The old-fashioned "push" approach to media relations, whereby press releases are distributed via PRNewswire, PRWeb, or some other wire services, worked well under the traditional, old-fashioned media paradigm that is dying a slow but certain death.
The future is something I call Inbound Media Relations that utilizes the brand as publisher model, whereby the blog, as your sole "broadcast" platform, moves the needle in this direction by forcing the media to come to your blog, subscribe to it, or register their email to get breaking news.
"News only happens once," was something my first boss told me; so, if that's true, you can't distribute the news and then place it on the blog and expect that to do the trick. All you've accomplished under that scenario is having the blog serve as another outlet for the release, not the source of the release, which is the point of inbound media relations.
I realize this takes some guts!
But, if a company can train the media to follow its blog for company news, that's a true breakthrough, and the key step toward making Inbound Media Relations work to your advantage. Otherwise, you're just doing the same old, same old.
