Are You Master of Your List?

Note: This is a continuation of yesterday's post Don't Be an Ass.

Old-school PR-ers know the list well.

It's the core of your media and community relations efforts.

Media: You have spent years developing, cultivating, and honing a list of reporters who cover your industry, company, and related topics. You start by finding as many key reporters as you can, getting their contact information, learning about them by following their work, talking by phone, and even meeting them in person. Often there are different reporters/editors for different purposes. Some are focused on just your industry. Some might be more focused on a geographical area (local newspapers and electronic media). Some might have a particular niche like an events calendar for when you hold public meetings, the hirings/promotions column, or a highly-topical radio call-in show.

Community/Industry relations: These folks aren't reporters, but they still have influence over your organization. Could be politicians, public officials, donors, investors, or even the neighborhood associations near your facilities.

There's also your internal list... how you reach those inside your own organization or closely related organizations who need to be kept up-to-date or contacted on short notice.

Your list ends up being your core tool. All of the people you've spent years cultivating. You know them. You know their likes and dislikes. You have them neatly organized and categorize. Rarely... almost never, do you contact your whole list at once.

Using a contact management tool like ACT allows you to group them into often overlapping groups. Some get just product announcements. Some get industry-related materials (the business reporters, for instance). Some get community-oriented materials. The idea is that you only distribute material to those to whom it is relevant.

There are entire companies, such as Bacons Media, who specialize in compiling lists of all the media outlets they can find, surveying the reporters, and listing what they cover (their "beat") and how they prefer to be contacted.

You can often tell a PR hack or neophyte because they have not yet grasped list mastery... and they send press releases (often poorly-written ones) to entire lists. Or even to lists that have been generated without thought to whether or not the "pitch" is relevant to the recipient.

In hearing popular bloggers lately slam "PR types" for this practice... I cringe. It's a bit like hearing about a hack doctor who botched a treatment plan and blaming the entire medical world for this. All industries have their hacks, as well as their consummate professionals. I would love if bloggers would speak more about the "PR types" who excel at identifying and pitching relevant stories. These "PR types" have long been a staple of the media business. They actually do bring great stories to the journalist or blogger. Yes, the do have the agenda of promoting their organization's or client's image. But the highly-professional "PR types" also help journalists/bloggers identify interesting stories that would otherwise be overlooked. Turns out that organizations that use "PR types" are often doing interesting things worth reporting.

But the lists... they have always evolved. Used to be it was a stack of typed sheets with a staple in the corner. I knew one old-school PR maven for whom the annual updating of her media list was such a ritual, she continued to update it well past retirement. (They even found it on her desk in the process of being updated after she died.)

Then we got computers, which made updating the sheets easier. Then fax machines into which we could enter reporter numbers en mass. Then databases, which became progressively sophisticated.

There's a lot changing rapidly in PR these days. We're inextricably linked to the media and it's changing to the point that old institutions like newspapers and magazines are crumbling.

But the list remains a core tool. Albeit, it's a little spread out now. While I won't go so far as to declare that, universally, bloggers are journalists. Some are, some aren't. Journalism is a profession that includes a lot more than just writing the article. Not all bloggers practice it. But they are still excellent conduits to reaching an audience. One they get to know very well through dialogue and cross-participation with other blogs and other online resources. But "PR types" can develop and maintain relationships with bloggers just as they did with reporters and editors. Bloggers definitely belong on the list.

There's also a new twist to the list. It started with email newsletters, where your audience registered (and canceled) their own inclusion in your list. This further honed the "relevancy" part of your relationship. Deliver good, useful information and people will subscribe. If you delivered drivel, you got canceled.

Take that further to social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. In these cases, your friends/followers are adding you to THEIR list. The same goes for blogs, especially when you consider that individuals subscribe to your blog's feed.

Think about that with a touch of oversimplification: With the two-way nature of the social media list, you've eliminated the need to keep a list (they subscribe to you... no need to revise it). Now your list is based ENTIRELY on delivering relevant, useful information via the constraints of whichever platform you're using.

Your list is now you. Have you mastered it?