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…

Unsurprisingly, Facebook eventually surfaced as a conversation topic. I had to justify my lack of recent activity, boring profile picture and prudent status by the fact that the networking site has a professional component and therefore minimal professionalism is required. To which the doctor replied: “Since when has Facebook become a work tool??”

And so I tried to explain to her that in virtually all fields, social media have become efficient communications tools, Facebook included. And that I obviously use social media for more than virtually spending real time.

So yes, social media offer multiple opportunities to present contents to diverse publics, including in healthcare. The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) has been producing online videos and podcasts for over a year, and the Douglas Institute uses web 2.0 to promote its clinical, research and public education activities.

On June 17, Stéphanie Lassonde, head of communications at the Douglas Institute, will be with us for the last 3MTT meeting of the season. Whether you are a PR, marketing or advertising professional, working in an agency, solo or for a corporation, you’ll be inspired by these novel ways of using social media and will leave with new ideas on how to make social media work for you, your clients or your boss.

I don’t know if I have convinced that doctor to join us on Tuesday night… She obviously doesn’t rely on Facebook or Twitter for updates on her patients’ status.

Registration and details

The presentation will be in French. Questions and comments in English are welcome of course!

Shel nous parlera des diverses façons de maximiser ce qui se dit en coulisse sur votre entreprise. En effet, la ligne entre les communications internes et externes est de plus en plus mince. Les employés aiment parler de leur travail et de leurs réalisations. Et cette conversation a lieu à l’extérieur du bureau : en ligne, sur la place publique virtuelle, à travers les médias sociaux.

Cet expert en RP et médias sociaux maintient qu’il est impératif de communiquer les informations justes et de reconnaître le rôle actif des employés dans les communications, les relations publiques et la promotion, bref dans la création de la « marque ».

Shel Holtz est le président de Holtz Communication + Technology. Il conseille les entreprises sur l’utilisation des outils web en relations publiques et en communications corporatives depuis 1996. Il est l’auteur de « Corporate Conversations » et de « Public Relations on the Net », et co-auteur de « Blogging for business » et de « How to Do Everything with Podcasting ».

Préparez vous pour cette rencontre très spéciale en écoutant la baladodiffusion de Shel Holtz et son collègue Neville Hobson, « For Immediate Release  » disponible sur iTunes.

Cette rencontre est gratuite et se déroulera en anglais.

Here are some highlights from our last event. Pierre Bouchard was our guest speaker and discussed how blogs and Facebook can be used for business purposes. Toward the end, Nicolas Cossette announces that next month, our speaker will be Shel Holtz, the co-host of the popular PR podcast For Immediate Release.

Since Google is the new front page, search results are more and more important to PR practitioners every day. After all, whatever makes it onto the first page of Google results is there for a lot longer than just one day.

An important distinction that Aaron makes is that the difference between PR and marketing is that PR looks organic. The underlying point is that organic search results have a massive impact on your brand’s reputation. Anyway, enjoy…

Here’s a clip titled Managing the Swarm. Here, Tod Maffin, CBC tech-columnist and president of Four Sevens, explains just how important Web 2.0 is for reputation management, and PR professionals can adapt to it.

I met Tod last year at a Montreal Geek Dinner, so I can attest to how he’s not just a great guy, but a really smart one. He really gets it. And if you enjoyed this, you should check out this this interview Tod granted me at Geek Dinner. It’s about HR and recruiting for the Facebook generation.

Confirmez votre présence sur la page de l’événement!

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Come and have a drink with us next Tuesday and learn how social media can help an organization
establish a dialogue with its target audience and reach its objectives. This
case study will be presented by Pierre Bouchard and it perfectly illustrates
the efficiency of social media as part of a clever communications strategy.

RSVP on the event page!

Nicolas is not only one of the Third Tuesday organizers, but he will also be helping to MC the next event on the 15th of April. He’s also a passionate Web 2.0 devotee, and you can follow his thoughts on social media at MontrealSocialMedia.com.