In the coming months we’ll need to be on the road to places like the Cattle Industry Convention, Commodity Classic or NRECA Convention. We’ll still bring you news and information from the world of Talking News Releases since we can post by email or even mobile phone! In fact, this post is a first by email.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o />
Look in your inbox for a special offer coming out this week from ZimmComm!
Talking News Releases (TNR’s) can take lots of different forms. The Missouri Beef Industry Council has us distribute a weekly TNR to Missouri radio reporters. Instead of a news release with sound bites we produce a fully self-contained interview called “The MBIC Report.” In this picture Chuck is interviewing Steve Taylor, Executive Director of the Missouri Beef Industry Council, about the upcoming Cattle Industry Annual Convention & Trade Show in San Antonio, TX. An emailed description of the interview is sent, along with an embedded link to the audio file that is streamed on our website that can air “live” or reporters can edit out the sound bites they want. This helps the MBIC communicate how it’s using cattlemen’s investment in the Beef Checkoff and provides the reporters with immediate audio they can use to make their reports sound better. Everyone wins! 
We’re amazed by the number of PR people who aren’t familiar with blogging, especially when it comes to agribusiness. It’s also amazing that ag-related blogs are kind of hard to find. This will change and now’s the time to get a jump start on using this great form of communication.
Here’s a piece of a series of articles on why you should consider a blog for your business or client that was posted on Bob Cargill’s blog. He works for Yellowfin Direct Marketing. You can find the posts at http://www.afinekettleoffish.blogspot.com/.
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Why Advertising, Marketing and PR Pros Should Blog (Part One)
Most advertising, marketing and public relations professionals know a blog when they see one, but when it comes to actually using this relatively new, self-publishing platform, there are still many skeptics and naysayers among us. This time next year, however, those people will likely have come to their senses. In 2005, I dare say you would have to be either misinformed or just plain obstinate to not at least consider adding a blog to your business plan. Here are ten reasons why:
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Happy blogging!
Now you can keep up with the latest posts on Talking News Releases.com! If you have a news reader program you should be able to subscribe to our site feed. At the top of the page you’ll see a link to our feed. Just subscribe and then you’ll get a short piece of each new post, along with a link to it on the blog. It’s simple. And since it’s not email you don’t have to worry about things like spam or unwanted emails showing up in your inbox!
If you don’t have a news reader program go to this link to learn more: News Readers
Many of them are free and very easy to use.
Let us know what you think and we hope we can be of service.
This is the question everyone would like to know the answer to. If it were only easy!
Radio is such an immediate medium and reporters have multiple daily deadlines that it’s very difficult to obtain direct feedback on the use of releases sent to them. We’ve tried emailed survey forms with little result. As reporters ourselves we know how difficult it is to provide good feedback. Often a story may be used multiple times or held for future use.
There’s no cost-effective “clipping service” for radio. You can pay a lot of money to have a particular station monitored but what if your release is being sent to thousands of radio reporters?
ZimmComm is in the process of installing a new distribution software/email system which will in the future allow us to provide you with more feedback on who opens your emailed releases and downloads the audio files. With that information we’ll also be able to do more direct follow up with the reporters we send to on your behalf! We estimate about 2 months before the new system is in place.
In the meantime we continue to send releases for very happy clients who obtain sufficient anecdotal feedback on release usage that they believe in the value of this added method of getting PR value for the releases they produce!
So far this week we’ve sent releases to over 1,500 reporters in 31 states for several clients!
We’re exploring the idea of offering you RSS feeds of your releases. More to come on this new and very logical way of getting even more mileage from your release.
VALUE-ADDED – adj : being or pertaining to something added to a product to increase its value or price; “software supplied by a value-added distributor”; “a value-added tax.”
So how does this apply to radio?
As you do your spring planning, think about including Talking News Releases in your media mix for added value!
Most companies and agencies are looking for added value when it comes to buying radio these days. Often that comes in the form of feature programming and news stories for the client on the station or network. Talking News Releases are the way to provide a consistent message to all your target markets, without tying up the time of one or more spokespeople doing interviews with a number of different broadcasters.
We’ll do the interviews with your spokespeople, then provide the stations and networks in your buy with complete stories, sound bites with copy, and/or long form interviews. The audio can also be regionalized for different audiences with different messages.
This blog is being designed to provide public relations professionals with a resource to learn more about using radio in their plans. Radio is the often overlooked medium and there’s good reason for that. You’ve got so many radio stations and formats that it can be overwhelming to think that you can figure out how to reach reporters and others who work at these facilities.
Through our on-going series of postings we hope to show the effectiveness of radio and creative ideas for getting information about your products and services to your clients or members.
The ZimmComm team (Chuck & Cindy) have spent over 20 years each working in the business and are using that experience to refine their Talking News Release service. This service is currently the only one of its kind.
We hope you’ll find the information coming in future postings to be very helpful in learning more about the radio medium and how to use and justify using it.
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Hello from ZimmComm, the home of Talking News Releases.
We will be posting information about our services here as we start developing our website more. Our main focus will be on this blog though as a tool to communicate with our clients and prospective clients.
You may want to know what a Talking News Release is. If you’re patient and have a high speed connection you can download a narrated PowerPoint presentation from our home page at zimmcomm.biz. It’s a 28 mb file so it takes a couple minutes to download. But it’s worth it.
More to come . . .
Obviously we haven’t been very active on our blog yet. Give us time. We’re still a startup company. Gotta lot of work to do on our website too.
But we’ve been busy. Our Talking News Release service has attracted a lot of attention and we have several new clients just in the past week.
New to the ZimmComm client family is Dow AgroScience and Machinery Link. More are being planned over the next month. Thank you to all the people who have used our service.
Radio is the often overlooked medium when it comes to public relations. One of the reasons is that there are so many radio stations, making it difficult to keep up with them and the people who produce news. We do it for you with our database of radio station news directors, which we can sort by state or just about any area including format of station.
Enough for now. More to come.
Hello from ZimmComm. We’re just getting this blog set up so bear with us. We’ve got to learn how to use it and get it linked on our website.
We’ll be updating information about projects we’re working on, places we’ll be and services we offer. Check in from time to time to see what’s new in the communications world!
Chuck
