In “The Right and Wrong of PR Pitches“, he discusses what is probably the perfect example of what good PR should be from the journalists perspective. Since it’s Yelp that did the PR work (and they get social media) it doesn’t shock me to hear that they impressed John. He talks about what he liked from the PR outreach side, there, but let me go into a little detail one of the points that he quickly sketches over because he probably assumes that you know what he’s talking about:

First PR lesson – track, filter, and engage brand mentions.

In my articles on the sidebar, I go into using Google Alerts to track mentions of your brand (and that’s a great start), but you should also look into using some other services on top of that now.

• TweetBeep or TweetAlarm are both  good services for keeping on top of Twitter mentions of specific phrases or words, but I’m personally fond of the Seesmic Desktop to keep running searches of the phrases and words that matter to me.
• If you’re like me and follow roughly a hojillion different blogs, a service like FeedRinse can be invaluable, letting you search and organize your feeds so that you only read what interests you.
• Filtrbox is an excellent paid solution for someone who’s looking to maximize his or her brand engagement across blogs, Twitter, and other social media.

That said, I promised you 5 ways to use these tools to slow pitch to the media as John Jantsch recommends. Here you go:

1. Keyword-Based Searching: Pick out keywords that your brand (or yourself!) can speak on with authority. When people write about those words or phrases, respond to ‘em. (That’s more or less what John Jantsch recounts in the above blog article)
2. Brand-Based Searching: Not quite the same as “keyword based”, since you’re looking for any instance of your brand being mentioned on the ‘Net, instead of people writing about a topic. Whether they’re rants or raves, you should make sure to engage the consumer when they talk about you; it will frequently turn an unhappy customer into a happy one, and a happy customer into a thrilled one. Just knowing that someone’s listening is a big help for many consumers.
3. Information Gathering: Once you’ve found media outlets who write about what it is that you have to say, you should still make a point to contact them with more information as you gather it. Keep it timely, of course, but if you find out something about a new product or initiative that’s launched recently and which is applicable to a recently-covered topic, then go ahead and pass it on.
4. Trending Topics: Through Twitter and Technorati, it’s easy to keep on top of what’s breaking on the ‘Net. If your brand has a legitimate stake in a trending topic, sending out a friendly note to journalists & bloggers with whom you’ve previously corresponded with both an overview of information as well as a note on what it is that your brand has to offer as commentary will help you get ahead of trends and keep your brand in the news.  (Note that your brand needs to have a valid opinion on a trending topic lest you find yourself mocked on something like the Bad Pitch Blog)
5. Identify New Influencers: Using your keyword and brand-based alerts, you’ll obviously see who’s talking about you. Something you should be taking notice of, though, is how often you’re seeing a particular blog or twitter profile posting about your subject or brand. Notice who’s got a growing following (which you can check on Twitterholic or Technorati, depending on whether you want to see someone’s twitter following or blog reach, respectively) and cultivate them as a contact. When they’re looking for a new quote or a topic idea, they’ll turn to you. And that’s really what the slow pitch is about achieving: a relationship with journalists and bloggers where they come to view you as a source for information and a person whose emails or calls they know will e valuable to them.

The “slow pitch” builds over time and increases your reputation and reliability with news outlets until they are happy to hear from you. It takes time, but ask yourself this question after reading John’s article: the next time Yelp sends John Jantsch an email, what do you think the chances are that he’ll open & read it? Pretty good, I imagine.

Now go out and find the people who are having conversations you care about and start a dialog.

Further reading:

• Ten Free Tools To Kick Your Social Media Cynicism to the Ground (nettiehartsock.com)
• Three Best Ways to Use Social Media (online.wsj.com)
• What’s In Your Twitter Toolbox? (twitterrati.com)
• Managing Your Reputation Online: 5 Essential Tools (computerworld.com)