I was pleased to see Technology Reseller covering the story of Deeside-based support services provider, Pro-Networks, becoming an Employee-Owned-Trust (EOT). This is the business model most famously used by John Lewis, and it could be something more IT businesses will consider in the future.
It’s not often you see such a simple, good-news story being run by channel media sites. But it is certainly worth covering. It will make other channel businesses think about the way they are organised and how they motivate, incentivise, and retain their workers in the long term. The shortage of skilled staff is a big problem for the channel right now.
The Pro-Networks story may have been the result of the company issuing a press release, or it may be that the Technology Reseller team picked up on a Tweet from the company and clicked through to the blog post on its website. The story is also covered on The Business Desk, which covers the north-west, and on Insider Media Wales, both of which are SMB news sites. It’s possible that these sites might have also picked it up from Twitter.
But it is nowhere else to be seen and this suggests to me that it has not been issued as a press release. If that’s the case, I’d suggest Pro-Networks will have missed out on a bit of coverage. Had it landed in their Inbox, channel editors may have used it.
There was a period some years ago when it became fashionable NOT to issue press releases in the belief that news could be spread more effectively via social media. This soon wore off. Channel journalists simply don’t have the time to constantly scan Twitter and LinkedIn for every potentially relevant post, and then click through to assess whether it’s useful or not. Yes, they may well use this as one of their sources, but most prefer stories to drop directly into their Inbox. It’s quicker and easier to read them and assess their newsworthiness that way.
This is why we continue to advocate the use of formal press releases as part of your media activity. Of course, you should still post on LinkedIn and Twitter. But you can’t expect channel media to always pick up on stories that way.
The real trick though is to keep coming up with the relevant stories.
If you’d like to hear our views or discuss channel media communications and relationships, please feel free to get in touch.
