Unbidden, the same description has come up for our agency’s style of public relations again and again. The editors we work with call us “pleasantly persistent.” That’s persistent as in tenacious, assertive, and maybe even dangerously close to over the top in our eagerness to sell a story or to strike a great PR deal. Our consultants aren’t obnoxious – never rude or threatening – but we’re the persistent people who are full of good ideas and who just aren’t going away.


It’s a valuable principle.


How many great stories went unpublished and great deals went unsold because someone was too hesitant to step up and ask? Or stopped asking after floating the first gentle request?


A great personal growth coach, Pamela Maier, once stated, “You’ll never know what someone might be willing to do if you don’t ask.” She was right.


Many of the greatest PR wins we’ve accomplished were won for that very reason: We were bold enough to ask. Politely, of course. There’s much more to a great PR pitch than just asking, but none of those skills will matter to a person who isn’t bold enough to step up to the plate.


This principle applies to our strongest clients as well. Here’s a great case in point: Mike Proper, CEO of DirectPointe, has led that company from its inception to its current level of growth and presence in 29 countries and all 50 states. In fact, DirectPointe has been named the top Managed Service Provider (MSP) in the world, ranking number one on the MSPMentor 100 list for 2008.


Mike wanted to meet MSPMentor’s Managing Editor, Joe Panettieri, in person at the recent CompTIA Breakaway event in Orlando. Did they connect? Indeed, they did. You can read all about it in Joe’s blog this week, Meet America’s Most Progressive MSP. Here’s what Joe had to say:


“He called me and text messaged me more than a dozen times during CompTIA Breakaway. He runs a fast-growing managed service provider. And he isn’t using traditional technologies to do so. Who is this guy, and why does he want to talk to MSPmentor?


“…I’m glad Mike tracked me down. And when I describe him as ‘aggressive,’ I mean that as a positive rather than a negative. Whether it’s his pursuit of a face-to-face meeting or a sale, the guy doesn’t quit.”


You can read Joe’s entire article on MSPmentor.


The moral of the story is clear. In PR and in business, the ability to be “pleasantly persistent” can clearly pay off.


Cheryl Snapp Conner, Managing Partner

Most typically, PR consultants operate in the background, heard but not necessarily seen. Today, however, we can't resist putting the following photo of our Senior Consultant Clay Blackham in lights. Notice the stunning mustache? Until the hour before his mother's wedding, Clay declared his intention to wear this manly addition to his persona all the way to the end. At the final minute, however, he relented and shaved the offending bristles once full shock value had been achieved.


In honor of the occasion, however, our partner in podcast Brad Baldwin has immortalized Clay's macho appearance in film. With all due respect and apologies to the original source files, today we share the true and typically hidden personality of Clay. Enjoy.

This morning, we'd like to congratulate our client DirectPointe on their #1 ranking on the first-ever MSPMentor 100 list, a ranking of the world's most progressive Managed Service Providers (MSPs). More than 500 MSPs had entered this ranking. Based on a number of metrics comparing fiscal 2007 to fiscal 2006, DirectPointe clearly wins.

Where does social media play into this equation? The MSPMentor 100 project is the outgrowth of a new brainchild by leading IT and channel editor Joe Panettieri. Joe has been a renown editor for 16 years for publications including Informationweek, CMP and Ziff Davis Media. However, the MSPMentor multimedia platform and its accompanying publications and programs are new.

You won't find his editorial calendar on Bacons (Yes, we subscribe. As everyone should!)

We found out about Joe's new project through a posting he made on LinkedIn in early January. SCPR became DirectPointe's PR agency of record on January 15; Joe's deadline for submission was December 28. I know Joe well enough from his prior engagements that I jumped in and begged him for a slight extension. He agreed – and based on DirectPointe's breakout performance in 2007, today we are able to announce the company's win.

What if the world's top MSP had missed this opportunity entirely? Clearly, social networking is a force today's PR professionals can no longer afford to ignore.

Cheryl Snapp Conner

Managing Partner

This morning was the annual Utah Technology Council (UTC) public relations event. This event has become increasingly popular—the third year UTC has offered it. The topic was New Media (surprise!) the fundamentals and forecast for 2008.

Three experts presented: Malcolm Atherton, regional lead and SEO expert for BusinessWire; Brad Baldwin, podcaster, pundit and co-founder of Utah's Rocky Mountain Voices; and R. Dean Taylor, VP Marketing and Sales for COMPLETExRM (a strategy and development partner of FranklinCovey) and the founding executive of Caldera who was instrumental in launching the Open Source user community that helped to create and define the Linux market.

All three speakers had interesting things to say about social networking and search optimization. Malcolm noted the growing prevalence of RSS, blogs and microblogs (like Twitter), social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us, multimedia and universal search tools. Malcolm notes that while bloggers are now generally considered full credentialed members of the press, they often operate under different rules. They need to be approached differently than traditional journalists. And for PR professionals: You have officially now lost control. Our job is to recognize it, deal with it, and find the ways to embrace this fact as we move on.

Brad Baldwin talked about the growing popularity of video media, and the roles this medium played at last week's CES. At least one company Brad mentioned, Celio Corp., used a podcast as the first-ever appearance of its REDFLY Mobile Companion. A quick Google News search on REDFLY will tell the rest of that tale: the story spread like wildfire and more than 22 news stories were out before CES even began. Brad also recommends PR folks interested in social networking get acquainted with Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research Social Computing. Jeremiah publishes a weekly update, www.web-strategist.com.

Dean Taylor talked about finding the holes in the information vector and identifying the ways your company and message can fill those gaps. He advocates forgetting the myopic focus on “message" and instead stresses the importance of the “concept." Feed your news – in a highly web optimized fashion – in a way that fills those holes and you'll effectively stimulate what Dean calls the “Piranha effect." As a case study, Dean illustrated the recent announcement of COMPLETExRM – a strategy and development partner of FranklinCovey in the development of PlanPlus™ Online. Prior to this release, no one had ever heard of COMPLETExRM. So using all of these concepts, Dean and his PR team (yes, that was us—Snapp Conner PR) to identify the holes. In this case, it was tying the concept of Enterprise 2.0 to CRM (contact relationship management). No one had done that before, but we could see there was a significant interest and need.

COMPLETExRM also has some notable investors – most importantly, Donald L. Lucas, who has been instrumental on the boards of Oracle and Macromedia. He's never invested in a Utah company before, and there's a significant cadre of investors and industry watchers keenly tuned into what he might be doing next. Now they know.

The rest is history. Within three day of issuing its launch press release, COMPLETExRM had been picked up by 911 other sites. Within five days there were more than 10,000 pickups. Within nine days there were—wait for it—more than 7 million URLs linked to this single release. To say that social media is important for this company's launch would be a vast understatement.

All of these speakers are available for follow up discussion. They'll all be easy to trace—you can just search them on Google

Cheryl Snapp Conner

Managing Partner

In the Shameless Self Promotion Department, Snapp Conner PR is happy this week to have been acknowledged by David Strom and Paul Gillin in their TechPR War Stories podcast this week for best PR practices.

David describes the PR activities surrounding the Manage Fusion user conference for the Altiris Business Unit of Symantec in Orlando Florida. You can give a listen to David and Paul at the podcast link; click here.

Cheryl Snapp Conner

Managing Partner

Is it the relationship or the message? Here’s the headline: It’s both.

So what's the secret to getting the media's attention? Is it a carefully crafted message? Or is it really just a function of who you know? Here's the lowdown: It's both.

For more than twenty years, the field of public relations and the media itself has seen some astounding changes. However the age-old argument between who you know and what you know remains strong. Is success a matter of providing the best and most targeted pitch to the most carefully targeted reporter? Or is it a pure and simple matter of being able to call who you know? (a.k.a. the “black book" approach to PR.)

It's interesting to tap the opinions of current experts. As much as we'd like to claim the biggest factor is the ability to pitch a targeted story based on research, leading technology editors acknowledge that first and foremost, they continue to give their best responses to the people they know.

Here's some interesting information from leading editors Paul Gillin and David Strom. Paul is founding editor of TechTarget and former editor-in-chief and executive editor of Computerworld. David Strom is former editor-in-chief at both Tom’s Hardware.com and Network Computing magazine, and now a podcaster, blogger, public speaker and freelance writer for a number of technology publications, the New York Times, and a long list of websites in the technology sector. Combined, they have been the recipients of thousands of media pitches over the past 20 years.

In a recent podcast on Tech PR War Stories, David and Paul shared their insights on what currently works. And the verdict?

According to David, “The majority of the time, it's still who I know. The pitches that work best are based on a relationship I've had with the PR person; someone who I've had trusted interactions with over the years, who knows me, knows what I write about, and is respectful of my time."

Even more surprisingly, Paul Gillin agrees: “There is no substitute for familiarity. I can probably count on the fingers of two hands the people I always respond to, and it's the result of relationships that have developed over a number of years."

So what are the secrets to pitching an editor you don't know? Is it a lost cause? No, it isn't.

The second most critical factor, according to David and Paul, is preparation.

Says Paul: “Knowledge about a reporter's interest is paramount. There's no excuse for not having that knowledge. Do a Google search. Check Linked In. Who are my contacts, and do you know any of those? In this day of technology, there's no excuse not to be armed with some information about that person and some of the things they're interested in."

David also recommends diligent follow up and follow through:

“If I ask a question and get an immediate response or a response within the business day, you will have my attention," he says. “I recently accepted a pitch and wrote a full review on a product that was pitched by a PR representative I didn't know, simply based on the fact that when I asked a question, he knew his stuff and he followed through."

So successful media relations is based on both what you know and who you know. Let's put that knowledge to work.

Cheryl Snapp Conner

Managing Partner