1) What Is Cyber PR?
Cyber PR is an online PR firm that gets you featured on blogs, podcasts, and Internet radio stations. We also help you come up with a social media strategy that works for you, so you can take advantage of the new ways to build a fan base and a community online.

2) How is Cyber PR different from traditional PR?
CyberPR is Internet only PR. This means we only go for placements online. Where online? Anywhere we can think of that features musicians, authors, and filmmakers including:

  • Blogs, Vlogs & Audio-Blogs
  • Internet Radio Stations
  • Web-Based Magazines
  • Local/Regional Sites (Hometown)
  • Online Music Journalists
  • Podcasters
  • Video Upload Sites
  • Social Networking Sites
  • Lifestyle Sites

3) How Does Cyber PR Work?
Cyber PR is an online system that works like an Internet dating site.
Instead of connecting for dates, we connect clients to potential online PR opportunities.

Each one of the 10,000+ new media makers that use our site tell us what type of music/ book/film they would like to receive based on their preferred niches (Mommybloggers, queer networks, charity based sites, etc.). We only send perfectly matched artists to each new media maker.

Here is a Virtual Press Kit (or “VPK”). This is an example of what we send out to all of our potential new media matches.

Example VPK for the band Kaiser Cartel

Each new media outlet has a user account at Cyber PR where they log in, download music, leave feedback, request interviews, station IDs, or more materials.

Traditional PR

  • Press releases and press kits are mailed out.
  • Hundreds of packages mailed out.
  • Target: Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, TV.
  • Publicist calls and “pitches” all outlets that we mailed packages to.
  • $3,000 a month for PR, plus expenses. (postage, phone, Fed Ex, etc.).
  • Today’s newspapers and magazines = tomorrow’s recycling.

Newspaper readership is down dramatically:

“…the proportion of Americans who read a traditional newspaper on a typical day has declined by about 40% since the early 1990s.”
- Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Cyber PR

  • An online VPK, Virtual Press Kit, is created, emailed, and stored online.
  • Music delivered digitally.
  • Target: blogs, podcasts, internet radio stations, video sites, and zines.
  • Our new media makers log in and choose only what they like from our site. There is no hard pitching involved.
  • Less than $500 per month (with no additional expenses)
  • Online reviews, mentions & links last forever & are indexed by Google.

Blog readership is increasing. Consumers read blogs to help them make buying decisions.

“Blog readership is up 300 percent since 2004… One half (50 percent) of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.”
- buzzlogic

4) Why Don’t You Offer Traditional PR Anymore?
In recent years with each passing campaign, we noticed something we did not like at all; our placements were diminishing for our artists. When we started handling traditional PR, major feature placement easily rolled in on a consistent basis. We used to mail out 100 CDs and get 20-30 or more CD reviews usually within a month.

What started happening is we would mail out three times that many CDs (costing the artist a fortune in postage, envelopes, paper etc.), and we would get half as many reviews back. Writers were totally overwhelmed with CDs (1,000 on average were coming out per week). Also, some reviews were taking between four and six months to come in. We were unhappy and our clients were too.

We did however notice the rise of citizen journalism, something very exciting! Internet radio stations and podcasts were cropping up everywhere, bloggers were beginning to create new sites with endless musical content and cool social networks were launching on a daily basis with new and innovative ways to connect to others. We started introducing our artists to these types of outlets and noticed that placements and reviews came in at a much faster rate.

5) Will you promote me on MySpace & Facebook?
If you choose our All Access package we will indeed add friends on your behalf on MySpace and Facebook.

Otherwise, we will promote you to all of the types of online outlets mentioned at the top of this page and more. There will be plenty of MySpace friend opportunities in our campaigns, however you will be responsible for working your own MySpace and Facebook profiles.

6) I don’t want to give away free MP3s: Can I still use Cyber PR?
Sorry – then we are not the company for you! We think at this stage of the game you MUST be willing to give away at least some of your music. If you are not comfortable giving away MP3s from your albums, we suggest giving away some live versions. People are so accustomed to getting free music online (either illegally or legally) that you are taking yourself out of the game by resisting.

7) I want to promote a video – Can Cyber PR Help?
YES – We do video promotions and we have gotten our artists featured on the homepages of Billboard.com, Singing Fool, All Media and more. Please get in touch to find out more details about our video promotions.

8 ) I only need a bio – Can Cyber PR help?
Yes we have an in-house bio writer with 15 years of major label experience who will interview you and craft a professional band bio or individual artist bio. » Click here for details

9) I need a booking agent – Can you book me?
Sorry – Ariel Publicity is no longer a booking agency.

10) I only want one or two CD reviews. Can you do that for me?
Yes, we also own a service called ReviewYou! Go to: www.ReviewYou.com for full details

11) I want to sign up for your Sound Advice eZine & Sound Advice TV to receive your marketing & PR tips newsletters – Where can I do that?
Our bi-weekly email Sound Advice: http://www.SoundAdviceezine.com

Our Weekly TV show: Sound Advice featuring 16 episodes with Derek Sivers: www.youtube.com/ArielPublicity
(Please subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss a single episode.)

12) Blog, Podcast, Zine, Social Media? What are you talking about?
We were not born knowing all about these new terms! Here are some

Useful New Media Definitions:

What is a podcast?
A podcast, at its core, is just a computer audio file that is created along with some computer code that enables the file to be downloaded to your computer (and therefore, is transferable to iPods). There are now thousands of free podcasts available at iTunes.

What is a blog?
A blog is really just an informal website. The format of a blog site is an online journal or diary that is usually more personal and more subjective than a proper website. Blogs have actually been around for years, but it wasn’t until recently that they came to be known by this term.

What is an audio-blog?
An audio-blog is a blog that includes music as well as text. Usually the text is a critique or some commentary of the music. Audio-blogs are becoming more and more embraced by the industry.

What is a zine?
A magazine that is available online (as opposed to in print on paper). A music ‘zine focuses on music as a main topic.

What is an Internet radio station?
Listening to radio broadcasts via the Internet. Using streaming techniques, high-quality audio can be delivered to users at their computers. The audio is played via a software media player or a browser plug-in that supports streaming audio formats such as those from RealNetworks and Microsoft. Internet radio may be streamed at the same time as live AM and FM broadcasts over the air, or it may be a recording of a previous broadcast. In the latter case, selecting the station again after it started will reset the stream to the beginning.

What is a social networking site?
A Social Networking Site (like MySpace) enables people to rendezvous, connect, or collaborate through computer-mediated communication. Many advocates of using these tools believe (and actively argue or assume) that these create actual community, and have adopted the term “online communities” to describe the social structures that they claim result. (Definition from Wikipedia)

What is a wiki?
A wiki is a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available content, typically without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. (Definition from Wikipedia)

If you have a question that we have not already addressed please feel free to get in touch with us!