I’m asking because as a former TV producer for the Today Show and writer/reporter for MSNBC, I get calls all the time from start-ups or from speakers/writers asking me how do they get on cable news or the Today Show? Their premise? If I am recognized there, I’ll be recognized everywhere.

Maybe.

There’s no question that getting your company or product on a major television show will help sales or drive people to your website. We have all heard of the Oprah effect on products like Spanks or books such as Simple Abundance, an Oprah endorsement drove sales and national recognition of these products. But Oprah is an exception rather than the rule, the stories of other products launching that big through a single television appearance are very rare.

The process of getting recognized and covered by a reporter whether its for a television show or a newspaper article has as much to do with your online publicity as it does with your offline one – especially with television which generally follows stories that appear in print and more and more so on the web.

So what does this mean for the new fashion start-up that came to me a month ago and wanted ideas to improve their publicity and get more awareness? Their CEO told me that Facebook ads had provided them with strong leads, and when they did post content on their Facebook site it was getting comments, traction and readers. Television appeared to be a logical step because the founders were unsure how to scale from just their Facebook audience.

And that’s where the new rules of advertising and public relations come in.
In a content driven medium – which is what the internet and social media are – if a start-up already has interest in its content, and is winning viewers and readers through web ads and blog posts, the best way to get noticed by major fashion writers and producers is to produce more content. The goal should be to build an online following through videos, regular writing and engaging with their present community, and then leverage that as a way to get onto a television show. In this example, the founders of this start-up become “the experts” whose views are sought after and who, because of their sizeable online following, have an opinion that carries weight. This will win the attention of fashion writers and producers who do follow online blogs, and that will hopefully provide the big “get” in terms of television. The irony of course is, if you can build that large online audience, then you are probably raising your sales too. A TV spot might just be the icing on the cake.

Is it as easy as I just described? Not always, but if you already have an interested audience you’re a step ahead of many other similar companies. Your goal should be to grow that audience through the medium that you’re currently using to reach them and then take that audience as proof that your site/product/blog/book/speech is a reason that the bigger guys should pay attention. Think of it as finding a way to percolate up in terms of awareness to influencers rather than go after something big that will trickle down to a lay audience. Both ways will work, but for start-ups with fewer resources relying on yourself rather than the hope of a television show to bring you an audience may be the best course of action.

So back to the original question: what comes first in terms of publicity and marketing prowess – the new social web or the old fashioned television appearance? Right now both work, but I’ll bet that as media becomes more integrated there won’t be as much of a distinction or preference between the two.