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.