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Mar 22 2016

Surviving the Transition: Q&A with Lisa Wrenn, Bay Area News Group Executive Features Editor

Column sig photo for Lisa Wrenn, Executive Features Editor in the Mercury News photo studio in San Jose on Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

The Bay Area News Group (BANG) is a model of digital transformation, whether it’s expanding digital advertising, producing videos, or building responsive mobile sites. And the group’s consolidation of several Bay Area daily papers over the years is a direct response to declining revenues now that the Internet has changed the business model. At the same time BANG is trying to meet readers’ demands for more focused regional news. As Lisa explains, “Our challenge now is how to cover our large circulation area most effectively with our limited resources.”

I sat down with Lisa to learn how the transition from print to digital has affected her role as editor and the nature of local news today.

How has your role as an editor changed in the last 10 years?

My role as a manager is more important than ever. I’m managing change, and I’m required to do more things with fewer people. I have to identify people’s strengths and weaknesses, and fine tune the job to get their best work. My biggest challenge may be keeping up morale for people who haven’t had a raise in years!

Personally, my strongest skill set was working with writers on long narrative stories, but today we’re writing shorter and faster. I miss the luxury of working one-on-one with a writer to make a story even stronger. Still, we care a lot about integrity, so we work hard to get it right and get it first.

How has the transition from paper to digital affected the stories you publish?

The biggest difference is that now we have to drive traffic to our sites, and that drives how we make news decisions. What we think readers should know and what will drive traffic are sometimes in conflict. We like to take on big local issues, and we have a reporter who covers city hall, but even with local news we often are looking for a headline that is search engine friendly.

“Eat, Drink, Play” is one section that happily came about because we had to do something differently. We decided to make our former Food and Travel sections more Northern-California-specific to make it more valuable to regional readership. In print, our Thursday Eye for Mercury News readers and the Entertainment section, and TO Weekend sections also are somewhat zoned and we focus on local arts. At the same time, if people want to Google a pop star we want the search to lead to us, so I have to be on top of pop culture news too.

What is the best way for PR pros to work with BANG reporters?

Take time to get to know what we’re looking for and who to reach out to. I get pitches all the time from people who don’t even know where our paper is located! It’s okay to say, “I’m not sure if you’re the right person” and send me a pitch as long you’re aiming in the right direction. I get tons of business pitches, and if one is good I will forward it to the right reporter or editor.

Email is still the best way to go, and a follow-up phone call doesn’t hurt. I get hundreds of emails a day so I have to triage, but I will listen to a thoughtful call and reply. And another tip: Include a color photo with an event pitch. In Features, at least, we are very art driven and if we get a good image that gives us more options we’ll use it in a best bet capacity.

Photo: Column sig photo for Lisa Wrenn, Executive Features Editor in the Mercury News photo studio in San Jose on Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Written by Shelly · Categorized: Editors, Journalism, Pitching Stories, PR Writing, Public Relations, Reporters, Uncategorized · Tagged: article, articles, content, coverage, executives, interviews, journalist, journalists, media, pitch, pitching, PR, press, press release, reporter

Oct 17 2012

The PR Honeymoon is Over… Now What?

You’ve just completed a successful PR launch for a new medical device that yields faster post-operative recovery for cardiac surgery patients, the clinical trial results have been published in a medical journal and the FDA has approved it for safety and efficacy.  Health and science journalists from top media outlets thought it was unique enough to cover.  The articles have been very respectable by startup standards.

Investors are delighted and all 20 employees are singing your praises.  You’ve had lots to tweet about and post on the company Facebook page and the retweets and comments are rolling in.

But eventually the PR bloom will fall off the rose and the board will be expecting the next wave of coverage.  Customers are not quite ready to go on record, nor are surgeons who are trying out the product.  What do you do?

While you have focused on generating broad coverage with great success the second wave of brand building requires a new PR strategy to sustain momentum.  It’s the right time to narrow your PR focus to reach your target customers – the surgeons who will push their hospitals for acquire your device; the patients who will benefit; the investors who see a healthy ROI.  Identify the publications, blogs and other digital destinations where surgeons and post op nursing staff get their medical news and information.  Set up specific PR programs to penetrate this second tier media: trade publications, medical journals, blogs, etc.

First, research healthcare and medical publications read by your customers. Check out the magazine editorial calendars which schedule feature stories throughout the year to drive advertising spending.  Identify the topics related to your device.  Set up a spreadsheet and populate with those publications and topics.  Pitch your new device and how it shortens patient recovery times in unique ways.  Invite the editor – or assigned writer to interview your company founder.

Develop a thought leadership program for company clinical executives by proposing and ghostwriting articles for those same publications, which are often looking for content, especially for their websites.  These articles help position executives as experts who articulate the problem your device solves — but doesn’t shamelessly promote it.

Don’t forget to post and Tweet all PR driven content on Facebook and Twitter.  Reshape these articles into blog posts, or add an introductory paragraph with a link to your published article.

Start a speakers’ bureau and arrange for speaking engagements at medical conferences and tradeshows where you’ll be exhibiting your product.

Find opportunities to announce the latest company news [following the initial product introduction]: a new round of funding; new customer; new executive hire; results of a clinical trial; etc.

Set up a mini PR program for new customers with a news release template that lets them announce the benefits of your product to the communities they serve and how they’re securing post-op safety for their cardiac patients.

Develop a story around the company founder for the business media; who she is; what inspired her to create a solution; her unique journey that led to the invention of the device.

Set up Google alerts on cardiology or cardiac surgery. Use headline news stories as angles to introduce your company to the media; pitch the founder as a guest for a radio talk show.

The honeymoon will end at some point so don’t ignore the myriad ways you can use PR to promote your company’s accomplishments.

 

Written by Laura R. · Categorized: Public Relations, Uncategorized · Tagged: articles, coverage, executives, facebook, health, healthcare, journalists, media, medical device, PR, startup, Twitter

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