many people. They're getting smaller. It's a real shift from there's less print titles, it's more online. Because it's smaller, journalists are receiving more press releases, more pictures individually. So you have to really make sure yours stands out because you haven't got the quantity of people that could be like, oh, well, I've got nothing really to do because there's so many of us, like, I'll I'll just take a look at kind of everything that comes in. People are having to be more selective. And we're seeing more of a shift in what we would call in the media like editorial priorities. So because it's gone more to a digital place for most outlets, it's about things that people are going to share online, that they're gonna click on, that they are gonna send to their friends, that kind of thing. Whereas, say, in the past, a magazine or a newspaper really only had to make sure they had a great selection of stuff on their front because their aim was to get somebody to pick it up in a shop. Clearly, these things still exist. So they didn't have to think about every single article selling it to the audience because no one's gonna go, well, I was gonna buy this magazine, but I'm not that keen on one of the pieces on page 56, so I'll leave it. You know, they might have a little flick through, but they would look at the front cover and they would see the different headlines, and that would be what made their decision. Now, pieces have to kind of compete individually in something. You have the home page is kind of like their front page, but people are choosing whether to click on individual pieces. So, in that sense, there's more of a drive of what do our audience really want? What are they really interested in? We can't just cover stuff anymore. And some people will say this is a terrible thing, like a lot of journalists will. We can't just cover things because they're important and they're worthy. We have to cover things that our audience also wants to hear that are appealing to them. So in the past, there might have been stuff. We definitely wrote stuff in some of the places I work where it would be like, this isn't really interesting, but it needs to be in there, we'll we'll put it in there. And we would be like, Oh, while they're reading the other stuff, they'll probably read this as well. It was that kind of element. Whereas now, pieces have to be much stand on their own. This does also mean though, that there is, as well as pictures needing to be really, really great to stand out, you know, there can be more of a chance that journalists might suddenly decide, oh actually, no, we're not, we we thought we were interested, this isn't really going to work out. And it's a sad reality. It's something I wouldn't say to worry about or think about too much, but do know that there is always a chance, and it's nothing to take personally if it happens, that things could seem all systems go, you've got a piece going out, and then something happens and it just doesn't go out. That's a normal thing, doesn't happen a lot, so I don't want people to be like, oh, what's the point? But it does happen sometimes, and it's not about the person, it's about the shifting priorities and the the need for every piece to hit the mark. So, really, it's even more important, I think, for you to make sure that what you're saying is relevant. I think that's the big takeaway. What you're saying is is relevant, it's interesting. Things like anything that's topical, it's got good timing, is gonna make it that bit more likely to stand out in a journalist's inbox because it's things that they really want people to be talking about right now. And you know, this is something that I'll try and really drill in with people anyway. That it doesn't mean every single thing you've got to say has to be topical, but try your best to think of those things that are super relevant for right now because they're going to be the things that journalists really want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Love that. And I find it so interesting to think about what the PR world was like before we all came online and everything changed, and social media and AI, like it's just since the noughties, it has just changed so much, hasn't it? Like it's just flipped, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Well, when I tell you that when I started, and for like, I'm not talking about all the first few weeks, but like for a while when I started in the industry, the best place in the office for the good stuff was the fax machine. That's how long I've been in the media that people fax their press releases and pictures. So you would stand by if you were a reporter trying to get a really good story, you didn't look, your email was there, sort of. You used it a little bit, but you would stand by the fax machine and you would grab the interesting-looking facts. That's, I mean, you know, most industries have probably got the same sort of thing where if you actually think back 25 years, the difference that the internet has made is just phenomenal. But the same principles do stand. There are some timeless things because it would still need to be an interesting fact, you know, it would still need to say something interesting. It's just that the methods, the methods have changed, and there isn't as much space for journalists to spend time digging for what you're trying to say. So you can't just send a stream of consciousness to them and expect them to work out what you're trying to say to them. They don't have time for that anymore. They probably never really wanted to do that, that you know, would never have been a great idea. But the days of, oh, let's spend the whole day working on this story and thinking like how it's gonna go, they're they're gone now because people have expected to produce, produce, produce, produce. So, really, it means you need to make journalists' life as easy as possible so that they're not having to worry about that.

LinkedIn As A PR Shortcut

SPEAKER_01 16:28

One thing that's kind of come out in in the research I was looking at is LinkedIn's like value. So, both for so a couple of times LinkedIn came up, and I thought it was interesting because I think people I've made no secret the fact that I'm not a massive fan of LinkedIn because I think it's a bit boring. But reading this, I'm like, it clearly has a huge value. So one of the things that people were saying is that so part and parcel of kind of the the newsroom shrinking was people being a bit more strategic in where they pitch. So not just going for these kind of legacy publications like the traditional newspapers and magazines, but like the online sites, which is obvious the podcasts, but also newsletters and blogs, blogs about things that might not be kind of formal. So that was one interesting thing, but then people saying actually, if you've got a really great article, like it can be really effective to use it on LinkedIn if you haven't got it. And I think a lot of people they they come up with something for the media, and if it doesn't get placed, they feel like it was a waste of time. But nothing's a waste of time, yeah. Everything should be repurposed. Yeah, not nothing's a waste of time, and it helps you get the clarity as well. I think coming up with a distinct appeal helps you with that clarity, but it was interesting to hear because I have said to people in the past, oh, why don't you put it on your LinkedIn? It was interesting to hear that that was actually a common strategy among PR agencies for the brands that they were working for, was using that on LinkedIn and making sure that these things aren't wasted. And finding that LinkedIn was a good first place that then sometimes would end up leading to something. So it had a bit of a boomerang effect. So maybe let's just have a hypothetical situation. Maybe they had tried pitching something, hadn't got a yes, used it on LinkedIn, and then somebody goes, Oh, I saw your piece on LinkedIn. Would you like to write a piece for us? So what they thought was a no, and they could have very easily gone into that situation and go, I've sent it around if no one's interested. I'm gonna take my bat and ball home and I'm gonna feel quite cross about that. But by using it, giving it sort of the air and the oxygen kind of to thrive that piece, then journalists were kind of going, oh, okay, yeah, actually, we would like something related to that. Which is a really good point about LinkedIn as kind of a networking thing, that it's a really good idea to connect with journalists who write about your topic on social media, particularly things like LinkedIn, where you're not, you know, you're not trying to become Facebook friends or you know, be, you know, add them on WhatsApp or anything that feels a bit a bit much. Something

Why You Should Not Pitch DMs

SPEAKER_01 19:23

like LinkedIn, where you've clearly set out who you are, what you do. But we often get asked, don't we, Lauren, about whether people should pitch on LinkedIn. This is kind of quite a common question.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

It is a is a big topic, and the the the simple answer is no, unless they are openly inviting it. So stick to email. And this is a funny thing as well, you know, about you you talking about how PPR has changed since the noughties. Even when I started in 2011, norm was still to do phone calls rather than emails. But anyway, these days, email. Unless, like every now and again, a journalist will put a call out on LinkedIn or whatever, and they'll say, you know, send me your pictures by DN, in which case do it. But otherwise, no, stick to email. But do engage with them publicly, like say post an article or something, just to engage with it, you know, something natural. Just so that they they get used to seeing your name pop up, you become a familiar name to them. And then when you're pitching, they're more likely to open that email if they recognize your name.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah. It's kind of the the connecting and the engaging is a little bit like old school networking where you have like a nice little bit of small talk and you exchange your business card. Yeah. Whereas pitching unsolicited straight into their DMs would be like cornering someone at this marketing event and being like, for the next 10 minutes, I'm going to tell you about my business. You know, so it's kind of getting that right tone. Obviously, again, there will be exceptions, like when they've they've asked for it, or if it's that you know, like someone that you've built a relationship, you've worked with them quite a bit, and then they might they might reach out to you and be like, Oh, have you got anything, you know, via that channel? Follow their lead. I think that's the thing. Follow their lead. But email is the standard and what is it expected unless they want otherwise. But what is interesting is, well, there was a couple of stats that I could bring into this. So among sort of PR professionals, 70% said that they do one-to-one emails. There's probably a lot more do emails, but I think the re the distinction would be emails where you're like blind copying a load of people in at once or you're emailing them one to one. So 70% of them are pitching directly, they are writing one email to one person, and that's how they're doing it. But also 56% of PR professionals said that of all the social media. Media platforms, LinkedIn was the most valuable one to them, which is interesting because I think it's kind of always been seen as kind of the uncool platform, you know, of all the ones, you know, because it's quite business focused, it's quite B2B, it's not, it's not got the pizzazz of TikTok or things like that. So when it comes to that kind of PR journalist relationship, LinkedIn is really valuable. And what is ironic is when I first started working with Dauntless, I was all about Twitter. And at the time, that was the right advice to be all about Twitter. So I used to say to people, if you do nothing else, get yourself on Twitter, get your Twitter buyer, follow a ton of journalists, and that was the strategy. That's not to say that you shouldn't do that now. Like if you're on X, I was like, oh, I can't even bring myself to say it. If you're on X, you're active on there and you see, like, absolutely follow some journalists, like, still do that. But when I came up with a stat that I'd I found on this research that said 56% said LinkedIn was the most valuable, only 11% said X. That would have been, I would love to compare. I think that would have been absolutely the other way around years ago. Definitely. And 39% of PR people said that they had stopped using X completely in a professional capacity. I mean, I know a lot of journalists, myself included, who pulled completely away once the name changed. And there was just a whole change in vibe. Um, I won't I won't get into ranting about the change of Twitter to X. But it just shows, and I think the takeaway is to be flexible in your approach. Just because something was the way that worked in the past doesn't mean that you have to stay with that even when it stops. So I could still be saying to people because that's what I used to say, oh, this is what we do, because this is what I've said and I've always said. But actually, no, you need to evolve your approach and say, that doesn't mean that that won't sometimes bring you results, but that isn't the way to connect now. That there are other platforms that are that are better and are more likely to get you noticed by the right people. There's a few other, I'm gonna chuck a load of of random stats because we don't normally do things like stats in this podcast, but I love them because they're so simple, but they also back up what I also say. And I'm not being selective, by the way. I haven't found a load that is prove everything, and I'm well, I won't say then, but I this is about pitching in general.

The Best Timing For Pitches

SPEAKER_01 24:51

51% of PR professionals, their favorite day for pitching is a Tuesday. Now, it's also my favorite, but I didn't necessarily realize that that was a thing that everybody had kind of caught on to. And you're probably thinking, well, that's random. Why have you just all picked a Tuesday? There is a reason makes sense. Yeah. So Monday is if you if we work on the assumption, most people are working a Monday to Friday. If you get in on a Monday, you've got a ton of stuff that came in over the weekend, you're feeling quite sluggish, you're probably a bit like, oh, I've got a whole week ahead of me. You are probably not going to greet everything waiting in your inbox with huge enthusiasm. You might do if you're like that kind of person, you've got a great mindset, but most journalists are going to be on a Monday, the heck am I going to be doing this week? They've got a very full inbox. By Tuesday, they've kind of gone through all that. So they've got that kind of real start of the week. So, like, I feel like, and again, I'm making huge generalizations, everyone's going to be different. But a lot of journalists, that Monday is kind of it's slogging through it, but by Tuesday, they're like, Yeah, come on, let's do this. So Tuesday pictures are great. But also Tuesday morning during office hours is ideal. So 80%, this start actually surprised me that it was so high. 80% of PR professionals pitch before noon. Now I was surprised by that, probably because I'm not a morning person. So I was like, oh, okay, you're all morning people here. But there is a bit of logic to it when I think about it, because it gives them time to respond within that working day. If you pitch five to five when they're out the door, are they gonna respond or are they gonna think, oh, maybe, but then by the next day they've forgotten all about it? So I talk a lot to people about the power of the ping effect. And what I mean by this is if you can email or schedule your email pitches to go to that outlet during their office hours. So if you're say in the UK and you're pitching a US outlet, you might pitch a time that's not when you would do it, but you're doing it so it arrives to them during their office hours, and vice versa. And the reason is because if you are working on your computer, most people have their email set up so that there's a little thing that'll appear, it'll pop up, and you know, it they see the email subjects. If they are on their computer anyway and they see an interesting email subject, they are much more likely to go, oh wow, I'm gonna look at that, I'm gonna open it. If you send it at like nine o'clock at night, it's gonna just be sitting there with a load of other emails. So it's not gonna have that, oh, it's just come in. What's this all about? They're gonna have to actively pick it out of a huge crowd of emails. So a lot of people will be like, oh, but I do my work in the evening. Schedule, schedule them, like set, use, use the tools available to you. You don't have to be physically sat there sending it, but schedule it so it comes up at the right time. Unless it's so time sensitive that it's just a whenever you think of it, you need to send it, in which case all bets are off. But if it's something that you can plan, send it during the office hours, and apparently send it before noon's even better, according to 80% of people. And another one, I always say to people, keep your pictures around 250 words, but and 87% keep pictures to less than 300 words. So I was like, good, we're all on the same page there. You might have a different like benchmark, because I say 250, but under 300 words is you know, very similar thing. And again, it's about newsrooms being smaller, people having less time. If your pitch is an essay, are they gonna have time to really go through it? And the I'll promise I won't have any many more stats here, but what about follow-ups? So

Follow-Ups That Actually Get Replies

SPEAKER_01 29:17

we always talk about how valuable follow-ups are 40. So this is where the PR world is divided. This is a bit of a split thing. 41% of PR professionals follow up once, 40% follow up twice. But if you actually add them together, that means that 81% are following up at least once or twice. Probably essential. That there are, and I what I would say is that doesn't mean 19% aren't following up. That probably means most of those 19% are following up too many times. Like following up three, four, five, six, because the people in my inbox, my god, some of them will follow up. I feel like they follow up until they'll be following me until I'm like 80, asking about this same bitch. I'm like, for goodness sake, I've not replied. It's a no. But the follow-up is so important, and it's something that people just don't think about until they're told by someone that knows what they're doing. They'll just be like, oh, I sent it. They didn't reply, and they they automatically decide that that means it wasn't interesting. Whereas actually following up so important.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

From our figures, it was something like it was eight, I can't remember the exact figure, but it was 80 something percent of all our bookings came from the follow-up, not from the original page. That's huge, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, it's definitely the most likely time you will get a yes or a no. And you might kind of go, well, I want a no, but actually, it's it's often better to get a clear answer either way. Oh, totally. So I have a bit of a philosophy in PR that would chase the nose, don't be frightened of the nose. Like if you think to yourself, this outlet is never in a million years gonna say yes to me, well, who cares? Pitch them anyway, chase that no, like, because actually, what if they do say yes, but you've automatically just decided, or they're gonna say no, so I won't bother. So I'm unless it's so ridiculous, like for example, if I was selling a skincare product and I decided to pitch something that was, you know, about something completely unrelated, then yeah, that's not gonna be sensible. But if it's a dream outlet, if you're the reason that you're not doing it is because you're intimidated by it, because you think, wow, that would be my absolute dream. And I'm scared for them to reject me because it matters so much to me. Don't be because it's never a personal thing, it's just that that's not the right thing for us right now. But pitching means they know who you are, they know you exist. It increases your chance of a yes later on, and I think that's what people don't realize.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

I always try and get across to people that the pitching isn't about just getting that booking there and then, it's about establishing who you are, establishing your authority on your topic and getting your name familiar. And yeah, and also pitching isn't a one and done thing. Like people think, God, I'm gonna pitch this place, but what if they say no, or what if they ignore my email? Well, then you try another angle later on. Like it's not a one and done thing. You keep pitching, you keep trying. And I think people underestimate how much it takes, how much commitment and dedication it actually takes.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah. And that a few, I think when people sort of have a try themselves and then they go, it's not really working, they give up way too soon because they'll send maybe like they might kind of go, they'll send like a half-hearted, quite lengthy email telling people everything that they could tell them. So it's not focused, it's not to the point, it's not relevant. They'll send it to a couple of outlets that they really, really want to be in, and they'll kind of be pitching themselves as a potential advert, like you should feature me because I'm amazing and this is my business. And they won't kind of hone in on those things we talked about before, like, what do the audience want to hear? And they'll send this really long thing, they'll probably send it on like a Saturday or something, so they'll make all the kind of mistakes, but then they'll do that, they won't hear, and then they'll instantly be like, Oh, PR's not for me. And I'm like, So you haven't given yourself the chance of success, because that would be like in anything else, you know, be like, I'm gonna try and get fit, but I'll go to the gym, I won't use any of the equipment, I'll just sort of wander around the edge, and then I'll sort of say, Well, I'm not, I'm not really fit yet. So it's like you've got to give yourself a chance of success by being persistent and consistent and keeping going. And whenever people say they've pitched everyone, and I actually ask, it's never, ever, ever been more than five. Never it's always under five. Yeah. And I'll be like, okay, tell me who you pitched, and then they will list people. I mean, I never get off this hand, I'll put my fingers up counting, never get off that first hand. And their definition of everyone will be three or four outlets. And I'm like, yeah, that is not everybody. With things.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Imagine if people gave up that quickly on their businesses. Like, imagine if they offered their program five times and got five no's or didn't get a reply, and then they just thought, oh, nobody wants my offer, they wouldn't be where they are today, would they?

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Yeah, absolutely. There is one more thing that I think is a really good thing that I saw, and this was a slightly different. So there was a report that was all about what PR professionals were saying, that that's where what I was mainly delving into. But Mukwack

AI Rewards Earned Media Credibility

SPEAKER_01 35:22

had also done another piece of research looking at where AI gets its information. And I've got to share this with you because we've taught lots about AI. And when I saw this, I was like, I really need to let people know about this start on the podcast. So they looked at and they they looked at, I think it was like more than a million like AI, like things to see where the citations were. So it was a big sample size, and they looked at what has where's AI got the information that it's giving to people. So they were looking at not just Chat GPT, but all the different kind of types, and they found that non-paid media, so that means not adverts, not pay-to-play, not and not social media either. So like an earned media drove 95% of citations from AI, which is much more than I would have guessed if you'd have said to me, Catherine, I've got this stat, what do you think? I'd have probably gone for about 65, 70. I would have thought most, but I wouldn't have thought as high as 95. So that made me really go, oh wow. So actually, if you want ChatGPT to be including you and citing you and saying, like, this is what this person has said, this is the wisdom from this person, really, the only option is to make sure that you have some earned media. So just to put clarify, obviously, it does also look at things like your website and stuff like that. But the value AI was placing, say, if you had a piece in Forbes or the New York Times, you would be used so much more, and the information from that would be given so much more value and weight than something you would put on your social media, something you'd put on your website. But the earned media was outperforming the paid placement significantly. So again, we even earlier in the episode, Loana was saying that the way that a lot of pay-to-play is marketed is as if it's the solution to everything. But actually, AI makes the distinction. So you might think that your audience won't know the difference, but AI knows the difference. So its own kind of ranking, and each one will be slightly different depending on what the AI is. So it will favor the very well-known household name media pieces. But then also just the things that the big thing seemed to be whether it was written by a journalist or whether it was kind of written by the person and it was a sponsored feature or something where it was clearly money had changed hands. And sometimes people can be really wary about being in pieces written by journalists. They'll be like, oh no, I want to write this piece myself. And there is absolutely huge value in writing a piece yourself. But actually, it said when journalists were writing about somebody, AI took that far more seriously than when somebody was writing about themselves. So that third-party verification, I guess, of somebody else talking about you. So really that nervousness that you might have, it's really worth pushing through that because if you're wanting to, and that's where we're moving now. I've talked about fax machines earlier. Now we're getting to, you know, it really matters what AI thinks of you. That's not something that we talked about, probably even two or three years ago. It wasn't like a huge thing. But also another thing that it talked about with AI is AI does value trade media. So a lot of people will they'll really focus on the big names, the things that like sound really exciting to them. And they might forget about the actual sort of trade or professional publications within their industry. But AI sees that as a very trustworthy source of information because it's a specialist publication that covers that area of expertise. So while it might not seem as sexy as being in some really exciting thing, from that point of view, really, really valuable because it's seen as a very trustworthy, verifiable source that is writing about you. So it with AI, it's not necessarily all about the audience size, it's about kind of how much it trusts the facts that are in there. Um I thought that was really interesting because I was like, I bet there's loads of people who could be pitching their trade media. And obviously, it will what that is will vary depending on what it is you do, but they don't because they think it's a bit boring.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

But actually, no, that is a really people focus way too much on what the audience size is. Like a lot of people think that's the be all and end all being in the press regularly, over and over and over and over again, as well as having the big hits, the you know, the top tiers, the forbes and business insider and all of that. But being in the press regularly, even in publications with the smaller audiences, then it's gonna have a much higher chance of picking them up than if they did by one article four years ago. Like it needs to be regular as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Yeah. And there's one last thing that was really again, it it backed up what I already thought I knew, but I was glad to see that it was actually there was data to back it up, which is that the most citations from AI are from content published yesterday. So that doesn't mean, oh my goodness, I didn't have something published yesterday, I'm sunk. But like it places the most value on very, very recent information. And that can complete, and that is when you actually logically think about it, you go, well, yeah, that makes sense because it could be out of date if it's from a long time ago. So if it's telling you something, of course it's gonna look for what is the most current thing.

Consistency Beats One Big Feature

SPEAKER_01 41:59

But this does mean that it's really important to be consistent and see your PR as a long-term strategy. Because if you just do a little burst of stuff, or you get loads, it's brilliant, you get loads of stuff there. You've got fantastic things for your website's media page, and you can put loads of amazing logos on your website, and you're like, oh, I've been in like the big five publications I always dreamed of. I can stop now. I can forget PR. I don't need to do it anymore. I've done it, been there, got the t-shirt, finished. That isn't how it works anyway, because I would say that you need to keep being in the public's mind. You can't rely on them searching a piece from five years ago to find out about you. But even in the robot's mind, that matters because AI is looking. So it doesn't mean it ignores the older stuff, it will still look at it. But if there's something more recent, and it particularly if you are potentially in competition with other experts that might also be being used by AI if people are asking general questions about what it is that you do, and you want to be the person that they say, oh, well, this person says this, you know, and they're an expert in the field. Well, if you are competing against somebody that is consistently in the media all the time and has fresh content for AI to mine and look at, then that person is gonna sort of win that battle because they've got the newest stuff. And this is something that I think people probably don't put appropriate value on is that consistency and that reasonness. So what they will do is they will think about the best piece that they've got. And sometimes people will say to me, I've had an absolute load of media. I don't really need PR, I don't need this, that, and the other. I've had a piece, and they will usually quote, very important. Impressive titles. But when I actually Google that piece might be from five years ago, might be from longer ago. Somebody who said that to me, and I'm not going to name any names, obviously. It was from 2018, it was from 2018. You know, I was like, that's eight years ago. So amazing that you got that. And that doesn't take anything away from it. But you can't expect people to still be coming to you from something from seven years ago. You wouldn't put a piece on social media and then go, well, this piece should set me for the next 15 years. You know, that's that's me done.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

This is what gets me, right? Because people really get the value of needing to be consistent with social media, but so many don't have the same mindset towards PR.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Well, if you went on somebody's Instagram or well, any of them, but like something like that, where you it's kind of like you've got the Instagram grid and they hadn't posted anything on their Instagram for five years. Would you assume that that person was still in business? No, you wouldn't at all. I would just think they're not relevant anymore. Move on to somebody else, yeah. I would just be like, oh, okay, then no, they've decided to do something else, they're no longer in business. I wouldn't delve deeper and go, well, I'll go on their website, see if they've got any current offers, that kind of thing. Exactly. I would just be like, oh, okay. The same is is true, really, with media, that it's brilliant to have those pieces that they will still continue to work for you for a long time as like background. You've got this information about this is a bit about my backstory, this is my values, this is my stuff. So people will often read old articles if they're interesting to them and go, Oh, what did they have to say about that? But if the only stuff is from a very long time ago, they're not going to assume that you're still there, relevant, doing that thing. They're going to be like, oh, okay, that was really interesting. But a lot of outlets as well, The Guardian is a big one for this. It actually tells you how old the article is at the top. So if you click on a piece on The Guardian, as well as saying all that, you have read however many pieces in the last 12 months, please give us money. You know, it's got that whole thing going on. It also says things like, This article is eight years old, and it really like throws it in your face. And again, completely understand why they do that because what they don't want is somebody to come to them and complain and go, You've given us some information and it's not right anymore. So by saying this is however many years old, it will have been right at the time. But you know, if someone goes, You told me I could buy this for this amount of money from here, and it's no longer on sale. Well, yeah, we told you eight years ago, like it was relevant then. So they have to like protect themselves. But if you know the outlets are warning people of old content, then that again makes it that bit more relevant to make sure that you are just having it as a consistent approach in the same way as you would your social media, in the same way as you would your accounting. You wouldn't do your books for your business once and then never do them again. Oh, well, you know, that tax yeah, that's me done. I don't need to check. Oh, yeah, if that was an option, I would have absolutely gone down that. But you know, in anything else in business, we understand that need to keep doing it and doing it and keep fresh and relevant. And PR is no different.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Yeah, totally. And you know, yeah, it's like marketing as well, isn't it? You wouldn't just say, okay, done my marketing, that's it. I'm okay now. All done. Okay.

Key Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Well, that was very interesting today to hear all about those stats. And you know, these are all things that we've been saying for absolutely years, isn't it, Catherine? But it's nice to see the stats to actually back that up from the industry as a whole. So we will finish it there for today, and we will see you back again next week.