The Decoder

In the good old days, communications were limited to face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and snail mail. Remember the excitement that came with opening up a hand-written, sticker-adorned, customized letter from a pen pal? Or physically picking up the phone to catch up with a long-lost friend? Now, in the time that it takes to grab a cup of coffee, you can send three work-related e-mails, view your friend’s pictures from a recent trip to Japan, and update your status on Twitter - all through your mobile device.

As the days of personal touches and face-to-face contact being commonplace move further into the past, and businesses become more reliant on receiving information instantaneously, how’s a PR professional supposed to crack the communication code? When one journalist wants to be e-mailed a pitch, and the other wants to talk on the phone, how do you ever know the best way to work with the media?

Case and point: the recent Business Wire Media Breakfast we attended. The panelists, ranging from seasoned editors to younger, “2.0″ journalists, all differed in their communication preferences. When someone in the audience asked the golden question “how do you prefer to be contacted?,” guess how many opinions the panelists offered? That’s right fellow confused PR friends, all five panelists had something different to say. Between social media, e-mail, and phone, everyone wants pitches and communication tailored to their needs. It’s all just so confusing. PR people not only are required to memorize each journalists’ preferences between receiving an e-mail, a phone call, and what kind of follow up they prefer, but also they have to remember if they use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Web 2.0 technologies.

Certainly there are best practices you can follow. Be the typical, overly curious PR professional that you are and ask the right questions. Dig around social media, and find out if your reporter/editor is on Twitter or Facebook, learn their schedules, work with them to determine the best time and way to connect, and find out their personal likes and dislikes. In all relationships - personal and professional - it’s about making a common connection - simply getting to know the folks with whom you work on a regular basis can remedy some of the confusion.

But can you truly crack the communication code? Have we made things worse by relying so heavily on digital tools to build relationships or are these tools actually helpful in bridging the PR-journalist gap? Has the PR-journalist relationship become overcomplicated or have you found a way to keep it simple? Share your thoughts, ideas, and gripes - we want to hear ‘em!

Each month, we put our two cents in about the stuff that’s just a little controversial, discussing everything from the latest news on the Twitter feed down to innovative and “out-of-the-box” PR strategies.  Doing something interesting at your agency?  Share it with us.  Time to put your thinking caps on folks.