Designated Hitter

Designated Hitter

MEDIA TREND by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

Glenn Selig left a career as a TV anchorman and reporter to become an entrepreneur helping clients get covered in the media.

Gulf Coast small-business owners looking for coverage have a lot of options for getting the attention of journalists.

There are full-service public relations firms, which are very expensive. There are the newswire feeds that are just expensive. And then there is the small, local guy, such as Tampa entrepreneur Glenn Selig, who offers a third possible option:

Hire him.

Selig, a former TV reporter who caught the entrepreneur bug, offers to go to bat for small- to medium-size companies on the Gulf Coast and elsewhere to get their stories covered, taking the more personal approach.

Selig, 40, is president and CEO of Selig Multimedia, which produces PR Newschannel, a service that emails press releases to journalists and posts them on a Web site. Selig also offers coaching for his clients on crafting the releases and what kind of business event is newsworthy.

Working in TV news in California, Michigan and Florida, Selig spent time at Fox 13 in Tampa before taking more than $20,000 in personal savings and starting Selig Multimedia in Tampa in 2007.

He had been thinking of going into business for years while interviewing business owners for TV stories.

"I was envious when I covered their stories," Selig says. "They made a difference. I had some ideas. I made a go of it. I've had my share of challenges, but haven't looked back."

Selig has established a portfolio of communication companies in Tampa which are designed to support and help each other grow. They are:

• PRNewschannel, a press release distribution company, primarily for small businesses, to reporters and editors, via email, Google News and the PRNewschannel Web site.

• The Publicity Agency, a firm that does custom publicity work for clients.

• Press Release Pros, a Web site that concentrates on doing press releases.

• PRNewschannel.TV, a news site that caters to business.

• Interactive Dad, a free online magazine for fathers. It gives dads info on parenting, finance and family fun ideas.

• Interactive Dad TV, aimed at men 25 to 54, Interactive Dad TV distributes news stories on fatherhood to television stations across the country.

Glenn and an assistant make up the company and he hires freelance help as needed. He is searching to buy or lease office space and expects to start hiring other full-time employees in the future.

Selig is barely a David among some Goliath competitors, among them PR Newswire, with offices in 14 countries and owned by United Business Media in London, and BusinessWire, owned by Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Selig's strategy: Offer accessible, personal help to small- to medium-sized businesses at a lower cost and do it from the perspective of a journalist, not a public relations or marketing expert.

"They (the newswire companies) charge a whole lot more for not a whole lot more," Selig says. "We offer the consulting with it. We make sure the release is written properly. You're not just dealing with a machine and an operation. We look at every distribution."

While some of Selig's competitors recognize his journalistic and local niche, they disagree with his analysis about not offering more.

Both PR Newswire and BusinessWire have direct feeds into newsrooms and news organizations. So instead of relying on emails and a Web posting, journalists directly receive information from PR Newswire and BusinessWire. And both businesses offer lower pricing for statewide and city distribution.

"We reach them via dedicated news feeds into their newsroom," says Thomas Becktold, senior vice president of marketing with BusinessWire in Los Angeles. "We have patented hardwire that gets information to AP, Dow Jones, Reuters and Bloomberg, that get into newsrooms simultaneously to get to as wide an audience as possible. Email and posting won't cut it."

Rachel Meranus, vice president of public relations at PR Newswire in New York, says a PR Newswire national release goes to at least 4,000 Web sites and 4,700 media outlets. PR Newswire has partnered with smaller news distribution companies to disseminate news. Like Businesswire, it has expanded its distribution offerings and now distributes videos for companies.

Journalism roots

Like BusinessWire and PR Newswire, Selig stresses his roots in journalism as a selling point to clients, someone who approaches public relations from a journalist's perspective. BusinessWire was founded by a UPI reporter.

Selig sees himself as a direct contact for businesses who can build a relationship with him.

"What we offer is the personal touch and the personal connect," Selig says. "We know the audience very well. We know what angle will create and inspire the biggest result."

Some of his contacts have helped clients get mentioned on the Today Show and Good Morning America, among other TV programs.

He charges a flat fee for distribution on PR Newschannel: $369 for international distribution, $269 for national, $169 for three markets and $89 for one market.

BusinessWire charges $160 to reach a city and $650 nationally, for one press release. That hits 3,000 Web sites and goes directly into newsrooms.

PR Newswire also charges $650 for a national release and has lower rates for smaller distribution.

"One of the biggest mistakes with press releases is that companies think of them too much as a marketing tool versus how can their company help others," Selig says. "We approach it from that perspective: Why they should do a story, not to promote your company. It's about helping other people."

The other mistake businesses make in getting out corporate news is overdoing it.

"They kitchen sink it," Selig says. "They throw everything into a press release. You can't do that."

The Publicity Agency, Selig's other company, is all about media placement. It handles crisis communications because a lot of that includes working with the media.

"It can be the most challenging, but can be the most fun from my perspective," Selig says. "You've got to take control of that and get ahead of what's going on and figure out which way you're going to go as a company."

Since Selig Multimedia is still in startup mode, it is just building revenue, but Selig estimates it has grown about 30% to 40% in the past year.

The Publicity Agency has eight clients, one local and the rest in other states and in China. PR Newschannel has distributed press releases for hundreds of companies worldwide. The vast majority are U.S.-based. Some of the companies are from Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Thailand.

Selig's vision includes spending more time on the Publicity Agency and expanding into multimedia as well as publishing. Each company in his portfolio is designed to help the other.

"We're going to keep figuring out creative ways to get clients into the news," Selig says.

The competition, multimedia

BusinessWire considers itself the market leader in the news distribution industry by providing email services using targeted lists for clients. But that's not the core of what it does. Like PR Newswire, it reaches media through dedicated news feeds into their newsroom.

"We have direct relationships with major wire services," Becktold says. "They know us and trust us as a source. They will run our content on their wires as well."

Becktold says what Selig is doing is "great, but not a unique" offering.

"We can target news down to the level of a city," he says. "We can issue a press release. We can also post it onto a Web site. There are databases you can go to and you can build your own email list. Email isn't the greatest way to reach everyone. There are so many spam filters set up, so I don't know how effective that is."

One of the trends for the future in this industry is the growth of multimedia. Selig has set up PR Newschannel Video, a dedicated Web site for news stories. BusinessWire's feed is HTML based. PR Newswire has a sister company, MultiVu, that sends video data. One location is a giant screen in Times Square.

"Multimedia is the future because technology is making it easier to produce and share the content," Becktold says. "Any multimedia tends to improve the viewership. Google and Yahoo are pulling in that type of content. There is a huge difference in coverage. It is where things are moving."

In 2002, PR Newswire started MultiVu, a broadcast public relations company, and the industry veteran running it said there would be a shift toward more multimedia.

But there was a second shift: Companies started sending video to journalists. Today, more companies are looking to reach consumers directly through the Internet.

"The future is going to be about communicating with consumers," Meranus says.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company: Selig Multimedia

Industry: News dissemination

Key: Crafting press releases and working with the media to get clients' stories covered in the news media.