The Long Tail by Chris Anderson is all the rage…dare I say, a fad. I keep hearing from folks who want to “reach the long tail.” Some—those who have not actually read the book—seem to be under the mistaken impression that Chris and his people sure know how to coin a catch phrase…so let me clarify up front:

Wikipedia says: The long tail is the colloquial name for a feature of statistical distributions. The phrase refers to, I now know, the appearance of a line graph where the left side is high on the X axis and tapers down quickly to a sustained lower level. As the lower level is maintained, it cumulatively equates to more than the initial short term burst.

In a nutshell for the PRists reading, Anderson postulates that smaller niche audiences have more cumulative value to businesses than larger audiences reached over a short timeframe. Being editor-in-chief of Wired probably has something to do with why Anderson’s book puts everything in a technology context.

I’m sure The Long Tail is well-written and insightful—can you tell I haven’t read it?—and groundbreaking for what it brings up. But I can’t help rolling my eyes when someone thinks they’re giving me something so over the top today as they inform me about the importance of niche audiences…and those fabulous little blogs.

Gee. In PR, we’ve been dissecting audiences for some time now. Here’s some news for the Tailees: Blogs are not the first long tail form of communication. Some consider them archaic, but weekly community newspapers have always been and still are one of the best means of long tail communication.

I’m grateful to Chris A. because his best-seller will influence the suits and help them finally get that that PR by the Pound is a last millennium concept. Yes, you want to reach a lot of people with your message. Doing so indiscriminately has never worked, since we learn the hard way there’s no power in the message less story.

As has happened before with other fads, The Long Tail has made a core component of PR fashionable. Unfortunately, it also seems to be leading some CMO types to believe a successful PR program is based wholly on niche audiences, and yet smart PR practitioners know that PR delivers return when it reaches both the broad foundation of the pyramid and the specific audiences that inhabit the top.

A Brief History of PR and Audiences

A while ago—think, before computers and when we had just 12 channels—we tended to talk about audiences in more general terms. Our demographic breakdowns included sex, age and geographic location. There were consumer stories (we called them features) and business stories. News was by definition new, and we were familiar with the outlets we visited quite intensely because there were fewer of them.

As the sheer number of media outlets increased, we shifted focus to less tangible angles and discussed corporate reputation ad nauseum. Newsworthy events became stunts, some of which worked.

Then we all moved online. Folks who were awake knew early on the Web would change PR…and, again, we fell in love with discussing it to death. Now, we seem to be having a hard time moving past the discussion.

Reality Check, Please

Online media is not new. It’s not mysterious. It just is. We must get over treating blogs as the Bright Shiny Object they aren’t, and get on with integrating online media outreach into our PR programs. If you don’t understand how “new” and “traditional” media interact by now, let me know and I’ll come over with my portable White Board. It’s not complicated.

So what about Chris Anderson’s elongated extremity? Congratulations for stating the obvious, Chris. He used a lot of words but hey, it’s working for him. Niche audiences are important to PR—they always have been—and pointing it out seems to be a big ta-da moment for many readers. But niche is not, however, the be-all-end-all.

At RLM, we use what we have dubbed the AudienceMatrix to identify the way to reach niche audiences. The difference here is that this outreach is not conducted in a silo. If hard-core online gamers are important for a client, we ensure that our tactics also appeal to the broader audience—like, for instance, 20 year-old males who don’t play online but still might be a customer here. So we are reaching the whole tail, and then the head and torso.

Drop me a line. And not one in the sand! We are happy to do an AudienceMatrix for you, too.

Erin Mitchell is a Group Director at RLM who reads a lot more than a single niche.