Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The simple guide to PR

Product comparison website iselect has provided a very instructive guide on how to do PR - especially in the IT industry.

They issued a release through get2press that referred to "research released today" in the "iselect Broadband Report". It was received by media organisations with no contact details, other than a link to the iselect broadband comparison website.

Nowhere in the release nor on the website is there a copy of the "recently released" research. The release was also available on PRWeb.

A Google search for the exact phrase "iselect broadband report" scored just under sixty hits, some of which were repeats. The story was carried by news.com, ibtimes, itwire, knowfirst, Yahoo, helstra, The Courier Mail, QuickSales, NineMSN, and Adelaide Now.

Some of these don't purport to be anything other than "rip and read" sites but the others are representing that they do IT journalism. Read the content of the stories and see exactly how much journalism there is versus "churnalism".

Meanwhile I've found a contact for the release and have at least asked for a copy of the actual research report that the release claims has been "released".

Hopefully exposing the light of scrutiny on PR based on citing headline grabbing lines from otherwise unavailable reports will turn this from good PR to very bad PR indeed.

(Note: I'll keep you posted if I get a reply from my request for the report)

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

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