On Tuesday I was at Social Media Cafe Manchester, held at the BBC on Oxford Road.

A good venue – I am sure the drinks are subsidised, well a little bit – and not a bad turnout at all.

As usual the attendees include a range of professionals from journalism, PR, digital and other interested parties such as Salford / Manchester creative & digital recruitment agency Orchard.

Anyway on to business and in particular the first talk (and the one I will talk about) on Hyperlocal News (HLN).

What is it you ask, well might be asking?

If you will allow a little short cut, Wikipedia gives the following explanation:

“Hyperlocal content, often referred to as hyperlocal news, is characterized by three major elements. Firstly, it refers to entities and events that are located within a well defined, community scale area. Secondly, it is intended primarily for consumption by residents of that area. Thirdly, it is created by a resident of the location.”

Local journalists Nigel Barlow and Richard Jones were on hand to talk about the issues as well as mention that they are planning an M60 blog to be launched in April  (Manchester’s answer to the M25) .

They are other HLN news blogs such as ones for Lichfield and Sunderland.

The benefits of HLN is, or are claimed, to be more versatile, vigilant and immediate.

But without the necessary advertising revenue it is not a sustainable business model as both Richard and Nigel admitted.  The value of having community based news has to be recognised by local government and associated organisations for it prosper.  There is the big sell.

Yet HLN was proposed as vital for democracy.  Richard expounded the view that robust reporting of say a council meeting can be done better by HLN than a traditional newspaper that is relying on press releases owing to lack of resource.

Simon Wharton of PushOn commented, when the talk was opened up to the floor, that search and HLN are ideally suited to one another and the volume of content with a focused reference will be picked up by search.

One local example is Salford Online, which is in the process of developing its reach in the city.  It seems to be looking at both the advertising and community based funding model.  It should make interesting viewing as it progresses.  I know Brian who runs the team is putting his all into making it work – it has made good progress.

Nigel Barlow concluded: “No-one has got the journalistic model right and we need to come out of the ad recession before it will be possible to make a call.”  We are all wondering about that to some level.

I don’t need to say how important bloggers are in modern communications, but if you have any doubts I picked up the following stats from the Future Buzz blog:

• 133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
• 346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)
• 900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period (seems a bit low)
• 77% – percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

This naturally presents a golden opportunity to convey your message.  And if you have a very sector specific target audience there is bound to be a multitude of blogs that will cover the topic.

Yet, I still hear of companies and agencies that go about pitching the wrong way.

It is certainly harder to pitch to a blogger than a journalist (although there can be a correlation).

The media needs stories.  The media relies on PRs to supply those stories / interviewees on a regular basis, it has a continuous appetite.   A relationship with a journalist is very helpful but not essential for getting your release or article published.

A blogger does not need a PRs’ stories, of course they need material but that can come from a number of sources.  A blogger might post every day, week, month – there is not the same pressure generally to deliver content.  Gaining coverage with a blogger relies far more on relationships.

It is a different dynamic: a journalist is paid to generate content for an organisation, a blogger tends to be working for him or herself, often for nothing, and they can relate to their blog in a very personal way.

(With way over 100 million blogs these observations can be nothing but generalisations, there are bound to be exceptions but I think they are rough guidelines nevertheless).

For me the key difference is that I can pitch to a media channel whether I have or not in the past worked with them, it is not too important if I have a good idea or subject – I would not do the same with a blogger.

The key, I believe, to taping into the blogosphere is spending the time to develop relationships, learn about individual blogs.

Use Twitter to initiate a conversation.  Better still if your client has a blog leave (relevant insightful) comments on the target blog.  It will help show you have some knowledge of social media, which will help gain acceptance, it will show interest and it might make the blogger feel that they are obliged to reciprocate.  It is a first step in the pitching process.

So, for me, it is the conversation before that really counts.  Of course you might contact them directly and succeed with a brazen salesy press release, but you might be deleted as spam more likely.

And remember, if you have developed a reputation though social media or indeed traditional media then you might find that you are pulling in interest from bloggers.

This all takes time and that is where it goes wrong: PRs and clients don’t often have the luxury of time.

Please note

I have just upgraded my blog and there were a few issues with plug-ins, so I have (hopefully) reset the comments, which had requested a Wordpress account to leave a message.

I would be appreciate if you did leave a comment to see if it is working and if not please drop me an e-mail rob@artisanmc.co.uk

On Friday I was at the the Manchester Chapter of the NUJ’s meeting to fight the proposed job cuts.

It was a passionate and compelling event and one that certainly opened my eyes.

The received wisdom that many might have is that digital media is the main cause of print media’s demise and in turn the local media – it’s an unstoppable force.  Well the speakers eloquently expressed a different side to the debate.

One of the key messages and this is especially relevant to the Manchester Evening News and the Guardian Media Group is that the publishers are still making a profit.  And those profits were more than healthy when redundancies were made over the last two to three years, including at the MEN.

One fact that might surprise it that The Guardian is not the money maker at the GMG.  It was stated that The MEN and local papers actually propped up the flagship paper.  What is perhaps more galling for local journalists is that there are no substantial cuts at The Guardian, not that anyone wants any cuts anywhere.

It is the ridiculous effort to prop up unsustainable and ludicrous profit margins that is a prime driver behind the redundancies programme.

One speaker pointed out that Tesco expects to make a profit of 9.8p on every pound spent whereas some publishers expect nearer 40p.  Coupled with executive bonuses it is clearly an unsustainable policy.

The result is that if the proposed cuts are to go ahead then the quality of local media will be seriously compromised.

Newspapers are already relying on wires and press releases to a greater extent than ever before.  But the figure of 12% that was quoted as the percentage of news that is researched and sourced and written by the journalists themselves was shocking.

What is more journalists are already responsible for taking images, uploading stories onto the web and taking on the subs work.  Standards will inevitably diminish and quickly if the proposed cuts are made.

So what is the solution?

Whether news is conveyed in print or web is not the issue here.  The issue is the standard of local media and indeed its survival.

And it can survive and prosper.

Initially we all have to as a community make sure the publishers are aware of community feelings and that pressure can be brought to bare.  It is up to the community and if it is not interested in defending our local media then we deserve none.  But I think there is enough of us that do – many attending the meeting were not journalists but members of the public showing their support.

Writing to politicians and the papers themselves might be a start – express support and make sure the publishers know the depth of feeling.  To their credit there were politicians in the room including John Leech MP for Withington, so that is promising.

One solution could be that journalists take over local titles or set-up co-operative style managed media – an emphasis on quality and not weighted on profit.

Whatever the solution is, the current model of bleeding the local media to sustain unsustainable profits is certainly not the way forward.

MEN Media Ltd is cutting 150 jobs, including 40 out of 90 at the Manchester Evening News according to reports in Crain’s.

I am in shock, I very much mean it.  Not because advertising revenues are down although the last tax returns showed a healthy profit.

I have to say I thought after two major rounds of job cuts over the past two years there would be little give.  How can you maintain standards with such drastic cuts?

Where do you go from here if you find yourself looking for a new journalist’s position?

Has it reached its tipping point between seeing itself as a paper based medium with digital, and digital based medium giving out free newspapers to keep advertising revenues?

Comments welcome.

A caught 10 minutes of quite a preposterous episode today: The Treasury Select Committee grilling five well-known journalists about their coverage of the credit crunch and especially Northern Rock.

The caption underneath kept coming up with “should coverage of the credit crunch be restricted?”  Ridiculous!

The five business journalists included Robert Peston, Jeff Randall and Alex Brummer.  As you might guess Robert Peston was the centre of attention.

The MPs questioning centred on responsibility.  Shouldn’t Peston and his colleagues hold off with stories to give Northern Rock a chance?  Hadn’t they created the run on the building society?  Did they have inside information and mysterious sources?

The rebuttal was that Northern Rock was a badly run business.  It had failed because its wholesale division had stalled and big investors saw the writing on the wall and took their money out.  Holding off on a story for 48 hours would not have saved it.

The run was in many ways Northern Rock’s fault.  Their website had gone down because the bandwidth capacity could not cope with visitors and this created panic.

The queues had built up because they have too few branches for their client base and too few staff were put on duty.

And if a financial institution is badly run, whose fault is it when savers want to take their money elsewhere?  And more so when it is on the brink of collapse?

As for the insinuation that the journalists had shady sources, well that proved to show the MPs as lacking an understanding of their subject.

Peston maintained he had many sources and had used many different sources over the years, including some of the MPs questioning him.  He cross checked everything and did not have narrow weak biased source to base his stories on – unlike Bush’s evidence of going to war with Iraq.

If this was a trial then the case would have been thrown out on the first day.  It was embarrassing for the MPs and they did not know hope ridiculous they sounded.

This view that the media somehow created a recession is seeking a convenient scape goat.

And as for recklessly putting economic institutions in danger by their reporting, it came out that there is a suspicion the the Government used the media to suppress share prices before buying them by leaking the appropriate stories.  I wonder if that will go before a select committee.

How-Do reported the sad news that The Metro is making redundancies.  This is especially sad for me because many journalists are based in Manchester and this is, I believe, the fourth biggest selling daily.

Journalism is a precarious business.  It is not often well-paid in relation to the pressures of the role.  And it is not always appreciated, I believe, by many PR professionals.

I came across this entry from the Editorialiste, a US based journalist blog, that has quotes frighteningly high numbers of journalists wanting to leave the profession, especially the younger ones.

What can we as PRs do about it?  Not much.  But we can appreciate that without them we would not be in work.

Media UK gives a sarcastic lists of tips of how to not get the best from journalistic relationships.

Unfortunately some things such as calling to see if a journalist has gotten a release are still quite common.  It would seem that experienced PRs cannot make such mistakes, but….

It is good to hear the insights of what makes journalists tick / giggle /show disgust / show appreciation, and simply use material.

I like Michael Taylor of NW Business Insider revealing a release that made him chuckle:

A local floor resin company making a vital contribution to health and safety at sea with a floor surface that does not erode when oil workers are buffeted while relieving themselves.

How BP must be putting the supplier on their Christmas card list, if not giving them some shares.

But Michael, did you use it that is what we really want to know?

PR is among the most cost effective ways to increase your awareness and sales leads. However, all to often enterprises do not make full use of the opportunities available.
Rob Baker of Artisan gives a few pointers to start improving your PR drive and it’s return.

PR is a long-term activity. All too often companies get some coverage, it doesn’t yield immediate results and they lose interest. You must adopt a sustained, long-term approach for it to be really effective. You are building-up interest and trust in your company and it’s services, it cannot be relied upon to do that in just one go.

Developing relationships with journalists is a long-term activity. A journalist who knows that you deliver interesting, well-written stories is always going to be more open to your latest release than one that seldom hears from you. It is important to cultivate relationships, find out what a particular journalist wants and how they operate. Once you have their confidence, you will be more effective.

PR should not be a stand-alone activity. PR is more effective in combination with other lead generating activity. If you have an exciting new service and want to tell potential customers, you are more likely to achieve the results you want if you employ a number of ways to attract their interest.

Make sure your news is of interest to the journalist and their readership. Just because your company is excited about your new website revamp or office move, it doesn’t mean that anyone else is. Think carefully about what is really newsworthy from the journalists’ point of view before sending your press release.

Make the journalists’ job easier. A journalist does not want to re-write your poorly crafted copy, or phone you to clarify points that should be made clear in the original press release. The harder you make their job the less chance they will publish your release.

Make the subject of the release clear straight away. A journalist will receive literally hundreds of press releases a day. They might have space for one main release and a couple of smaller stories and possibly a column of News in Brief. They only have a few seconds to go through their e-mails and decide what they want to consider for publication. So, if the subject of your press release is less than clear, it is less likely to go any further than the delete button.
Do not neglect the local press. The regional press can be your best outlet for publicity. Local papers often have excellent business pages that capture the attention of the reader as they make their commute home or as they relax in their spare time. They also have a substantial readership. The Manchester Evening News sells 150,000 daily copies, while the Manchester Metro News has 390,000 regular readers.