We write a lot here about the new ground Page One PR is forging with social media, but to run a well-rounded successful PR program, which means staying on top of editorial calendar, speaking and award opportunities, still takes a lot of shoe leather and sweat – or at least a really robust tickler file.

We also write here about the free tools that we use to make our jobs a little bit easier. Here’s a new one: ITMemos from ITDatabase. (Disclosure: ITDatabase is a client)

We’ve already waxed poetic about the benefits of ITDatabase’s resources for tech companies wanting to keep in the know about what reporters are covering. With ITMemos, newsletter recipients are provided links to new speaking opportunities, given the heads up on upcoming editorial calendar opportunities and share reminders of impending award deadlines. All in one place. And by the way, these opportunities are vetted prior, so you’re not receiving crap.

ITMemos is worth taking a look. It will save you time… and it’s free.

The “micronews” approach to PR can significantly boost results for clients outside of traditional media pitching, especially when it comes to driving web traffic. This strategy can really help clients during dry spells of hard news.

What is the “micronews” approach to PR? It’s a simple three-step process: content creation, channel communication, measurement.

1) Content Creation

Thanks to blogs, everyone has the potential to be a media outlet. However, it takes more than having a blog to make a significant impact on traffic. You need interesting, consistent content that a targeted group of readers would likely pass on to others. News needs to be viral. Within this “micronews” approach,” blogs should not be long – around 400 words. The key is to be interesting. I suggest setting up periodic recorded interviews (10-15 minutes) with the client’s internal thought leaders to surface points of interest. The likelihood is they have interesting content nuggets and they don’t realize it. The PR practitioner should have an ear for what could lead to an active online discussion. Love them or hate them, lists almost always work well (example: “6 Steps To Refactoring Rails”).  Insights on hi-level trends can be interesting (example: “To ESB or not to ESB”). Controversy is always good for stirring up interest (example: “3 Reasons Why Encryption is Overrated”).

Two more quick points to consider on content creation. First, be consistent – shoot for one blog per week minimum. Second, plan ahead. Create an internal editorial calendar; share it via Google docs or a wiki. Solicit suggestions. Be disciplined and stick to the schedule.

2) Channel Communication

When the blog goes live, create a simple abstract (catchy headline and brief synopsis) that you can circulate via social media sites such as LinkedIn, Google Groups and DZone. Create and use a bit.ly address (URL shortener) that links back to the blog in your promotion (after free registration, one can monitor bit.lys).

Here’s an example:

“Headline: 6 Steps To Refactoring Rails

Text: Since December, Rails has undergone a fairly significant internal refactoring in a number of areas. Here’s the process for diving into a new area of the codebase and emerging some time later with a much improved area that does basically the same thing — Yehuda Katz blogs about a 6 step approach to refactoring Rails. http://bit.ly/116BST”

I’ve found that LinkedIn Groups are a great way to spread the word about interesting blog posts. Warning – provide useful information. If you spam or overtly pimp your products or services, you will quickly lose any credibility among the groups and may even be banned by the moderator and host. LinkedIn allows an individual to be involved in up to 50 groups at one time. These groups can have thousands of members (for example, the Information Security Community has more than 39,000 members). Treat the community right by providing truly useful, interesting information and it can be beneficial to one’s thought leadership position and prove an excellent driver of web traffic. Google Groups is another great forum to spread micronews.

Twitter is another communication channel to spread micronews – though you are limited to 140 characters. Thus, it’s all about the headline. If possible, make the “tweet” short enough so it can be re-tweeted easily without going over 140 characters. Again, the headline needs to be interesting enough to the audience you are targeting so that they click on the bit.ly link and/or pass it on to their friends, colleagues and go viral.

Client example: “5 Common Questions About Hadoop – http://bit.ly/ehZ15”

3) Measurement

One albatross that has hung around the neck of PR for some is that PR results can’t be measured well or easily. The micronews approach IS measurable. For example, bit.ly can be a great tool for capturing reach (how many people clicked to your content). But your best friend is Google Analytics. At the very least, it will show you whether a particular post or campaign or outreach was successful or not. For a well-executed micronews approach, it provides proof of success. Below is an example of a client’s Google Analytics graph (specific metrics are blocked out) along with notes explaining traffic spikes …

➢    June 1-2 spike: “Before You Jump Into Cloud Storage, Answer These 5 Questions…” blog post (6/1/09 issue)
➢    June 10-11 spike: “3 Reasons Why Encryption is Overrated” blog post (6/10/09 issue)
➢    June 23-26 spike: “Response Part 1: Future Processing Power” blog post (6/23/09 issue) and “Response Part 2: Complexities of Key Management” blog post (6/24/09 issue)

The Caveat – Content Still Matters (a lot)

Though the micronews approach provides straightforward marching orders to creating, distributing, and measuring content, it all really falls apart if the content is bad. Remember, create content that would be so interesting to the audience you are targeting that they would pass it on to their colleagues and friends. Take off your rose colored glasses.  Marketing brochure speak about how great your product or services will not only fail – it could very well hurt your brand.

A huge part of publicity is staying on top of new technologies for research, analytics and traffic measurement.  You really need to have an appetite for discovering new tools, because there is a definite “first mover” advantage. One new tool that Page One has been evaluating recently — ITDatabase (www.itdatabase.com) — was actually created by a former Page One employee, Travis Van.

We’ve always been aware that media directories like Cision are missing a ton of important tech authors – and that it’s really hard to find even the ones that are in their database, because they don’t let you search against their coverage.  But exactly how many tech journalists is Cision missing?  I did a simple search on Cision versus ITDatabase, and the discrepancy was incredible.

Take a look at how many authors Cision retrieved for the query “virtualization” … 23.

Now ITDatabase – which focuses specifically on tech authors … >900.

Van tells us this gap between ITDatabase’s coverage and Cision is also true for ITDatabase versus Vocus.  We don’t use Vocus at Page One PR, so I have no way to qualify that.  It would be useful if another ITDatabase trial-taker who is also using Vocus would do a similar comparison.  We’re still giving ITDatabase a thorough evaluation, but the early indications are that this is a serious media research tool for tech marketing and PR.  Right now Cision is just feeling like a really expensive contact database, and nothing more.  I have to wonder how Cision and Vocus are going to stay relevant to the tech industry when more people become aware of ITDatabase.

ITDatabase’s biggest challenge is probably just getting more tech industry marketing and PR people to try it.  When you do your first tech keyword query on ITDatabase, it’s really eye-opening how much easier identifying the relevant journalists and tracking them can be with a well- designed research tool.

While I’m not a fan of reading blogs about PR best practices from PR professionals, I wanted to give a shout out to three good friends from the old world of traditional PR that you don’t want to overlook in the mad rush to embrace all things social media.

So, my credentials. I’ve promoted everything from Kinkos and McDonald’s to hot high-tech startups and even the BodPod on Good Morning America. PR for me is all about results. Whatever it takes to get results as long as you don’t burn bridges – that’s how I see it. Be smart, be useful, show restraint, add value.

Specifically, there are three things from the old media world of PR that I think every practitioner still needs to understand and do better.

1) Contributed articles – typically, these are pieces written by a vendor for a publication that provides a series of criteria for acceptance (vendor neutrality is usually #1 requirement). While there are reputable publications that accept contributed articles (eWeek and Network World come to mind), there is an order of magnitude greater number of online publications that are suspect. In other words, their filter for excellence is porous at best. Now, I’m not talking about professional trade journals published quarterly by associations with peer review. I’m talking about contributed ‘cons.’ If you’re counting client clips at the end of the month, you know what I’m talking about – begins with an S and ends with ‘con.’ Don’t con your clients. Takeaway – go big or go home. A clip in a publication no one has ever heard of is a waste of your time and your client’s retainer.

2) Product reviews – tread carefully as bad reviews live forever on Google searches. First, do NOT submit your product for a review if you can’t find the time to make sure to prepare a reviewer’s guide. Assuming you have at least a basic reviewer’s guide, there are many types of reviews with varying degrees of depth you can consider. There are competitive bake-off reviews. There are reviews written from demos alone (if even that). There are reviews by established labs (unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer every day) under the supervision of eWeek, InfoWorld, Informationweek or CRN, for example. But, even some of these pubs “outsource” their reviews to freelancers. Some advice – avoid bake-off reviews whenever your product is more expensive. I’ve seen a number of examples where cost influenced the reviewer over functionality. It’s not too surprising since they have to crank out a lot of reviews and can’t spend too much time on each product. If you do get a standalone review with a reputable source – I’ve always felt Cameron Sturdevandt stood out here – drop everything and be available for them. Send a competent body to help with configuration who can answer all questions on the spot (even if you have to put them on a plane). Answer email and phone questions within an hour. Make it as easy on the reviewer as possible. Lastly, don’t try to get reviews if your product is not ready – you can’t fool all of the people any of the time.

3) Company mention – this is where your company, along with a string of other companies, is mentioned in an article. I see these types of mentions as mush. Tapioca pudding. Cream of Wheat. Sure, you want to make sure you’re included in the discussion – it is bad if you’re not included – but it will hardly move the results meter. Frankly, I think it’s mostly unscrupulous PR firms who rely on these drive-by mentions to pad their monthly client reports.

Here’s a bigger idea to chew on – people sell PR short by thinking of media opportunities as a 1:1 ratio. That is, client briefs reporter – reporter writes story – it goes live – it is listed under client news section. Instead, focus on using media opportunities and successes and discussion to breed other media opportunities and successes and discussion.

There’s a reason Twitter is exploding and newspapers are going out of business.