Print Media Dying a Slow Death. Get Social and Get Online.

Erica Morris from PR Week wrote an article about a 2010 Media Survey they worked with CA Walker to conduct. Data is based on completed surveys from 268 media professionals and 285 PR professionals during January 11-19. Results were tested at a confidence level of 90%.

The findings were very interesting. A few findings stood out for me:

1. Growing importance (and acceptance) of pitching to journalists through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
2. Half of surveyed journalists say that only 0-25% of pitches they receive are related to what they cover.
3. Nearly 40% of journalists say pitches incorporating multimedia and high res photos help them better understand a story.
4. 84% of journalists consider email the best way to receive pitches.
5. Nearly 60% of journalists expect a further decline in print circulation and growing importance on the Web and other online channels. A blog post I made yesterday on HRmarketer discussed how the S.F. Chronicle circulation dropped 22 percent in last year! While there are exceptions we are seeing a definite trend of dropping circulations amongst print media.  

My reaction to these points:

• Senior Care vendors must do a better job at connecting, following and using social media in their media relations. Our SeniorCareMarketer.com customers have plenty of tools available to facilitate this including our database of social networking account information for senior care and boomer media and our real-time feeds of their media tweets. But they are not being used to there maximum value by most vendors.
• Knowing journalists prefer email is a plus for companies using SeniorCareMarketer.com because they can send media releases to senior care and boomer journalists. But many vendors still do not engage in ongoing media relations. This is a missed opportunity. 
• Finally, the fact that 50% of journalists say that only 0-25% of pitches they receive are related to what they cover is shocking to me. Elrond Lawrence, one of our media relations experts at our sister product HRmarketer, wrote several articles on effective media relations - read them here. And SeniorCareMarketer.com customers should review the notes we compile for journalists before sending them news releases (e.g., what they cover, what they want, etc.).

The bottom line is that print media is dying a slow death as online visibility grows in importance. More and more data is confirming this fact. As a result, companies targeting seniors and boomers  must aggressively invest in social media, SEO, SEM and other tactics that result in online visibility, web site traffic and sales leads.

Here are some free resources from SeniorCareMarketer that discuss many of the above points.