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by
Marsha Friedman
EMSI Public Relations
 It
used to be that people went to a neighborhood
coffee shop in the morning, with their morning paper under their
arm, ordered a large coffee and sat down to read the news of the
day. Nowadays, the paradigm has shifted just a bit.
Today, they go to a Starbucks with an
IPad or smartphone in their pocket, order a large coffee (just
to have the barista tell them it’s not called large anymore –
it’s called Vente) and sit down to check the headlines on their
phone.
Years ago, if PR firms got a news placement for their client
online, it was like a little bonus – a cherry to put on top of
the sundae. Today, it is the very life-blood of PR, with online
news coverage making up the majority of how people get informed
today.
According to a study by the independent Pew Research Center
for People and the Press, the Internet is a regular news source
for a majority of Americans – 57 percent regularly get news from
at least one Internet or digital source. Search engines,
Facebook apps, iPhone and iPad apps, and other feeds that fuel
the online and smartphone hunger for news.
The report also stated that the use of search engines to find
news has also increased substantially. A third of the public
employs search engines, such as Google, Yahoo or Bing, three or
more days a week to search for news on a particular subject of
interest.
What’s more is the way news is covered on the Internet. News
aggregators like Yahoo, AOL and MSN always ensure that readers
can identify resources, to find out more about any given topic
covered in the news. They provide links to related stories,
other news sites and to the Web sites of the sources they use in
their stories. That means if you or your company’s spokesperson
is quoted in a story, your Web site will likely be displayed as
an additional resource.
I’ll say it plainly – you can’t buy that. There is no
advertising solution that equates to the third-party
verification of a legitimate media outlet quoting you and then
providing a link to your Web site as an added resource. The
story engages the readers with your message or your words and
then places them one click away from your virtual storefront.
Even in the cases where your Web site
may not be displayed, your audience is a Google search away from
finding you, after reading about you. And, you don’t have to
worry about them misspelling your name, because they can copy
and paste it right from the story.
Further, that story will stay available and searchable on the
Internet for months, if not years. In the old days of the print
newspaper story, readers would have to clip the article from the
newspaper, in order for it to have any staying power. Today,
it’s point and click, and if they want to find you again, they
can.
But, that’s not to say that regular newspapers are worthless
anymore either. According to Pew, most traditional newspaper and
magazine hard clips are repurposed on the Internet 8 to 10 times
on different news sites, after they appear in print. Traditional
print media, in fact, still makes up a large percentage of news
coverage today. The only difference is that most of their
audience reads that coverage online.
If you’re not entrenched in the media the same way a Public
Relations company might be, it can be difficult to recognize the
changes that have taken place, thanks to the internet. It’s not
a fad. It’s not a trend. The Internet is a fact of life and it
has truly become the way most people get their news today, and
readers could be clicking on your coverage for months and years
to come.
Marsha Friedman is a 21-year veteran of the
public relations industry. She is the CEO of
EMSI
Public Relations, a national firm that provides PR strategy
and publicity services to corporations, entertainers, authors
and professional firms.
marsha@marshafriedman.com
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