About a month ago, the author of the blog PR 2.0, Brian Solis, guest posted on TechCrunch. The post was called The Evolution of the Press Release, and it explored how (1) traditional press releases has changed, (2) the role of the SEO press release, and (3) the emergence of the Social Media Release (SMR). The underlying point is that social media has irreversibly changed the practice of PR, and communications professionals now have to really ramp up their efforts when they’re trying to get the word out. Of course, Brian goes into considerable detail, but here’s the gist of the post — which itself isn’t all that short.

 

Overview

The new breed of Press Release (PR) humanizes the story. They are clean, clear, pseudo impartial and focus on how it benefits customers.

  • According to a recent Outsell study, over 51% of IT professionals reported that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals.
  • When integrated with calls- and links-to-action, readers are usually compelled to act.
  • The new breed of press releases should be written as an article you want to read. Keep it clean, clear, pseudo impartial, but definitely focused on benefits for specific customers. Basically, humanize the story.

This kind of PR-ethos bears directly on 3 different kinds of PRs. A successful PR campaign includes each of these.

 

The “New” Traditional Releases

  • Outward-focused and reflective of the state of the market:
    – how your company fits into this state
    – and what potential stakeholders (customers) stand to gain as a result (from the news item).
  • “Canned” quotes are bygone: inauthentic quotes only detract from the overall PR.
  • Less concerned with structure and format.
  • More concerned with the news item, story, and supporting facts.
  • 400-500 words in length.

 

The SEO Press Releases

Releasing press releases on wire services such as PRNewsire, BusinessWire, and MarketWire offer additional value in the form of SEM (search engine marketing). In this case, the greatest targets for SEO releases are actually customers, not journalists.

  • Top keywords are included towards the front of the release, especially in the headline and subhead, as well as the boilerplate.
  • Three top keywords are repeated throughout the release – especially in the boilerplate.
  • Keywords are used as anchor text to link back to strategic landing pages on your Website.
    – those landing pages should also be keyword optimized.
  • But, it’s important not to overuse each word or over link.
  • Links rich media so that keywords show up in content-specific search engines as well.

 

The Social Media Releases (SMR)

The SMR represents a new, socially-rooted format that complements traditional and SEO press releases by combining both news facts and social assets in one, easy to digest tool. Basically a Social Media Release should contain everything necessary to share, discover, and retell a story in a way that is complementary to your original intent and context.

  • The SMR is not just about multimedia content, but connecting information across social networks, the people looking for it, and the conversations that bind them together.
  • SMRs provides bloggers and online journalists with one resource that provides them with everything they need to effectively write a rich media post.
  • SMRs should be hosted on a specific company blog channel dedicated to SMRs  (PR page).
  • SMRs only go live once the news is public, including links to:
    – Traditional and SEO Releases
    – Company Blog Posts
    – Wherever else the social content is hosted — i.e. YouTube, Flickr, Scribd, etc…

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