Report: enterprise tech coverage in business media non existent

The folks from ITDatabase recently issued a concise report on the state of enterprise IT business media coverage. It's yet another reminder to those of us in the trenches who represent B2B technology clients just how difficult it can be to crack the titles featured in the report.

What I found odd, however, was the ridiculous percentage (82%) of PR pros who thought the "business press focused on companies with the most revenue or adoption." I'm shocked by this on so many levels.

As soon as we can agree that business media tend to cover interesting individuals & creative corporations relevant to the reader's life, then we can discuss the reasons why "enterprise IT is treated like consumer tech's snaggletoothed twin - it barely even makes the family photo."

In order to improve those B2B tech coverage numbers, it's our (PR) responsibility to 1) anticipate the media's agenda; 2) translate the agenda into client relevant story angles/ideas; 3) sell the angle/idea to the client stakeholders; 4) guide them out of their product talking point comfort zone; 5) and bring the package back to the biz tech reporter to begin the pitch discussion. 

It's certainly not our job to say to the client: "Well, if you just increase Acme's revenues by 50%, we can then secure an interview with Steve Lohr or Ben Worthen." If I read the report correctly, sadly, too many PR pros believe this is the winning approach.

Am I off base?

Comments

[TravisV]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for taking a look.

I actually beg to differ that it's shocking that PR folks would assume that revenues / profits have a correlation on business press coverage. Business press publications posture to inform BUSINESS readers - readers who by definition are more interested in financial trends and the flow of dollars than the average reader ( not just fun consumer stories based on daily life experiences). Hence, it is surprising to see how little correlation there is between actual revenues and companies / topics being discussed.

I don't think that many tech PR people are so unsophisticated that they think upticks in revenues equate to coverage.

But the report raises questions about biz press' RELEVANCE to enterprise IT and to enterprise IT buyers.

This is more of a personal editorial (and not in the report, which is relatively objective), but look how biz press falls for the hottest-buzzed-up-enterprise-tech story every year hook line and sinker. "Cloud computing" was "On Demand" 10 years ago, then "utility computing" then "grid computing" and so on. The same general hosting / infrastructure discussions that biz press loves to ignore 99.99% of the time they suddenly pivot towards once it has a nice little new bow tie. People that work in the IT industry roll their eyes, because what constitutes a "business press tech story" is frequently a very low IQ version of the realities of what are happening in the market.

Religious discussion? Sure. But many PR firms are choosing - rather than spinning enterprise IT client wheels to either dumb down or sensationalize stories to be interesting / titillating to biz press (which seems to be the only way biz press pays attention to enterprise) - to instead focus the energies on the authors that actually cover enterprise with depth.

As the report notes, there are some outstanding individual business press authors (who regularly cover enterprise IT vendors and themes). But they are a very tiny lot. It's reasonable to wonder how relevant business press is to enterprise IT on the whole (and hence, how much time should be spent trying to drive a round peg into a square hole).

[Rich Young]

Thanks for the feedback, Travis. My point is that business readers/viewers/listeners aren’t solely looking for content predicated around P/E ratios and fluctuating market caps, as they are not all number crunching wonks. Just as the readers/viewers/listeners of InfoWorld and eWEEK are not all code crunching propeller nerds. They want to be entertained while becoming informed.

I think we both agree that the pickings are slim these days for biz media reporters who (more regularly) cover B2B type stories. But why should that count out a middleware provider client who has an interesting story to tell? Tell it to someone else on the masthead if you think it’s worthy enough. My team has taken that approach for quite some time now with stellar results.

It’s also up to us in PR to extract those stories from the client and then make the determination what’s relevant for the outlet/reporter and what is not (i.e. Fortt will not give a darn about your v6.7.1 bug fix).

[TravisV]

I agree. ;)

The same way "the best product doesn't always win" - I think the results suggest that it's not the most important tech vendors that get biz press, it's the ones that do the best job (have the most PR talent) adapting to (or triggering) what the biz press find interesting to write about.

What I personally find objectionable however is the notion that entertainment value should be THE criteria for biz press tech coverage, as it seems to have become. When I hit Yahoo, I expect to see some salacious lead story 100% of the time, because they're obviously just corralling eyeballs.

But I think business readers have more sophisticated requirements (for investment research in particular) than being entertained. I think the tech investor is the one that's left out in the cold when so many huge areas of tech spending are neglected by such high profile publications who focus >90% of their discussion on consumer tech.