As I read the article, I found that, although I agree with what he wrote, Jason didn’t go in the direction I thought he would. So this post will explain what I thought after reading Jason’s headline.

First, Jason’s concept:

By understanding that every media member is different, we can segment them into categories of preference, we can better organize our outreach, customize our pitches and serve both the media outlet and our client or organization. We don’t need the perfect pitch. We need the perfect pitches. [emphasis mine]

And he’s right. But in addition to being a PR guy, I also play a little baseball (so what if we’re only 4 and 8 right now — I’m batting .381!), so I had a different take on the idea of “perfect pitches.” When I read Jason’s headline and saw his post’s photo of a pitcher on the mound, here’s what I immediately thought with regard to PR.

Jason’s right that the perfect pitch is something that’s unique to each situation. In baseball, if I have a runner on first with one out, I’m going to try to throw a low pitch or a tight breaking ball, hoping to get the batter to hit a ground ball for a double play. In media relations, I’m might tie my client’s story to a big news item in hopes of riding that news wave to the land of PR glory.

But when I think of “perfect pitches” being the key, rather than a single “perfect pitch,” I think about the setup.

When I’m on the mound, I might try to catch a batter off-guard by throwing two smoking fastballs and then a slow, floating change-up (if, of course, I could throw a decent change-up!). If I’m good, he’ll swing for the fences but miss by a mile. The slow-flying change-up might be a sitting duck if the batter has a clear head and is looking for a meatball to swing at, but in the context of having seen two well-placed fastballs, this guy might be thinking he’s going to jump all over my next pitch because he’s seen that fastball and knows exactly what to do with it.

That context — the two previous pitches — makes my change-up the perfect pitch. Maybe next time he’s up, I’m going to have to unleash my curveball on this poor strikeout victim, if the context is right.

When I’m on media hunt, I’m not going to be trying to catch anyone off guard, but I am going to apply the same basic principle. I’m going to work to build a relationship with a reporter or a blogger — establish that all-important context. Perhaps I’ll first introduce myself and my client and share a link to the client’s podcast, so the reporter can learn a little about the client and relevant industry issues without having to hear it all from some lowly PR guy. Then I’d share some news items with the reporter that are relevant to his or her beat; they might include my client, they might not. Point is, I’m demonstrating that I’m in touch with what’s going on and am interested in the reporter’s success as well as my client’s.

Then, when the time is right and my client has a relevant angle, I can truly make my pitch. And keeping in mind the lesson Jason’s reminded me of, I’ll know that there’s no one perfect pitch — just a pitch that’s perfect for this reporter at this time in this context.

Thanks, Jason, for getting me thinking.

Photo courtesy of aturkus on Flickr

When I started reading this story in the New York Times, I thought I was going to read an analysis of how the hell so many prominent new outlets — “including U.S. News & World Report, The Daily News in New York, MSNBC.com and The Los Angeles Times” — ended up running a bogus story about “toxic” shower curtains that have invaded our homes.

Instead, I was presented with a general-interest newspaper’s take on how crafty PR pros can trick journalists into caring about “news” — quotes certainly intended, as we all know that anyone who has to resort to this kind of trickery doesn’t have much real news going on.

Here’s the transition from the “how could they run this story?” lead to the “here’s how PR people are sneaky” bulk of the article:

How do stories of this ilk get such bounce from major news organizations?

Those who make their living composing news releases say there is an art to this easily dismissed craft. Strategic word selection can catapult an announcement about a study, a product or a “breakthrough” onto the evening news instead of to its usual destination — the spam folder or circular file.

“P.R. people want to invest time in things that are going to get picked up, so they try to put something to the ‘who cares?’ and ’so what?’ test,” said Kate Robins, a longtime public relations consultant. “If you say something is first, most, fastest, tallest — that’s likely to get attention. If you can use the words like ‘money,’ ‘fat,’ ‘cancer’ or ’sex,’ you’re likely to get some ink in the general audience media.”

Think about the recent news stories you seen, read or heard, especially those that pertain to some study or research findings. Robins’ words seem as though they hold some truth.

But is it really about trickery? Later on in the Times piece:

Ken Sunshine, the head of a P.R. firm in Manhattan, said he thought the media had an institutional bias against “hype-y terms” like “world renowned” and “once in a lifetime,” which he studiously avoids putting in his news releases. “But ‘unique’ is fine,” he said, “if something really is unique.”

Um, yeah. I’m pretty sure I could get away with claiming to have the world’s nastiest curveball, too — uncontested — if it were true.

So we’re back where we started. Trickery might work occasionally, but really, it’s about substance. So how the hell did that story get such coverage? Was it the setting (the news conference was held at New York University Medical Center)? Was it the doctor who led the presentation, bestowing upon the happenings some level of credibility?

Photo courtesy of dullhunk on Flickr. (Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” is a great book, by the way.)

Example:

“We’re excited to partner with These Folks,” said Jane Doe, CEO of Boring Corp. “This synergy will allow us to leverage our extensive resources in generating industry-leading levels of boredom among our key constituencies.”

But excuse me for a minute while I unnecessarily pick on a big dog. Mike Arrington welcomes a new member (with an impressive resume) to his team and kicks the post off with a nice little bit of PR-ish BS.

We’ve charged her with leveraging our brand, syndicating our content and helping us drive revenue.

Sweet! I guess it’s not really all that bad, but any time I see the word “leveraging,” I vomit a little in my mouth, and the phrase “leveraging our brand” is like vomit times three.

And when Mike mentioned the new hire on Twitter, his message was reminiscent of those generic executive quotes:

I am so excited about Sarah Ross joining our team

I suppose I’m being overly critical and picking a fight where one is certainly not needed. I just found it funny that even the biggest and best of the new-media entities falls back to some seriously old-school PR-isms every once in a while.

(Don’t take this criticism to heavily. I really enjoy Mike’s work, and god knows TechCrunch is a successful blog, to put it mildly.)

1) What’s first in your day? What do you do before any other social media task?

First thing is usually to check for Twitter replies. It’s not really the case that this is the most critical, but it’s a quick and easy thing to check first, and Twhirl is usually the quickest app (compared to Outlook and Firefox) to start up in the morning.

2) How do you listen? (example, I use Google Blog Search and Technorati search)

I listen with a huge load of RSS feeds that track Web sites, blogs, Twitter and specific news sites. Also, in a different way, I listen by simply being a part of a particular community. That’s not listening for company/product/client names, but it’s listening to what’s new, what’s hot, what’s important, what’s appropriate, etc.

3) Where do you connect with your communities?

I connect with my communities in various offline places (lunch, coffee shop, office, etc.), but online it’s primarily Twitter and on other people’s blogs. My own blog doesn’t have a huge community, per se — but, for example, Todd Defren and Shel Holtz’s blogs do.

4) How many communities do you visit?

I regularly “visit” two online communities: Twitter and Facebook. “Visiting” those communities is a very different experience, though. Twitter comes to me wherever I am (far better), and Facebook requires me to go there (far worse). Also, while my Facebook crowd reflects one particular community, Twitter really acts as a place to collect activity of so many other communities. It’s a meta-community, or a community community, or whatever post-modernist yuppie phrase you want to use.

For example, I’m not terribly active on Seesmic, but people’s Twitter messages about Seesmic videos occasionally rope me in. There are several people who’s blogs I don’t subscribe to, in an effort to keep my daily reading under control, but I often end up reading individual posts because they’ve started a Twitter discussion.

5) Is your social media use primarily for personal use or business or both?

There is almost no separation between the two. I don’t have a problem with working on the weekends or not spending time with the missus or anything, but there’s little, if any, distinction between Mike of Provident Partners and Mike of the Keliher Clan.

6) What are your goals with using social media?

Honestly, that’s like asking, “What are your goals with waking up the morning?” Seriously. And I don’t say that because I have to “use social media” all day, as soon as I wake up, because it’s my whole life.

I say that because the Web is pervasive in my life, in the best way possible. I’m “on Twitter” for much of the day, and I have many friends there — some, but by no means all, of them I’ve never met in person. I say that because questions in our office rarely go unanswered, thanks to an ignorance-slaying combination of Google and 1,000 Twitter friends. I say that because, even though it doesn’t fit the explanation most people think of when they say “social media,” I think e-mail is one of the biggest social media communication tools we have.

And yes, Chris, I’ll be at the NewComm Forum next week. I hope to have a chance to meet you. I’ll be the guy following Albert Maruggi around with a video camera.

Matt’s post was prompted by this one from Mark Glaser, which provides a pretty good history and current state of the union on social media news releases. Another link in this long chain led me to Tom Foremski’s post expressing (legitimate) surprise that putting links in news releases on the Web is still relatively unexplored territory. Seriously, people…

Why did I tell you that? Because after all that reading, I had dozens of eager and angry thoughts flying around in my head. I was about to start writing them down, sharing my thoughts on why this whole “social news release” concept isn’t really all that difficult. Then it hit me.

I already did. Thirteen months ago.

And pretty much every word is still relevant, still being discussed in those posts I linked to above. I could update or add a bit more, but to prove a point, I’ll let my previous post stand as is.

PRNewser provides a brief write-up about Peter Shankman’s “Help a Reporter” Web site, a good-karma-earning project in which the Shankman (doesn’t the “the” make him sound at least three times cooler?) fields requests from reporters looking for people to talk about, well, anything. The Shankman then compiles and shares those requests for resources with a community of somewhere around 1,200 or so (last I heard) public relations folks.

This Web site actually works its magic in one of the oldest forms of “social media”: a massive, e-mail distribution list. Remember those? Came around a few years before RSS and wikis and the like? Yeah?

HelpAReporter.com started as a group on Facebook.

Read those last couple of lines again. As bloggers tend to say when they’re trying to be funny about stuff like this, I’ll wait…

You back? OK. Did you catch it? Facebook, the darling of so many social networking junkies and social media consultants and so many other people who say “social” a lot, drove away a very successful, purposeful group that embodies exactly what social networking is supposed to be. Drove it away to an e-mail distribution list.

Way to go Facebook.

This happened because, as PRNewser mentioned, Facebook puts a limit on the number of Facebookers who can receive direct messages, sort of like an “internal e-mail” unique to the Facebook system. The Shankman’s group quickly outgrew that limit.

I’m sure there’s (probably) a reason for that and other limits, but probably not a very good one, especially if you’re Facebook and you’re trying to take over the Web. Plus, the Shankman really should want to be on Facebook to help his group grow. I know coverage on the NY Times site can help, but so can a link in my Facebook news feed that says, “[Friend's name] has joined ‘If I can help a reporter out, I will…’” That’s how I learned about it months ago. The power of that spread is not to be underestimated.

On a related subject: The folks who run ProfNet apparently hate Peter Shankman. ProfNet is a service from the PR Newswire that does basically the exact same thing HelpAReporter.com does. Two differences: It looks a little bit prettier and costs thousands of dollars. For kicks, I’ll remind you that the Shankman seeks no money, just good karma.

ProfNet has no ground to stand on. It’s not kosher to take content from ProfNet and share it with thousands of others who aren’t paying for it. But there’s nothing stopping a reporter from submitting a call for help to both ProfNet and ShankmanNet to improve his or her odds of success. Maybe ProfNet will find some other way to succeed in the long run.

It all started on Saturday when Chris Lynn, a.k.a. SocialTNT, made a comment about how he found coolness in a gay couple and their adopted child and the skin colors of each. It seemed an honest, innocent statement to me, but one Ike Pigott started questioning Chris’ comment.

I’ve met neither Chris nor Ike in person, but I “know” them both somewhat well via the Internets and the wonderful world of Twitter. Chris is here and Ike is here. They both seem like great guys. Certainly smart and worth following.

Anyway, the conversation between Chris and Ike, as Chris worked to explain his views and Ike questioned his motivations, became just a little heated. Not unfriendly or mean, but a bit testy at times.

Finally, Chris said, “Do I need to cry to win your sympathy and seem more human?” (He was kidding, of course, and he wrote it more like Prince, using the number 2 for the word “to” and whatnot.)

Just for fun, I asked Chris how long it would take to upload the video. He took me seriously. Unfortunately, before he put his video together, Chris said that if he did it, he’d want me to re-create that infamous “Leave Britney alone” video for his story.

So I did.

I used the original Britney-fan video as a loose outline, changing the lines to be relevant to Chris Lynn — and to make them funny. Each line in my video is prompted by a little something I know about Chris, like how he does a series of video posts on his blog called “3Qs in the 3min” or how his lesbian roommates moved out AND TOOK THE MICROWAVE!

I’m writing this post for three reasons:

1) To document this story, time capsule-style, for future generations of geeks who will find this as funny as I do.

2) To explain why I did this so I seem a little less demented and to increase the chances other people will think it’s funny.

3) To make sure I don’t piss off Ike. He’s always talking about logic and fallacies and syllogisms and whatnot. I’d hate to get in a argument with him. Seems smart.

Plus, it’s just a joke.

So let’s start right there: Did you notice my word choice - “consumer”? Target saw her as a blogger, someone likely to have “an agenda” but also likely to have too small of “an audience” to warrant a real response from a busy PR team.

The Social Times writes: “…basically Target doesn’t think anyone that goes to Target stores read blogs,” stemming from Target’s now notorious statement saying it doesn’t “participate with nontraditional media.” (Side note: Yes you do!)

In this case, it doesn’t seem to be an issue of “We’re big Target and you’re a little blogger and we’re not interested in whatever little audience you might have (and we’re ignoring the fact that you could incite a nice little blog storm).” To me, this is the important issue: The woman to whom Target sent this unfriendly response (likely a Target shopper or at least a model of Target’s “core guest”) had an issue with a Target ad, so she asked Target about it. And it seems as though Target blew her off because she’s a blogger.

The impression: To get a response from Target, you not only have to be a “core guest” but you also have to prove you’re not a “non-traditional media” outlet. Is that it?

I understand that there is a distinction to be made between the responsibilities of Target’s PR team and Target’s customer service department, but that’s not the consumer’s problem, nor does that distinction matter to the blogger who feels slighted. She’s slighted by Target, regardless of which department bears the blame.

Does every single inquiry a company might receive warrant an immediate, full-force response? No, of course, not. But this request for an explanation seems reasonable. Certainly, it seems to warrant more than a response along the lines of, “Oops! You said the B-word! No comment.”

If this woman had not identified herself as a blogger, it seems reasonable to assume she’d have been transferred from the PR folks to some sort of customer service representative and handled from there (hopefully in a more friendly manner). But in dropping the B-bomb, she was summarily rejected as not relevant to Target’s quest to reach the “core guest.”

Bloggers are people. People are bloggers. Some “core guests” are bloggers, and some “core guests” read blogs.

Photo courtesy of j.reed on Flickr. Thanks.

This simple statement got me thinking: What makes a “social network,” in the online sense? And, of course, the related question: Why does this word parsing matter, if at all?

To kick off my thinking on this issue, I informed my Twitter crew:

I’m intrigued by people who refer to things like Twitter as a social network. Is a blog a social network because it has your picture on it?

Sort of a snarky statement, but the responses, which came quick and often, turned me from silly to thoughtful. I had always reserved the label “social network” for those sites that centered on the profile, a quality Facebook, MySpace and many others certainly share. I considered Twitter and Pownce to publishing tools, not networking tools.

In response to my statement, Connie Crosby took the old-school approach, reminding me that social networks are indeed composed of people, not Web sites, but that Web sites — even blogs — can be effective social networking tools if people put an effort toward truly connecting and interacting.

Thu-An Bui also emphasized the idea of interaction. So did Julio Ojeda-Zapata, a technology writer at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and all-around geek (in the best way possible). And so did Clarence. Cece Salomon-Lee did, too, and added an angle about being able to “interconnect [with other people] seamlessly - add, delete, block, follow, etc.“

I think you see the trend developing here.

Social networking is about the people. Sites like Facebook are definitely focused on profile pages and connecting with other people, which led me to my initial, narrower definition of “social network” — something like a fancy, interactive Rolodex. Sites like Twitter, which the people mentioned above solidly regard as a social network, are more focused on communicating, I’d argue, than connecting people, but those two ideas are so closely connected I wonder if the distinction is relevant.

Why does any of this matter? I still wrestle with that. Maybe you can help (see that comment form below?). But one thing I do know: You can do yourself a favor by not getting caught up in your own preconceptions (or in this case, misconceptions). The way people use a Twitter, or a Facebook, or an anything, matters more than the label or even the purpose anyone tries to force upon it.

He doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers, but he does a good job of raising and putting into perspective the all-important question: “How effectively does our work generate leads, drive sales, reduce costs? All are bottom-line outcomes, and often difficult to tie back to PR activity—online or off.”

There’s a good discussion over on Bill’s post, so check it out. I’m using it as a launch pad for this post.

Bill poses the challenge of measuring relationships, as opposed to simply measuring outcomes such as “blog mentions” or “press clips” if you’re nasty. The first step toward successful measurement (perhaps obviously) would be to measure toward your objectives. This is especially true for something as complicated and important as relationship measurement.

Don’t simply “measure the relationship” to come up with something like a Relationship Value Index, for example, that is supposed to show how important a particular person or group is to your organization. Instead, if you’re (at the time) concerned with crisis management, it makes sense to judge the people or publics with whom you’ve developed relationships on, say, their ability to pacify a riotous blogosphere. That would include factors like favorability toward your organization, credibility, reach (quality and quantity), ability to generate other posts in response (influence), frequency of activity beyond the post (conversing in comments), etc.

In a different context — such as a product launch — you could judge those same relationships with more emphasis on reach and influence but perhaps less on credibility and conversation.

This brings to back to the headline: Let’s start somewhere. With all this talk of social media tools, tips and tricks, measurement often draws the short straw. It’s easy to get caught up in the complexity of properly, intelligently implementing strategies that put the power of social media to good use. To make measurement possible, we need to begin these strategies with tangible metrics and objectives in mind, another element of many social media efforts that is often lacking.

Anecdotal, case-study measurement is a good start, but it rarely is based in the mindset of comparing results to objectives stated at the outset. It’s one thing to be able to say you’ve earned your keep, but it’s a whole new world to try to measure, analyze, repeat and improve.

What do we want to accomplish with our “social media efforts”? Why are we social-media-fying our news releases? Why am I helping clients podcast their thoughts and insights? What could I ever stand to gain from Facebook? Can I possibly find a meaningful way to measure relationships and connect them to business objectives?

Or can we just keep blogging because it’s cool?

(For the record, there are plenty of folks far smarter than me on the subject of PR measurement. Katie Paine is one. Part of the reason I’m writing is to “think out loud,” as they say. Also, Geoff Livingston has a good collection of social media case studies; some certainly fall into the anecdotal style of “measurement,” but some are more, well, sophisticated, I guess.)

“Measurement” courtesy of thespacesuitcatalyst via Flickr