I was recently reading a sagacious study called What do Journalists Want? New Rules of Media Relations in the Digital Era. According to the report, about 50 percent of journalists who were surveyed are frustrated by irrelevant pitches via social media—and 26 percent admit they don’t like mass media pitches.

Based on that information, I wondered: Are the rules of the “new media relations” really that different from the old?

I am inclined to think that the rules aren’t new. This was abundantly clear as I reviewed a training piece that I wrote several years ago for one of my media training seminars. My first five pitching rules were:

1. Do your homework: Know the reporters, their beat, their preferences, the media outlet and the target audience.
2. The pitch should be relevant and newsworthy. Don’t waste a media member’s time with something that isn’t news so you can tell your client that you sent out a press release.
3. Build relationships and gain credibility. One well-targeted pitch that leads to one well-placed story is better than a mass mailing to reporters who end up writing nothing at all.
4. Follow up intelligently and courteously.
5. Hold yourself to the highest standards of honesty and ethics. Don’t ever compromise core values for short-term gains.

To this day, those rules still apply. What HAS changed over the years is the distribution vehicle in which we deliver our messages and our audiences who receive them. Our relationships, once confined to reporters, editors and analysts who traditionally have delivered the news have expanded to include our clients’ consumers and competitors as well as bloggers and other key influencers because of how quickly our carefully scripted messages travel over social networks.

As a result of this paradigm shift, I added another pitching tip to my list above:

6. Listen, Follow and Engage. As a PR practitioner, you now have the power to provide real time and relevant information to your niche audience—but first you have to listen and monitor social networks to successfully and proactively engage in the conversation.

Do you have any new rules that you would like to add to your old lists?