Should I Pitch Your Mom?

Web 2.0 forces us to challenge long-held truths. Change is a constant; we need to (pragmatically) consider ourselves in a constant state of iteration. So let's challenge two long-held truths here: targeting media and influencers.

Amorphous Media
The state of media is, uh, "dynamic." Even during the late 90s dot-com era, print was always preferred over online coverage. That's changed as sharing tools have become ubiquitous across news content and the ability to syndicate content became increasingly automated.

Even the definition of media has expanded to include citizen journalists/bloggers. They're extending the length of the news cycle as they sometimes break news on the front end of the curve and dissect mainstream media on the back end.

All the while traditional media has become resource-strapped. So even public relations role has increased in importance and brands have taken sponsored content from the purgatory of advertorials to a more credible level.

This creates more than a few questions--from measurement/impact of our work and the time it takes to pitch to the models of outreach (media vs bloggers) and the need to create content that's more applicable for the online space.

Without getting into each of the above points, let's just say that as it gets easier than ever to get the word out, it gets noisier with competitive, irrelevant and/or distracting messages. So it's "kind of a big deal" to pay attention to these shifts.

In The Perfect Storm, You Can Be All Wet
The need for customization has also increased and online tools have sprung up to help us get the job done -- or botch the job. This brings us to the elephant in the room: the industry hasn't changed expectations around how long it takes and how much it costs to conduct outreach.

If anything, the assumption is that it's easier than ever and takes less time so media relations efforts should be cheaper and faster than ever before. But the opposite can in fact be the case.

Influence ≠ Popularity
Influence may seem broadly defined, but like any buzzword, it's simply used incorrectly. One thing is for certain -- influence, the ability to impact the actions, opinions or behavior of others, is not popularity.

Furthermore, influence may differ depending on your goals. If your goal is to impact awareness vs. generate donations or sales, you're impacting different behavior. And as a result you're likely targeting different audiences.

There's a lot of discussion in the echosphere about targeting consumers directly with public relations efforts instead of targeting individuals that can impact their behavior. Last I checked, we used other forms of media/marketing disciplines to achieve this goal.

Should I Pitch Stacy's Mom?
So the answer to our headline is a trick question. It depends: on goals, target audience and a better than usual understanding of their media consumption habits.

The sphere bounces around a discussion about settling on one, well-intended definition of what influence is and who influencers are -- it's not that easy. So if you're looking for a silver bullet, keep looking.