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Marketers and public relations professionals can find plenty of advice on how to write a press release, but rarely is that advice directly from the journalists that press releases attempt to engage.
It turns out, journalists have a lot to say about press releases. It also turns out that marketers have a lot to learn.
Although I recently joined an inbound marketing agency, I'm a 25-year veteran the Chicago Sun-Times and the Contra Costa Times, among other. For decades I started my mornings weeding through the press releases in my inbox, one finger hovering over the "delete" key and ready to strike.
Wondering whether things have gotten better lately, I reached out to several journalist friends.
"Most of what I get is garbage," said Mary Pols, a longtime Portland Press-Herald/Sunday Telegram reporter who has also worked at the Los Angeles Times.
Ouch.
Follow these top 9 recommendations to stand out....
The fantasy world of merger announcements bears no resemblance to the reality of mergers. Michael Dell’s post about the Dell-EMC merger is a fine example.
Why do companies merge? There’s always language about “complementary skills and assets,” but that’s always bullshit. There is always language about “serving customers better” but that is also bullshit.
Companies merge for growth — period. It’s not about customers. It’s about money.There are two basic merger scripts, none of which you will ever read, and both of which are bad for customers....
Google is constantly changing its algorithms. We all know about Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, but what people often forget is that each one is periodically updated, often without any confirmation or announcement by Google.
The latest known Panda update is Google Panda 4.1, according to the Moz Google algorithm change history log, which has had a profound effect on PR agencies.
The Panda algorithm, in particular, has made huge waves across the PR industry. According to the article ‘Did Google Panda 4.0 Go after Press Release Sites?,’ industry expert Barry Schwartz launched a study which revealed prominent PR agencies like PR Newswire, BusinessWire, and PRWeb lost up to 85% of their visibility within a matter of days.
Studies like this demonstrate that PR agencies are intertwined with the SEO industry, and must adapt or perish in a changing environment....
When Google released its most recent modification to the Panda algorithm, Panda 4.0, on May 20th, one of the sites reportedly hit hardby the update was the large press release distribution company, PR Newswire.
The company’s answer to recover from the algorithmic penalty is to “take action” against press release spammers through new internal quality guidelines for press release submissions....
Check out these 8 tips for writing a press release that attracts attention from journalists and consumers.
Start 2014 off with a blast of PR.Press releases used to be the powerhouses of public relations firms — a way to fax timely, relevant information out to journalists. Nowadays, online publishing platforms like social media and blogs cut down on the supremacy of the press release. It’s now just one tool in a sea of educational channels available to the online marketer.
Nevertheless, we think well-written press releases are important in targeting news audiences and leading them to sites where they can find more information about your offerings. Here are 8 tips for writing a killer press release that attracts attention — and results!.
You don’t have to be a giant company to create and publish a survey that gets noticed. For example, here at MyPRGenie, we frequently use surveys to identify trends, preferences, and opinions on PR, social media, and digital marketing, and then use them in our PR and marketing efforts.
Once you’ve decided what you hope to achieve with your survey, the second step in setting appropriate goals is to define who will be surveyed, and who will want the data gathered from survey participants. One of the challenges with online surveys is that participants self-select, so they are not as randomized as a well-done telephone survey. So it’s important to clearly identify who you want to participate in your survey, and discard survey responses that are outside your pre-determined group....
I wince at 99.99% of the press releases I receive daily. That’s because 99.99% look like sloppy cut-and-paste jobs, ones that have nothing to do with the Daily Fix and its readers, and everything to do with the sender, the sender, and, oh, right, the sender. Reading a press release that doesn’t make me wince is rare—yet not impossible.Now and then, I receive press releases that are smart, audience-focused, brief, and interesting. So, for this week’s post, I thought I’d stay on the sunny side of the street and share seven traits about press releases that DO get read....
There are few companies or organisations that can come close to rivalling the power that Google wields over the internet and search in particular....
So when the search engine updated its rules on unnatural link schemes recently, making specific reference to press releases, it triggered a rather alarmist article from ZDNet asking whether Google had killed PR agencies.
The convergence of PR and SEO is something we’ve covered previously on the blog, with articles focusing on the importance of search optimised PR and suggesting seven SEO tools to improve online PR efficiency.
However the article on ZDNet understandably (and probably intentionally) ruffled a few feathers within the PR industry as it painted them as black hat SEOs, out to flood the internet with dull, keyword loaded press releases just so they could help their clients climb a few places in search rankings....
PR Newswire recently took a look at how press releases sent on the wire perform in terms of number of views. The stats are quite revealing: Need I say more? Adding multimedia to your press releases, articles and blog posts will give you a remarkable bump in views. And since that’s the goal of content, it’s truly amazing to me that only 55% of the PR folk recently polled by PRESSfeed about their online newsroom content, say they are using multimedia with news content. Seriously? Look at the graph again, please. A 77% increase in views. A study of corporate websites and newsrooms shows that not many companies use multimedia with their press releases. The vast majority are text only....
What’s changed? Here are the four most important things that have changed in the way press releases function in today’s connected world....
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It can be difficult to get a news release approved internally—even without thinking about search engine optimization.
However, if exposure, disclosure or page views are your goals, you must heed content discoverability and make your release SEO-friendly.
A list of search engine violations and penalties shows ways your content can fail to attract attention online. This applies to all your owned media content—including your website and news releases.
What makes some releases more successful than others in terms of drawing traffic? They’re written with healthy SEO features. These successful news releases appeal to Google’s latest algorithm, which rewards high-quality, unique and non-spam content.
Follow these five simple steps to create releases that can rank high in search results....
When you should—or shouldn't—send press releases over the wire is a popular topic.
We found that Monday, Tuesday and 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern were the most popular times to send a press release. Our advice was to publish releases later in the day and week so your news didn't get lost in the commotion. Remember, all this is from 2013.
This year, we took our research a step further. First, we analyzed the distribution of more than 100,000 press releases published via Marketwired, PRWeb and PR Newswire in 2015. Second, we determined how many times each release was shared across nine social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn....
Google likes to keep us PR pros on our toes.
Last year the big update to search results came through the “nuclear bomb” that was Panda 4.0. The age of the keyword was essentially over, and proper storytelling blogs and press releases were in. Many claimed that SEO was on its way out completely.
Recently, Google made even more changes. Though the advent of Panda 4.0 made press releases seem borderline useless, the search engine has now revalued them. There’s one big alteration, though, that changes the way savvy PR pros should use press releases....
Now, roughly 18 years since earmarking news releases for the public domain, it seems fair to say the commoditization of the news release is complete.
Given that journalists rarely write from news releases these days, why does the massive effort behind news releases – figure around 10 man hours per news release at $175 per hour translating into $3,078,082 of cost last year – continue?
That’s a good question....
It’s seven years since the ground-breaking post ‘Die! Press Release! Die! Die!’ was written.Tom Foremski’s this-can’t-go-on wail reads as powerfully as a Martin Luther deconstruction of one of the central pillars of the public relations industry.
“I’ve been telling the PR industry for some time now that things cannot go along as they are,” Tom wrote, “business as usual while mainstream media goes to hell in a hand basket.”.
Learn why most PR stinks, and how to fix it.
Hired a new executive? Write a press release. Painted a wall in your office? Duh -- press release, everyone is going to want to hear about that. Shipped a teeny tiny feature? To the press release we go!
Here’s the problem -- we've already established that reporters aren’t over the moon about inboxes chock-full of press releases, and the act of writing them isn’t particularly thrilling for any marketer. And yet, I think the heart of the problem has less to do with the age-old argument of whether press releases work or not, and more to do with the need for a seismic shift in how we think about media relations....
10 Yetis Vents - Google update has not killed press releases or PR Agencies its just killed crap content and spammy writing.
Right now the interwebs are full of "Google has killed PR Agencies/press releases" stories. These all relate to big G's latest update that talks about its crack down on keyword optimised press releases and the need to use no-follow links in stories that PRs push out.
Whether it is emails from nervous clients wanting clarification on the situation, or people on Twitter sending me DMs asking if I have seen various stories (because we set our stall out around being very SEO savvy), it is really up in my grill right now.
Not many public relations professionals have put their head above the parapet and come out with their take on this, so I thought I would give it the first shot....
New webmaster rules target core PR practices around press releases...At least, so Tom Foremski claims. Wrong Tom. You're way off base with your interpretation of new Google rules and how they will impact PR agencies.
Foremski's best known as the author of "Die press release, die", an infamous rant aimed at PR people. In his post, he misinterprets Google's directions on getting SEO slapped for black hat SEO linking practices. Then he wrongly applies his mistake, concludes somehow that it applies to press releases, and aims it squarely at his favorite target - PR people.
Sorry Tom. The worst practitioners of bad press releases are not PR agencies or legitimate PR pros. They are usually marketing departments or uninformed small business people who mistakenly think press releases are a great way to easily get "free advertising." Their news releases don't contain real news. They simply stuff releases full of marketing nonsense.
If you want proof of that, check out my blog where I've written 4 or 5 best-of-bad-press-release blog posts that have proven to be remarkably popular and entertaining.Most savvy PR people rarely use news releases. In fact, PR pros these days are usually social media leaders, skillful storytellers and adept content marketers.
Unfortunately, the same thing is happening in social media channels, annoying consumers and, instead of engaging them, pushing them away. It's time Foremski wrote the sequel to his famous anti-PR rant and called it "Die Marketing nonsense, die!"There's probably a very nice sequel for me too write as well. Its called "Die lazy journalism, die!"
Check out the four examples of companies reinventing how they use and present the press release. Every year, for the last ten years, someone has proclaimed that the press release is dying. While the rumors of its demise are exaggerated, they are not totally unfounded. That’s because the press release is, in fact, being eclipsed by digital alternatives that are more flexible, more interesting, and more relevant. ...This shift in medium and message represents a new era in corporate communications. News now needs to be conveyed in an empathetic tone and delivered in a user-friendly format....
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Press releases aren't necessarily dead but they do have to be much better. Journalists offer a collection of 9 tips to get it right.