10 Newborn PR Tactics

10) Reputation Monitoring: I understand this isn’t an entirely new tactic, but who could have imagined the WAY we’re monitoring reputations today?
10 Years Ago: In existence, but in a different form

9) Corporate Web Videos:10 years ago we sent out Beta tapes or booked satellite time to deliver client video and video news releases to journalists. Today, we create YouTube channels and make our video clips available for download in HD format from corporate websites.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent, but corporate video was available in a different form

8) Corporate Podcasting: As mentioned above, the Internet has simply changed the way we deliver our content. 10 years ago, I was known as one of the early practitioners of the simple nationwide Audio News Release (ANRs … also called Radio News Releases or RNRs). I recorded interviews with clients through the phone, cut the audio into soundbites using a simple digital editor, and made those soundbites available through a voicemail line. The audio quality was so-so due to the layers of telephone sound. Today, you can record high quality sound in your office and easily make it available via the web to whoever wants it. Much more efficient than a voicemail line!
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent, but corporate audio was available in a different form

7) Viral Marketing: Who doesn’t want their company or client content to go viral? Getting an article, blog post, web video or whatever to spread on its own through social media sites or email is a dream! 10 years ago it WAS in existence. It was called “word of mouth” advertising, and it’s been around since we’ve been able to talk. The web got involved later, and changed it forever. Per Wikipedia, the term was coined in the late 1990s and was used to describe Hotmail’s practice of appending advertisements to the end of free email accounts. The tactic wasn’t, to my knowledge, used by any significant number of PR pros until much, much later.
10 Years Ago: Gestating

6) Corporate Blogging: For years, we’ve wanted reporters and influencers to know our executives personally. Ten years ago, we took those bosses or clients on meet-and-greet tours with reporters. That’s still a valid strategy, if you can find reporters who have time for it. Another way to achieve this goal is to launch an executive blog. That’s just one of the myriad of uses for corporate blogging. Others include link building and SEO, news release distribution, and as a home for podcasts and web videos. Per Wikipedia, the term “weblog” was coined in 1997, and was first shortened to “blog” in 1999. Corporate blogs really didn’t start to explode until a few years ago.
10 Years Ago: Gestating

5) Blogger Relations: Once there were enough bloggers out there writing about enough topics, and enough people were reading them, we PR people started to realize that … OMG, WE NEED TO PITCH BLOGGERS! From what I can see, there’s not much rejoicing going on among bloggers about that realization.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

4) Web Design: Sure … websites existed in 1999. I started my first web business in 1998, and I certainly wasn’t the first one. However, I agree with Sara Evans’ recent blog post that today’s PR pros need to have at least a basic knowledge of HTML code. Optimizing and even simply improving the look of our postings, whether they’re on a blog, Facebook, or on a news release distribution site, is part of our job now.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent, at least as a PR tool

3) SEO PR, or PR for Search Engine Optimization: Keyword optimization has been around as long as the Yellow Pages. Ever wonder why company names like AAA Auto Repair were chosen? Yup … it was so they’d be at the front of the book. SEO, meanwhile, came into being in the mid-1990s, as businesses tried to get to the top of Excite, Yahoo, and Lycos. Using tactics like online news release distribution and keyword optimization of news releases, PR pros got into the act a handful of years ago.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

2) Social Media News Releases: There’s still a lot of discussion going on about whether this is the best format for a release. I’m on the side that believes the old narrative format can still be used, while at the same time using some of the elements of a social media release. Essentially, when I write a formal news release (something I’m doing less and less) I use a hybrid, which you can check on on my news release page. However, whether you’re a practitioner of the social media release or not, I think we can all agree that this was not a tactic we were using 10 years ago.
10 Years Ago: Nonexistent

1) Social Media … anything: You can’t get away from the phrase “social media” these days. Hard to believe it didn’t exist in any significant form 10 years ago.

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