The New Rules of PR
My friend and colleague David Meerman Scott has released a new, free e-book I encourage you to download, The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly.
In it, David argues that press releases are no longer just for reporters and editors, written in the hopes of attracting media attention. Today, through the use of Web distributors such as PRNewswire, BusinessWire, PRWeb and so on, the press release is an online content distribution medium. Packed with keywords, the new Web releases attract spiders and traffic; embedded hyperlinks draw readers to your site while boosting your search engine rankings.
I think David's ideas are provocative and worth exploring, though I'd advise discretion. David recommends writing releases as frequently as possible, whether or not they meet the usual standards of newsworthiness. Frankly, I fear a glut of meaningless information that will make it even more difficult for Web readers to find the content they need, making the tactic a potential victim of self-sabotage -- instead of helping us rise above the clutter, it may generate even more clutter we have to cut through.
But I can see the value in pursuing this method as a complement to, not a replacement for, the traditional press release strategy. If media relations is important to you and your business, I suggest you follow the old rules -- write cogent, story-focused releases backed with facts and quotes that encourage editors and reporters to write about you.
At the same time, you could use David's approach -- a constant stream of content distributed via the Web -- as a search engine optimization strategy to build traffic to your site.
In time, the relative merits of the "old" and "new" press release strategies will become more apparent. I look forward to seeing hard numbers, and/or real business anecdotes, that will substantiate, refute or simply modify David's thesis.
How about you? Are you deploying a press release strategy similar to David's? Is it working? Would you recommend it to others?
In it, David argues that press releases are no longer just for reporters and editors, written in the hopes of attracting media attention. Today, through the use of Web distributors such as PRNewswire, BusinessWire, PRWeb and so on, the press release is an online content distribution medium. Packed with keywords, the new Web releases attract spiders and traffic; embedded hyperlinks draw readers to your site while boosting your search engine rankings.
I think David's ideas are provocative and worth exploring, though I'd advise discretion. David recommends writing releases as frequently as possible, whether or not they meet the usual standards of newsworthiness. Frankly, I fear a glut of meaningless information that will make it even more difficult for Web readers to find the content they need, making the tactic a potential victim of self-sabotage -- instead of helping us rise above the clutter, it may generate even more clutter we have to cut through.
But I can see the value in pursuing this method as a complement to, not a replacement for, the traditional press release strategy. If media relations is important to you and your business, I suggest you follow the old rules -- write cogent, story-focused releases backed with facts and quotes that encourage editors and reporters to write about you.
At the same time, you could use David's approach -- a constant stream of content distributed via the Web -- as a search engine optimization strategy to build traffic to your site.
In time, the relative merits of the "old" and "new" press release strategies will become more apparent. I look forward to seeing hard numbers, and/or real business anecdotes, that will substantiate, refute or simply modify David's thesis.
How about you? Are you deploying a press release strategy similar to David's? Is it working? Would you recommend it to others?
posted by Jonathan Kranz at 8:43 AM
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