Using All the Tools

B. L. Ochman takes issue with our announcement about Nooked, one of our clients. Aside from disapproving of our release headline (it’s hardly Pulitzer material, but I’ve read and written worse), she complains that:

Nothing is said in the release or on the site about how journos will be enticed to read the press releases in the feeds…Of course Nooked couldn’t find a way to get this release to me via an RSS feed. Duh. The company has a blog about RSS feeds, and if the publicist knew how to promote the blog, its RSS feed could have made the announcement.

In our experience, we don’t need to convince journalists to use RSS. They’re already adopting it to monitor their beats. Every technology reporter I talk to uses it, and many journalists from other sectors are getting on board. Perhaps Ms. Ochman’s experience has been different, but we don’t think that’s a battle that needs to be fought.

At Capulet, we’re pretty familiar with blogs. The company has one, Darren has one, as do several of our clients. As this Technorati search demonstrates, we’ve been talking about Nooked with a number of bloggers. In theory, we could only pitch the story to the mainstream press and let it trickle down to the bloggers, but that’s not how we work.

Yes, Nooked has a blog and an RSS feed, and yes, the media release is on it. Any number of savvy bloggers will discover the story through PubSub subscriptions and Technorati searches. Still, RSS is just a tool. Email is a tool, too, and a ubiquitous one (I note, for example, that you can sign up on Ms. Ochman’s site to receive new blog posts via email). As PR professionals, we’re using all the tools at our disposal. We’re not about to abandon our most popular and tested communications medium just yet. That would be a disservice to our clients, don’t you think?