The Future of PR

On this episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business, Samantha Scott, APR, is joined by Mark Gordon, Managing Editor of Business Observer and journalist for nearly 30 years.

The episode explores the evolution and future of public relations (PR) and media relations, offers practical tips for working with media, and shares insights into future trends in the PR industry.

Have a question or feedback to share? Visit www.getpushing.com or one of our many social media channels. We look forward to hearing from you.

#marketing #business #communication #strategy

Transcript

Samantha: 0:05

Hello, everybody. Welcome to 1000 Ways to Market Your Business. I am Samantha Scott, APR, President of Pushing the Envelope. And today I am joined by Mark Gordon, Managing Editor of Business Observer and journalist for nearly 30 years. Mark, welcome.

Mark: 0:18

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here and excited to chat with you.

Samantha: 0:22

Yeah, I'm so excited. We've had the pleasure of working together for some time and I'm really, really excited to pick your brain because today I want to talk about the topic of public relations, media relations, where that's going. You are a perfect person to talk about this with your experience, nearly 30 years in journalism. You know, I've been in business for a little over 20 years, but different sides of the house.

Mark: 0:42

Yeah, certainly like a lot of industries, there's a lot of those flashpoints of change, right? And then you look at it and you're like, okay, this is how we do PR today. Right? Different than 10 years ago.

Samantha: 0:52

Oh my gosh, absolutely different than 10 years ago. I do public speaking and speak at colleges and things from time to time. And I joke that we were around before social media and we had to do PR before that. And when they were still faxing and things like that, like, what is a fax machine?

Mark: 1:05

Hard to believe I was with somebody the other day and we were talking about, something came up with his daughter trying to get into college. And he mentioned this person has a great Rolodex. And I looked at my 16 year old son and I said, do you know what a Rolodex is? He said, yes, I don't think he did. And then he sort of fumbled around. He kind of did actually, he just didn't really say, but yes, fax machines, Rolodex, all that.

Samantha: 1:26

Yeah, yeah, it's a whole different world now. It's really, really interesting and, you know, some good, some bad, and I'm looking forward to digging into that. So, let's start by how would you define public relations and as a subset of that media relations?

Mark: 1:40

Yeah, it's a great way to start. I define public relations, media relations as somebody who's representing their client or internally their company. Right? So it could be, you know, they're in a big corporation. It doesn't have to be big in terms of people, but just they're inside the company or they're outside the company, like at your agency, representing the builder or representing the developer or the hospital or whatever. Their job is to put forward information in a most timely, transparent way possible. I think that's how I would look at what PR and media relations do.

Samantha: 2:12

Yeah I agree, and I think part of that too is just representing the brand, the essence, and making sure that you're forthright. I love the transparency part that you mentioned. And I think also being forthright, and communicating clearly. And public relations goes so broad. I mean, media relations, I think is what most people think of, like, you know, publicity, things like that. That's a key component because we're kind of working as partners here on behalf of both the public who need this information as well as the organizations that we're communicating about. But community relations falls into, that crisis communications falls into that. I mean, there's just so many facets and they all kind of end up in some point intersecting with media relations as well.

Mark: 2:52

They do. You need somebody to tell your story. And I've known a lot of people in your line of work over the years, got to know you very well, and I think it's sort of that misunderstood thing in a company where they think,"Oh, I could just write the press release myself." And there's certainly tons of tools available today, where if you're just writing one press release, we just introduced a new product, you can make an argument that you could do that yourself. I'm sure there's plenty of good tools to do that, but a good PR person, right, should be the storyteller of that company. I say all the time, like I love the window into somebody else's life that I get as a reporter, I get to meet these interesting business owners. And oftentimes I'll leave the interview thinking,"man, if they had a PR person, the story would have been different." That doesn't necessarily mean bad, but you know, they could have used you to help them coach them through some things. It's a lot more things than just writing the

Samantha: 3:41

press release. Absolutely. People think that,"Oh, if I build it, they will come," and"well, if I put out the news release, I'm going to get coverage." We hear that so often from folks, and they've got a great story to tell. But either the release wasn't well written or they didn't have the media list. You know, this is where the relationships come in. And to your point, there's tons of technology and systems now that you can pay to have a release distributed, and it'll probably go to mostly the right people. But there's a difference between just kind of putting it out there and hoping somebody picks it up versus having that relationship, being able to call and say,"Hey Mark, I've got this client. This is their story." And you and I often have done that where it's like,"Okay, well this might be the angle I'm thinking," but you might come at it from a different side, where like,"Oh, I hadn't thought about it that way." And framing it is just so important, and, being on brand, and storytelling, like you've said, and doing it in a number of ways. So, I have another question. I've got lots of questions today. So what do you think has been the most substantial change in the last few years of PR? And if you want to go back, maybe start at the beginning or go in the middle or however you want to do it.

Mark: 4:38

We're top of mind people, right? And so AI and chatbots and all that would certainly be on there. But I think the most substantial change is, we just touched on a little bit. To me, it's like staffing levels, and PR people doing more more more and not doing some of the things that maybe they were doing 10 or 15 years ago. That's what I've noticed at least from the reporter side. Sometimes organizations that you think they're definitely gonna have a PR person for this, they don't, or at least it's not readily available. And then when you get a hold of them, there's a disconnect, and as a reporter, it's challenging to figure out who's the right person to talk to. That wasn't the case like 10 years ago. I feel like that's a pretty significant change where you don't have that access to people as much as you used to. I think that would be one change. And then as we mentioned the digitalization, I guess, of the industry. There's so many things you could do on artificial intelligence programs. That's really impacted it as well.

Samantha: 5:36

Yeah. So the first part, I think you bring up a really interesting point, change in staffing and roles and responsibilities. I could even reflect on that from dealing with media, right? Especially with TV journalists, right? You'd have the reporter come out, a camera person come out, you work with a producer. Now you're working with one person who has to do all of that, and they've got to get stuff on the internet. They've got to do social media. They're doing everything. And PR is definitely feeling the pinch that way too, because now, depending on the setup, you've got a PR person who has to be able to effectively manage the media, be a really exceptional writer, they have to be able to do social media posts, do community relations, know everyone, be everywhere all the time, and respond like this.

Mark: 6:17

Yeah. No, 100%. You're right. That certainly impacts it. And it's funny, those things, right? Each of those things are like specialist

Samantha: 6:23

Yes

Mark: 6:23

things that used to be done, right? There used to be the social media person. Now you're the social media person. And as these algorithms change, I mean, it's challenging and difficult to keep up with. It's hard to stay on top of all these different trends and things going on to be in front of people.

Samantha: 6:41

It really is. And, you know, to your point of having to do all of those things and I'll just explain, I like to share knowledge, but also our particular position and expertise on our podcast. I always say with a grain of salt, you can do it any which way, but this is how we've been doing it in our business for some time is we really try to be very specific, narrow and deep in terms of who does what. We work as a team. So collectively, we're kind of having to address this beast that is this change in the way that we work. But we have team members who are dedicated to just digital. And we have team members that are just PR. And then we've got somebody that's kind of looking at it from a brand perspective overall. But we work together because there's no way for one person to do all of those things exceptionally well. And that's what we strive to do. But I want to go to your point about AI and changes in technology. And I'm curious from your perspective, Mark. You know, AI, there's this huge discussion around how do you know what's genuine? How do you fact check? Are you using AI? I'm just curious. Let's talk about how you're seeing that work.

Mark: 7:40

So we are not really at the Business Observer using AI too much in terms of the final product content. We're using a little bit, I think, in our research. Like everybody, we're cautious. I say like everybody, like most people, I think we're cautious, especially in journalism, right? You have this like, you know, personal touch thing. I wrote a column, a leadership column a few weeks ago about a guy who's started a nonprofit in Tampa to help rescue American citizens like caught in like dangerous world hotspots. I interviewed him on Zoom and he was in Lebanon actually I thought it was really cool. You could do an AI reporter, but you wouldn't get the touch, the feel that we had. The other thing worth answering is we had a company wide meeting about AI. And it was surprising, my editor told me all the young people in the room that you think would have totally embraced it, they're like"no, we don't want this, we don't want to do it."

Samantha: 8:31

You know, it is interesting to see generationally how this is going to play out. I mean, in anything there's always early adopters, the laggards, you know, the bell curve kind of for adoption. What you just said really touched on something for me. You know, I'm accredited in PR, so I adhere to a code of ethics. Just like in journalism, you adhere to a code of ethics. And I think that is one really crucial thing that I think if we aren't careful on both sides can get out of hand with the changes in PR and it's just so critically important. So, how do you see on this kind of tech side, social media and online elements factoring into PR, specifically media relations in the future. And I'll kind of start with a little volley there, for example, we follow journalists on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, et cetera, and have found sometimes that it's easier to connect with them. You talked about trying to connect with the right points of contact with businesses, but sometimes we've found that that's easier to connect with journalists because they are overwhelmed with email or they're not answering the phone.

Mark: 9:30

Yeah. Yeah. I think that could be an age thing too. LinkedIn is a good place for me. I do connect with plenty of people there, and that's been good for me personally. The newspaper itself, Facebook has been relatively good for us. A way that I've seen PR people use it is to put stuff out there that maybe media isn't picking up, right? So, they'll put the press release out there, like, in a story form, and that's unusual. I think that's maybe the past few years. I've seen more and more of that, and I kind of understand that from their perspective. Like, hey, we had this thing, we tried to pitch it, nobody bit, nobody took it, so we're going to put it on social media ourselves, and then kind of see where it goes. I think that's been something I've seen different.

Samantha: 10:08

Yeah. That is an interesting way, and I think that's a great kind of tip for listeners who are curious about how they can leverage PR. Not everybody is interested or can afford working with a firm, and I love to give tips that people can apply. That's a great one is build your media list. There's tons of organizations, FPRA, which is the Florida Public Relations Association, but there's also the PR Society of America, PRSA. Often if you're a member, you can get a media list from them, that's an inexpensive way, plus you can network with others and learn. Plug, I'm a past president for FPRA, so love that organization. But, yeah, I think that's one way that you can build that. But the other is, if you're not getting the play, because you're not getting media to take a bite, well, you have earned media, or owned rather, excuse me, that you can use. So, put it out on your social media channels, put it out on your website, a blog, email newsletter, et cetera. That's a great tip that people can do on their own.

Mark: 10:56

And I guess I would add too we talked about in the beginning about, you know, the value of PR. And I feel like I'm not a PR person, but that's also something where you can access somebody like yourself to get a strategy, right? Is it just just putting it up on social media? Or what is your strategy? I've seen that a lot in PR where, what's your goal here? Right. We often say to Business Observer, think like a business owner. You're a business owner, right? What do you expect from this story? What are you going to learn? What are you going to be inspired by? What are you going to be informed by? So that's why I'm thinking, what's your strategy? Is it just to throw it up on Facebook and get 82 likes and 15 shares, or is it market penetration. You could go deeper with that I guess is what I'm saying.

Samantha: 11:37

You are singing my song, Mark. If you've ever listened to any of our podcasts, read a blog, ebook, anything strategy is everything. I always say that you got to start with a plan because to your point, is this a popularity contest? Am I just trying to get some eyeballs on this content? That means nothing for your bottom line. Are you trying to get people to take action? Do you want them to go to your website, reserve, call you? What are you trying to accomplish with this? Absolutely. Thank you. Love that point. And you know, I love Business Observer, I've been reading it for quite some time. I think you do a great job of that is looking at it from your readers' perspective. And I think that's a really important point for business owners, PR professionals to think about as well is it's not about what, and I say this a lot, it's not about what you're trying to sell or what you're trying to say. It's about what your target audience needs or wants to hear. So how can you position it in a way that they're going to be most receptive to that? And that starts with strategy and knowing your audience. So how would you being on the media side of the house recommend a PR professional or a business owner leverage PR for their business? And do you have any tips for working with journalists, reporters, editors like you?

Mark: 12:44

I think that the main tip I would say that we just touched on, that it's more challenging, but it's relationship driven, right? That's the first step I would say is build that relationship, find that reporter. You just said, know your audience, know that this publication caters to the thing that you're doing. Go find the publication that specializes in that, find the reporter, get to know that reporter. I can't say the number of times that it's helped me as a reporter understand the clients better. Your firm and I worked on this. You guys had a client, a nonprofit that we talked about and I didn't fully really understand what the organization did. I felt comfortable calling you saying,"Hey, I saw this press release. I don't really understand what you're doing. Can you, you know, help me with this like mission statement." But that relationship I think is, is the first thing. You have to be able to do that. And the second thing is be persistent. There's that fine line, I'm on these panels sometimes and people ask like, how often? I said, you know, you're selling your press release, so be persistent. You know, it doesn't mean.

Samantha: 13:39

Stalk you in a coffee shop and text you and email you.

Mark: 13:43

And look, that's a key part of this job, right? You know, trying to interview somebody that maybe doesn't want to be interviewed. I balance that line. How many times am I going to email this person to say,"Hey, is Mr. So and so going to do the interview?" The third tip I always have is accessibility. That doesn't mean 24/7. Everybody has a life outside of work. But I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten press releases, and in the upper right hand corner, for more information, contact Jill. And there's a number and an email, and they don't email back and they don't pick up the phone. I'm talking over a period of day and a half, two days, not, not 10 minutes.

Samantha: 14:17

Okay, so for any of our new college grads or people entering the PR world, that is like lesson one: when media calls, you answer. That is always mission critical. I even have that on my away message if I'm out of town that's like, if you are media or this is an emergency, here's what to do, because look, we get it. Well, I shouldn't say we generally, I think in the PR world, we should get this is that you're on a deadline. And we have to work together. So if you need something, I have to be able to get that to you. Absolutely.

Mark: 14:46

And yeah, you said need something, you know, I should say there's a fourth thing. I tell our reporters this all the time, and it's important, I think, lesson from the media side. Don't just treat PR people as, like, a phone call because you need something. You're allowed to call them and say,"Hey, what's going on, tell me about this, what's new? I'm not writing a story, but like what's happening?" It's just like anything else, relationship building. We all make choices about who we're going to spend more time with. And some people you become friends with some more working. That's okay. But I think the relationship has to be two sided. It can't always be I need, need, need.

Samantha: 15:21

Yes, I agree, and I have counseled many people on our team the same, right? It's like, don't just look at journalists as someone that's a means to an end, right? They're not a tool in the toolbox for lack of a better word. Let's help them, right? How can we help each other? Often we'll send notes like,"Oh, I really liked this article," or,"Hey, I've got somebody on this topic if you ever need it." Not because I need something right now, but again, to your point is like, let's just, let's work together. It's such a better relationship.

Mark: 15:47

Yes.

Samantha: 15:48

Love it. Okay. So look in your crystal ball. What does PR look like in the next 30 years? And how might that differ?

Mark: 15:57

30 years.

Samantha: 15:58

I thought, you know, you've been there for 30, what's coming up in the next 30.

Mark: 16:01

I like it. I like it. I think the big difference is going to be all the technology that we talked about. What shape it's gonna take, I'm not sure, but there's definitely gonna be a lot more digitalization of getting that message across, getting PR across, I think, less and less people. I mean, we touched on it a little bit. I think the devaluing of that side of it. Right. I mean, again, I've talked to people in your position where they go to companies and companies are like, well, why do I need you, I can just do this myself. But you wouldn't do that with a CPA firm, right? If you're not an accountant.

Samantha: 16:28

Can I, okay. I recorded this, so I'm just going to play that on loop.

Mark: 16:31

Play it on loop.

Samantha: 16:32

Go ahead. Sorry to interrupt.

Mark: 16:34

No, I'm pitching PR today and I a hundred percent mean it, but I think that's going to be part of the challenges for the industry. I think that's going to be a big change is that you could do it digitally and it's going to be less and less people doing it and seeing that value of having that person to be in charge of telling your story.

Samantha: 16:52

Yeah, I think that's definitely a consideration. The other thing I think about is genuineness, right? We had a client who we've been working with this client for quite a long time, I mean, close to 10 years, know them exceptionally well, and we've done PR and digital, and we've been pretty heavy on the digital side. And recently they've come to us and said, look, we really want more PR. We want to be on, like, the best list. We want to be, you know, in these kind of rankings. They're in the restaurant industry and it was kind of an interesting shift because they're like, you know, we want to kind of move away a little bit from digital. We're seeing a balance of this, of like, the rise of using technology, things to improve and enhance things or expedite things, but at the same time, finding a way to genuinely communicate and find folks where they are and when they're going to be most interested and really connect with them. PR is going to be a balance with all things marketing, like it's been, it's just a different balance. This has been awesome, Mark. I am so grateful for your time. Thank you so much. We've touched on AI and journalism, the PR side of the house, the media side of the house. Really helpful, I really appreciate it. And for anyone listening, do check out Mark's podcast. It's amazing. From the Corner Office. And we'll be on with 1000 Ways to Market Your Business again in the near future.