Dan Primack of Private Equity Week alerts us today to another 21st Century Media Relations issue we need to manage: making an unintentional personnel announcement via LinkedIn (or any other online contact management/social networking site).Here's what Dan wrote:
Polaris Venture Partners today announced that it has hired MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer as a senior advisor. They sent me a press release, put it on the wires, etc. And it would have been pretty noteworthy, had peHUB and most other outlets not first reported it yesterday.
The leak didn’t come out of Polaris or from an industry headhunter. Instead, it came from Kramer himself. Unintentionally.
The longtime journalist decided to update the his LinkedIn profile — a move that subsequently pinged Kramer’s contacts with word of the change. I don’t happen to be in Kramer’s network, but one of his people passed it on. And, just like that, Polaris’ big news is yesterday’s news.
As a rough estimate, I’ve written three dozen “people” items based on LinkedIn since beginning to use it a few years back. In fact, I wonder if it’s a better tool for journalists than for businesspeople.
Yup -- Press Release via
So, add this to your to-do list: remind new hires NOT to update their online profiles with their new job and contact information until after the press release goes out.
Please disregard the advice you just read.
ReplyDeletethank you,
a working journalist