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Bloggers: Don’t make visitors log in before commenting

5/22/2012 By 4 Comments

Don’t you  hate it when you visit a blog, read a post, love the topic, and even before you get to the end, you know what comment you’re going to add?

Then you reach the bottom of the post and you see this:
   
Log in box at Fast Company blog

   
That’s what happened to me just now when I read the article 10 Ways to Amplify a B2B PR Campaign by Wendy Marx at Fast Company’s blog. I love her list! She invited comments. And I had four more ideas I wanted to add.

Sorry, but I’m not hanging around to log in because I can’t remember if I have a Fast Company account. I’d have to dig around for my login name and password. If I don’t have one, I’d have to register. And that’s way too much trouble.

So instead, I’m criticizing the magazine and its dumb policy here.

Media outlets, by the way, seem to be the worst offenders. Many newspapers, which are dying, force the few visitors they have left to create an account before commenting at their blogs or websites. I’m a former newspaper editor. Before I left the business 17 years ago, I was appalled by the “screw you” attitude and awful customer service that permeates the industry.

 

My Ideas for Publicizing Your Publicity

Here’s what I would have written at the Fast Company blog. These ideas work for any PR campaign, not just B2B:

  1. When you’ve gotten national publicity, let your local newspaper, weekly newspaper or business journal know by submitting a press release. Go one step further. Pitch yourself and offer to explain how you got national publicity. 
       
  2. Ditto for your college alumni publication.
       
  3. Speakers, photocopy the article, with permission, and add it to your handouts.
       
  4. Write a letter to the editor of the newspaper or magazine that just wrote about you. Discuss one or two points the reporter didn’t include, or elaborate on a specific issue within the overall story. You get in front of the same audience twice!  If readers missed reading the original article, they’ll see your name and company name in the letter.

Those are my ideas. Add yours to the list. Or explain why you think media outlets and others have idiotic policies that make readers log in.

 


A Tool That Can Help You

My Special Report #13: How to Recycle Your Publicity, has many more ideas on this topic. It was updated a few months ago. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blogs Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Rethinking the press release: A content marketing & SEO view of a proven tool

1/23/2012 By 9 Comments

Deb McAlister-HollandThis guest post was written by Deb McAlister-Holland, a publicity expert who works for Distribion, a Dallas SaaS software company that makes marketing automation tools. She is also the author of 2 books, Slimed Online: How to get your online reputation back despite Google and The Customer Never Sleeps: 21st Century Marketing. She lives in Dallas, Texas. Visit http://debmcalister.com/ for more information.

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I wrote my first press release decades ago, on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Back then, press releases were viewed as disposable documents created for one purpose – and only one purpose: to convince a small group of media gatekeepers to share something with the audience they controlled.

My boss had lots of rules about press releases. We were told how long they could be, what had to be included, what was never included, how many we could send in a month, and exactly how long the process should take to write it, get it approved by a client, get it distributed via fax, postal mail or press wire service, and how to follow up on it by calling the targeted journalists.

I was pretty good about following those rules for years, but I threw them out the window as the new century dawned. Good thing, too, because as the first decade of the 21st century came and went, it became crystal clear to me that the good old press release had been completely reincarnated in a new role – and anyone who hasn’t yet rethought the press release is missing a tremendous opportunity for low-cost content marketing.

What’s changed? Here are the four most important things that have changed in the way press releases function in today’s connected world:

  • Press releases are read by anyone and everyone with access to a web browser or smart phone. They aren’t the “insider” documents they once were, and they have become one of the cornerstones of a company’s online reputation.
     
  • Press releases aren’t disposable. Google never forgets – the release you post on your website or send via newswire today will be searchable for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever. And there are legal and customer satisfaction implications involved in how press releases are written that would have turned my old boss’s hair gray.
     
  • Press releases now have hyperlinks, embedded photos and videos. I know, that’s old news, right? We’ve been adding web addresses to press releases for the last 20 years. But 20 years ago, those links weren’t trackable the way they are today – and any photos or videos we offered were completely separate from our press releases.
     
  • Press releases have a whole new constituency. Bloggers, content aggregators and scrapers, and a global audience are eager for news they can use and share.

The truth is that I send out more press releases today than I ever thought I would in the days when I viewed them as a way to convince someone else to write about my company. Ever since I learned that the press release itself was a great marketing tool to drive traffic, increase customer engagement, and boost my search engine rankings, I’ve discovered dozens of new uses for them.
 
 
The Proof is in the Testing

In February, 2011, when I started a new job as director of marketing at a SaaS software company, I put in what I thought was a routine budget request for a media data base – Vocus, Cision, MyMediaInfo – I wasn’t picky. I just knew that I would need a good database in order to add PR to my multi-channel marketing mix. The chairman of our board suggested I try a new service called MyPRGenie instead, and he arranged a free trial for me of their premium service.

That gave me the chance to try something I’d wanted to try for a long time: a head-to-head test to see just how much traffic press releases by themselves could drive to a website or blog. One of the content marketing strategies we launched was a new blog designed to expand our reach and introduce the concepts behind our products and services to new audiences.

The Distributed Marketing Blog published its first posts in late March, and from April through mid-June, I sent out an SEO-optimized press release with half of the blog posts, and posted the others without a press release. All posts – those with and without a press release – were supported with the same social media out-reach: links to our company Facebook page, updates on my personal LinkedIn profile, and tweets on the five Twitter accounts our company uses.

The results are clear in the graphic below: the posts supported by a press release got twice as many visitors as the posts without a press release.

 

Of course, the June numbers presented here are just a little bit misleading – I had to remove about 200,000 unique visitors to our blog that month because one of those press releases we sent out resulted in pick-ups from PC World, CNET, BNET, Fox Business, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal (along with several hundred smaller blogs and publications).
 
Traffic Target Surpassed
 
So 12 weeks after we launched our blog, I had blown our traffic target out of the water, and gotten global exposure for our company and our blog – thanks to that old standby, the press release. It was just the first of many similar successes we’ve had this year.
 
Although no other post has gotten more traffic than that very first one, we’ve had eight posts so far that have gotten awfully close – and if I was keeping an old fashioned PR clip book, it would have over 980 clips from major publications and broadcast outlets in it.

Those “clips” came straight off the press releases we’ve sent out. In more than nine months at my job, I haven’t made a single phone call to an editor, attended a single press event, or done anything else that even smacks of the PR skills I have no time to use. I don’t have a PR firm. The only thing I’ve done is post SEO-optimized press releases on a single service that sends the releases with an email cover note to journalists, bloggers and analysts in their database.
 
Press Releases and So Much More

So I stopped testing, and started writing a press release for every piece of content I wanted to promote. In fact, whenever I post new content, I write four things:

  1. The new content itself (starting with a catchy headline, followed by an outline, followed by the SEO-optimized content).
     
  2. The press release.
     
  3. A series of 5-7 tweets.
     
  4. An abstract for sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon.

Webinars, presentations, new blog posts, White Papers, trade show speaking engagements – you name it, we probably send out a press release about it. The distribution list for our releases ranges from a few hundred contacts in a particular industry to about 2,000 contacts for a more general topic.

Every press release follows a standard outline designed to boost search traffic:

  • SEO-optimized title / headline
     
  • Sub-head
     
  • Two to three paragraphs promoting the content with a call to action (read it, download it, attend the event, etc.)
     
  • A two-paragraph boilerplate (who, what, where, when, why – all the basics, including links)

Like other services, MyPRGenie has built-in SEO optimization tools, and that makes each release work overtime to drive traffic back to my content or website. The right words – the words my prospective customers use when they’re searching for products like mine – are critical in the strategy of using press releases to build traffic.
 
 
Don’t Forget Photos

Perhaps just as importantly, every single press release (and every single piece of content) gets its own unique photograph or graphic.

I’m a “word person”, and I was slow to realize just how powerful great art is in building traffic for content marketing. But I’m a true believer now. A press release titled, “How to Become a Legendary Marketer” illustrated with a photograph of a knight in shining armor (who just happens to be my son, so the photo is especially attractive) gets much more attention than a press release with the same headline and no photo. How do I know? Because I tested that, too.

Here’s a look at two weeks’ worth of press release titles and images from The Distributed Marketing Blog. (Our total cost for the legal, licensed images you see here, by the way, was $12 – most of them were free. For a look at great free or low-cost art for your content, check out this post from my personal blog.)

Last, but not least, we use the social media links available through the press release service extensively. Because all I have to do is click a button, I’ve been able to expand my social media outreach to services like StumbleUpon, Reddit and dozens of others that are well beyond the scope of my internal social media capabilities. 
 

No Such Thing as “Too Many” Releases

So here’s the bottom line for me: press releases work, whether or not they results in direct coverage.

Long ago, I remember being afraid to send out too many press releases. It was expensive, and I worried that I’d overwhelm the small number of journalists I was targeting.

That was then.

Now, I don’t have to worry about it. The people who read my press releases now do it because they want to. They’ve opted in to a distribution list, clicked on a link, searched for the keywords, or gone to a website where my release is featured.

As for the journalists, many of them are now paid at least in part on the number of readers they draw. From the standpoint of a blogger or journalist on a deadline, a press release offers:

  • Fast copy that’s usually well written. (Your press releases ARE well written, right?)
     
  • Freedom from copyright hassles or questions. (You wouldn’t send it to them if you didn’t hope they’d reuse it, right?)
     
  • Fresh ideas that may be timely and topical. (Your press releases are timely, right?)

Nearly 75 percent of all the journalists working today are freelancers – a complete turn-around from a time 10-15 years ago when high-paying jobs in journalism were the norm instead of the rarity they are today. For freelancers at even the most prestigious sites, compensation is usually tied directly to the number of readers they attract to their online posts.

The more articles they post, the more opportunities they have to draw readers. So they’re hungry for fresh content and fresh ideas in a way that their predecessors never were. It’s a hunger I’m happy to fill – and press releases remain the most cost-effective item on the menu for everyone.

Filed Under: Press Releases/News Releases Tagged With: , , , ,

Use hyperlinks in press releases: Here are 19 ideas

10/28/2010 By 2 Comments

hyperlinks in press releasesThe next time you write a press release, don’t forget hyperlinks.

Too many writers do. Or they’re simply unaware of the three most important reasons to include them: they improve your search engine optimization, drive traffic to your website, and amplify your message.

Used correctly, links can also push consumers to take the action you want them to take, whether it’s buying a product or calling for a reservation.

Business Wire has a helpful White Paper, ” Six Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Press Release,”  that you can download for free, and using hyperlinks is one of the tips. The White Paper givest two examples of when you should consider linking. If the release includes a quote from your CEO, link to the CEO’s bio. If the release announces a new business opening, link to a map that shows readers where it’s located.
  
  

17 Other Opportunities to Use Links
  

Here are 17 of my own ideas:

  1. A sales page, where brilliant sales copy can push consumers to buy your product or service.
      
  2. A video that demonstrates how to use the product you’re writing about, or provides helpful tips that tie into the topic of the release.
      
  3. A page of testimonials from happy customers.
      
  4. A blog post you’ve written where your readers are engaged in a lively conversation about a particular topic.
      
  5. An earlier press release that offers more perspective on the topic.
      
  6. A podcast that ties into the topic.
      
  7. Your online press room where journalists and consumers can find more background information about you and your business.
      
  8. Your social media profiles, with a recommendation that readers follow you.
      
  9. A page at your website that includes an opt-in box where people can request something like a free White Paper, special report, or list of helpful tips.
      
  10. A book you’re selling on Amazon.com.
      
  11. A page at your website that includes frequently asked questions.
      
  12. A page at your website where visitors will find product photos.
      
  13. Quotes from analysts.
      
  14. A page where readers can ask you a question about a particular topic. (A great way to generate sales leads!)
      
  15. Reviews from customers.
      
  16. An online catalog.
      
  17. A photo gallery that ties into the topic of the release

  
But Don’t Go Overboard

A word of caution. Don’t go nuts when using hyperlinks. 
  
Press release expert Janet Thaeler, who was my guest during a teleseminar on how to use keywords in press releases, says a good rule of thumb is one link for every 100 to 150 words in the release. Use more than that, and the release can annoy readers as well as the search engines. It will look like you’re spamming. 

If you need more help on how to write press release, sign up for my free email course, 89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.

Those are my ideas. Now, lets hear yours. When do you use hyperlinks in press releases and what kinds of results have you seen?

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Business Promotion, Photos & Graphics, Press Releases/News Releases, Search engine optimization, Social media marketing, Video Tagged With: , , , , ,

Why a press release and not just a blog post?

3/8/2010 By 1 Comment

If you’re releasing a report on the state of your industry, what’s the purpose of writing a press release? Why not just post the information to your blog?

In fact, why even bother with press releases? Can’t blog posts serve the same function?

That’s what law firm marketing expert Kevin O’Keefe asked at Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

He will be releasing a report later this week on the use of blogs by large American law firms, and he asked:

“My question is who do I send the press release to? Don’t I accomplish the same thing by posting a blog post with the report as I always have? As a courtesy to reporters and editors, couldn’t I just email them a link to my blog post? How does a press release help them?

“Some law firms and companies use press release services such as PR Newswire or PRWeb for press releases, many in large part for Search Engine Optimization.  Getting links from such sites to your company website or blog using keywords describing your offering causes your website or blog to rank higher on such keyword searches.  But that feels a bit like a sham and I’m not looking for SEO.”
   

Write a release and a blog post

Do both.

Press releases are written much like a newspaper article would be written with “just the facts.” And, of course, you can link directly to the report and anything else you wish.

One of the big advantages of press releases is that journalists, bloggers and others can simply cut and paste from the press release and add what you’ve written to their own copy.  Blogs, on the other hand, are written in a more informal, personal style that make wholesale copying difficult.
  
A blog also serves as a great platform to comment on various aspects of the report, in one or more blog posts. So while that press releases is pulling traffic at PRWeb, your post is pulling traffic at your blog. 
         
  
How to publicize an industry report

I gave Kevin seven ideas for publicizing his report:

  1. Write a press release and post it to PRWeb.  Journalists and others can also search the PRWeb site by topic.  I found eight RSS feeds at PRWeb just for legal news. So if the only place that somebody can find info on the report is at Kevin’s blog, they’ll miss it if they’re at the PRWeb site.
        
  2. Let your Twitter followers, Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections know about the release. Just give an enticing headline and link to it at PRWeb. (See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.)
        
  3. Write a blog post that ties into the press release.  Why was the report written? Are the results surprising? Can you offer a behind-the-scenes look at the benefit of blogging for big law firms, something the press release doesn’t explain?
        
  4. Post the same press release at your website, in your online press room.  You want to do this so that people who come to your website can find recent information about what you’re doing.
        
  5. If you wish, you can now pitch the story to a select group of journalists and bloggers.  These can be people whose names you have collected and put into a database.  I’d create individual pitches for each journalists or blogger, customized for their audience, and then include a link where they can see the press release.
        
  6. What about people on Twitter who “tweet” about law-related topics?  Don’t forget about them.  Sometimes you can get far more traction on Twitter than you can in traditional media, simply because of the retweets.
        
  7. How do you find people who would be interested in the report and are most likely to retweet?  Go to Search.Twitter.com and search for #law, #lawyers, #legal and other related words, using hash tags.  Twitter will return a list of tweets written by people who have used those keywords in their posts.  You can then go to each person’s Twitter page and decide if they’re worth following.  If so, follow them.  They might follow you back.  You can then send them a direct message and let them know about your report, and link to the press release on PRWeb.
        
  8. Finally, how about creating a short video, about two and a half minutes, discussing the report?  You can do this with an inexpensive Flip video camera and upload the video to YouTube, which can pull more traffic to your blog or website.

Kevin might also consider a subscription to Expertclick, the Online Yearbook of Experts. A subscription puts you in their experts directory and lets you post up to 52 press releases per year.  You can then link to these releases from your blog or the online press room at your website. That’s what I do.  Learn more at Expertclick.com.

How do you use press releases in conjunction with your blog?

Filed Under: Blogs, LinkedIn, Pitching the Media, Publicity for Niche Markets, Social media marketing, Twitter, Video, YouTube Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Number 1 press release mistake: A lack of keywords

10/8/2009 By 5 Comments

Most people who email me with questions about how to write press releases ask the least important questions:

  • How many words should my release be?
       
  • What’s the best free press release distribution service?
        
  • Can you take a look at my release and tell me if it has the right “tone”?
      
  • Should my name and phone number go on the top or at the bottom?

keywords2All good questions, actually. But no one has ever asked the most important one: ”How do I research and use keywords in my press releases so the search engines can find them and bring targeted traffic to the release, and then, to my website?”

Bingo. 

Most press release writers have a vague understanding or no understanding of how to use keywords. They think a tantalizing headline, scrumptious sub-head, enticing copy, kick-butt quote and even a call to action will pull traffic and convert to sales.

Problem is, if  their press releases don’t include the same keywords that people are typing into Google when they want a problem solved, those people might never find their releases. That’s the biggest mistake I see in press releases that people ask me to review.


How press releases have changed

Press release specialist Janet Thaeler, an expert at optimizing releases for the search engines, says  most people don’t realize that the world of press releases has changed considerably.

“The press release, as a way to reach the media, is essentially dead,” she said. “There are far better ways than sending out a press release to get traditional media coverage.”

Most of that includes responding to inquiries and building relationships with journalists. Online, you can get visibility through social media, your own blog and by using online distribution services to spread the news.

“Where online releases really shine is in getting you noticed online in search engines where it’s easier for people to find your news and therefore  your businesses…Many time the coverage you get online will take you much further than a great story in a newspaper or magazine. You can trace sales directly from a press release.”
     
    
Learn more about keywords Oct. 21

Janet will be my guest during a teleseminar at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, Oct. 21. She will discuss “How to Use Keywords: The ‘Magic Magnets’ That Pull Consumers and Journalists to Your Press Releases.”

Did you know, for example, that another big boo-boo in press releases is mentioning your company’s name in the headline? That’s the most valuable piece of real estate on the release, and one of the first places search engines look for keywords.

If you sell environmentally friendly baby clothing, and somebody is looking for what you sell, they won’t type your company’s name into a search engine unless they already know about you. They are more likely to type ”environmentally friendly baby clothing” or “green baby products” or “organic kids clothing.” Those keywords should be in the headline, and throughout the press release. 
     

5 tips for optimizing press releases

Here are only 5 of the many tips we’ll discuss during the Oct. 21 call: 

  1. Before you write, do keyword research to learn what words or phrases relate to your news, industry or brand.  Wordtracker and Google’s Wonder Wheel help simplify and arrange search results.
       
  2. Identify from one to three different but related keyword phrases to use, and include them within your release.
        
  3. If your business serves a local area, use regional keywords.  For example: “Los Angeles yoga studio.”
        
  4. Don’t assume you must use your company name in the headline.  That’s one of the first places the search engines look for keywords.  People who are searching for the type of product or service you sell, and don’t know about your company, won’t type your company name into the search engines.  Use the same keywords they’d use, based on your research.
        
  5. Use keywords in the first paragraph of your press release.

Hope to see you on the call Oct. 21!

Filed Under: Press Releases/News Releases, Search engine optimization Tagged With: , , , , , , ,