Pitching to the blogosphere's long tail

By far, Steve Rubel’s MicroPersuasion blog has been my favorite lately, especially for news and ideas related to blogging itself. Perhaps this site should have a featured recommended blog that can rotate whenever I get addicted to a new one? I already push headlines from a lot of weblogs relevant to the book on the Resources page, but you have to go looking for that.
Well, I’ll think about it next time I tweak the site’s design.
Anyhow, here’s what caught my eye this morning, quoting from How to Pitch Into the Long Tail News Curve

In a report (PDF) published last month, Morgan Stanley analysts Mary Meeker and Brian Pitz discussed the impact of the long tail of content on the news cycle. They compared this to a similar phenomenon that occurs on eBay. Typically, eBay users have the greatest opportunity to capitalize when selling products that are at either new/scarce or near the end of their lifecycle and hard to find. Much the same, bloggers are having the greatest impact at either the beginning or end of a news curve, the analysts wrote…

We believe that one could view Web content in a similar way. For news content, typically a few well-placed sources are privy to an event first, with the news then rushing into the mainstream. Traditionally, beat reporters disseminate the news to others; with online publishing, any individual with a keyboard (or a digital camera or other recording devices) can disseminate information quickly. At the end of the tail – as time goes on – the news becomes the subject of more nuanced discussion. While many blogs deal with mainstream content, their very nature makes them ideal for dealing with the tails at the beginning and the end.

Last week I wrote about the long tail of content for iMedia Connection and urged marketers to get on board. This week, as a follow up, I thought I would explain one way PR people can immediately convert this theory into an executable media outreach strategy by pitching into the evolving news curve. Feel free to print this out and plug it right into your PR playbook.

As we say in the blogosphere, “read the whole thing.”