“You have to stop thinking like a marketer, an advertiser and a communicator and start thinking like a publisher. Create information your consumers want, and they will share it…”
- David Meerman Scott

Lee Odden’s blog has a great summary of a presentation by David Meerman Scott’s on PR and marketing.

I love this rule: “Nobody cares about your products (except you).” And I’ll add, get over it.

He also said to stop using your own corporate speak and use the language your customers are using. To find out what words they are using, look at customer reviews for your products or products that reach your audience. There is a lot of information online. I like using it to write my product descriptions. Amazon reviews is a great start.

David shared the top ten overused words from a recent study:

* Next generation
* Robust
* Flexible
* World class
* Easy to use
* Scalable
* Cutting edge
* Well positioned
* Market leading
* Mission critical

Stop the fluff. Get to the point quickly. And give us a reason to care. That’s good marketing - and good writing.

I just wrote about how Google is selling off Performics search engine marketing services and keeping the affiliate division. I wish Google would sell the entire division of Performics but they kept the affiliate marketing part. Both seem like a conflict of interest. (Sidenote: Has anyone signed up or tested the Google Affiliate Network?)
What’s interesting to me in the industry is the whole issue of print vs. online advertising or marketing. Clients want PR and advertising to be more seemless - to have both in one place and to measure results across both. But the PR side and the online side are so different that each struggle to figure out how to combine them.
I see it on both sides. We (OrangeSoda or myself) offer press releases to clients for online visibility. To get search engine rankings and a permanent link and online distribution. Clients also want to get press coverage, which we don’t measure. We don’t find and distribute press releases to traditional media or even to individual blogs - but maybe we should. However, it’s not our expertise.

On the other side, PR firms are trying to expand their online offerings to include search engine optimization and social media services. Often it’s tough to define and charge for - as I eluded to in my last post (what terrible anchor text!). Obviously, the biggest players are trying to sort this out, as is the rest of the industry.

I’m very interested in the intersection between PR and social media. PR pros are trying to figure out how to “leverage” social media and measure it in the ways they are used to measuring things. Chris Brogan wrote an insightful post with advice to PR pros. He warns how “messy” it is to embark into social media - most will need a lot of direction as they do.
When it comes to approaching bloggers, it’s a very different approach than pitching stories to a publication. Chris says: “I’m writing to you as a human being who likes people, community, innovation, and business, not to mention art, creativity, play, and many other things.” So are the people you’re trying to reach. He explains it like this:

“Bloggers aren’t all the same. I’m definitely not the same as Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. I’m not the same as Seth Godin. I’m not the same as most bloggers. I’m just doing my own thing, and they’re doing theirs. It pays to understand which of us you’re trying to reach for what, and reading the last 10 things we posted, just to get a sense of whether we’re the right kind of person to write about your thing.”

One thing is no matter how high up you go people are still learning, whether we’re professionals or just starting out. This industry evolves quickly and involves a lot of creativity and unintended or expected outcomes, we all continue to learn. Which is what makes my job fun.
So you will make mistakes - getting involved in social media and various online communities has an element of unpredictability. As Chris wrote: “If you mess up, say sorry fast. Acknowledge that you made a mistake, and then act on what you can do better next time.”
In the comments: “Whats hard for us agency types is the transition between “old school” marketing strategy, where ideas and plans were what was sold to the client; and today, where in social media, participation is the product. Its all new to us, but well get there.”

Participation as product. Is that enough - to simply show that you are participating? Should we tell clients - we’re selling you a Facebook profile. We’re selling you our expertise. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to charge, what to offer, and how to define these types of services. So are PR firms.

I didn’t realize how much of a philosophy I had about press releases until today. So let me lay it out for you. I love the story. The story is what it’s about. If you can tie your story into a larger story you have it made. Why? because people love a good story. They don’t really care about your company without the story (compared to how many care about a story, unless your company name or your name is really big, not just in your industry).

If you do it right, people write about your story and your company gets mentioned. I’ve never been formally trained in marketing, writing, or press releases. But I can recognize who is good and learn from them. Also, I’ve had a lot of experience and trial/error and I have an instinct and appreciation for a good story. There’s also personal motivation - If I’m bored writing the story, I won’t enjoy my work.
Here are my rules for press releases:

1. Make the story compelling and if possible tie it into a bigger more universal story. When possible, expand the story. This takes thinking and creativity.
2. Keep the story straightforward. Don’t use a lot of jargon and watch out for your own internal culture, make your press release inviting and accessible. Don’t make them think too hard to get it.
3. Put the most important information first: who, what, when, where, why.
4. Reiterate or personalize the story in the quotations. In other words, the quotes should mean something and should make people want to read the entire story. Often people skim over your press release before they decide to read more.

   There is nothing I hate more than boring quotes that don’t mean anything. They usually say, “we’re excited about our new…” why are you excited? How does your story help people? That’s more compelling.

5. Keep ego out of it. Sometimes companies overdo it by putting their name above the story or see a press release as a way to brag or prove themselves. Especially in their broilerplates they find many variations of saying they are first, number one, the best, etc. How about give some stats or results that say that or reference someone else saying that you are. Or, better, what you do best for your customers or clients (your value to others).

   My take on it is that people care more about the human element than the company name. If they care they will find out who you are and they’ll remember you.

When I wrote a press release for Shoemoney free, I did it for two reasons. One, it’s Shoemoney and the exposure is worth way more than the money. Two, it was for a nonprofit that has the potential to impact people’s lives. I get satisfaction for making a contribution. I’m not saying money is not important or that I plan on doing my work free a lot, but that in this case it made sense.
I decided that the money or exposure alone wasn’t the main point. I wanted to see if I could get another 5/5 on my editorial score and get results (actual exposure). At first I wondered how I’d get a perfect score since the story on a basic level was a fund raiser. There are tons of those. But then I realized I had a shot at a perfect score because people care about the economy and how it affects families. Especially families of the troops.I didn’t know if or when Shoemoney would write about this on his blog, but he did today. It all happened in about 5 short twitter or email conversations. As I read what he wrote I noted that he said he wasn’t that impressed. I kept reading - I didn’t want the story to be one of disappointment.

Here’s what Shoemoney wrote:
I was on 4 radio stations and in 2 news papers and had inquiries from a TON of media sources. Janet had been able to score another perfect prweb score and had incredible distribution for my press release.

Success!

I asked someone at PRWeb the best day to release your press release. They said on a Tuesday or Wednesday. That’s generally speaking. I’d avoid Friday or weekends in most cases.

Search Results Will Bounce Around

You’ll notice that in the first few weeks of a release you’ll come up higher in search engines. But since Google in particular counts freshness, you probably won’t stay there. As the news matures your rankings will most likely drop. It’s just one tool among many to get backlinks and distribute information about your business online.
Social Bookmark Your Press Release

One way to increase its visibility long-term is to social bookmark and inner-link to related press releases. That means Sphinn, Digg, and Delicious it (etc). Put a feed of them on your Facebook page. Blog about them, put them on your main site. In other words, you can do things to increase the visibility of your press release.

PRWeb is ideal for their social bookmarking and extra features (attaching images, PDF files, podcasts, video, etc). What I’d like to know, for search engine optimization purposes, do you still think PRWeb is the best bang for your buck? I need to run a test: running a release at each level at PRWeb and comparing them. Then, taking another release and running it through some other PR sites.

Test, Test, Test

One of my favorite posts still is the one where I ran a test and found that our $200 PRWeb press release performed by far the best. However, I’ve never tested it against other PR services. Maybe the next time I’m on the phone I could see if PRWeb would sponsor a test between levels. I know there are several factors that influence how much traffic a press release gets besides the distribution, but it’s probably one of the most influential.

Don’t Schedule Press Releases Too Close Together
This is a mystery solved from over a year ago. I had a client who had me write a press release every week. We had to scramble to find news and sometimes it was difficult. But then I talked to someone at PRWeb and learned that you’ll start to see diminishing returns if you publish press releases too often (and the contract ended because he said he wasn’t getting the return he expected).

The releases go to Google News and Yahoo News first and stay there for 28 days. You’re basically spamming those news sites if you distribute a release too much more often than that. You want to keep in the news, but not saturate it.

Targeting Cities with your Press Release
Here’s another PRWeb tip (I will have time in a few months to finish recording all I’ve learned about PRWeb) about the MSA regions you select. When you submit a press release, you can select 5 US cities/areas to target your release to. These are in addition to the entire US.

There are two ways this is helpful: first, there’s a link on PRWeb’s home page that says, “search by MSA” that lists the cities alphabetically. So anyone can click there and see a list of cities. From there you can see all releases from that particular area. Second, people can sign up to get RSS feeds from PRWeb. So if a news organization is tracking news from their state, they could subscribe to that feed. They can also limit the press releases they see by area, category, and by editorial score. I only sign up for scores of 4 or 5 otherwise you get too many and you’ll get lower quality releases.

A Perfect PRWeb Editorial Score
I’ve been writing press releases for distribution on PRWeb for several years for many different clients. Every time I call in I ask a lot of questions and they’re helpful. I’ve gotten to be friends with Joe and like attending Mario’s webinars. In all this time I’ve never gotten a perfect editorial score - until recently. I wrote a press release for a client that got a perfect 5 out of 5.

I remember asking PRWeb how to get a perfect editorial score. They basically said they’d hire me if I ever did. So I guess that means I have a new job and I’m moving to Washington state. Good thing I’ve spent quite a bit of time there when I lived in Oregon, so I think I’ll like it there
Here’s the weakness in most of my press releases - they don’t tie into larger trends or bigger news stories. To get a perfect score your press release has to be well-written, optimized, and newsworthy. In this example the client sent me a story about how real estate agents were marketing homes for sale. I changed it to be about how to survive the recession if you’re a real estate agent. It was already well-written, I just added strategically placed keywords, anchor text, and a call to action.

Right now the economy, gas prices, foreclosures, and the cost of food are big. If you can tie your story into these you’re chances for a perfect score will go up.

Some PRWeb Editors are Stricter than Others
To balance out my big head, in the past few weeks I’ve gotten more editorial holds on my press releases than I’ve ever gotten. I asked an editor why. He confirmed what I thought - some editors are more strict than others. For example, some will put your release on hold if you use “you” or “yours” in the release. They could also require that you use the organization’s name in the headline or the first paragraph. I’ve never had these complaints before.

The biggest problem I have about not using “you” or “yours” in a press release is that online people are used to more casual language. Since PRWeb distributes online, I don’t see why this is a problem.

Remember: every press release has several audiences: the consumer, the journalist, and the search engines.

Stay tuned because I’m going to publish more tips - before I forget them!

I had a consulting gig last year that had me write an SEO press release every week. I had no access to stats and that severely hampered my ability to improve and learn from all of the data. I like seeing what combination of techniques and PR distribution services work best for different business objectives. In other words, I would go for lower cost services just for SEO and save the more dynamic news for higher priced services that target search engines and the media.

The client was extremely protective of me and his company, so I can’t use any of the press releases as references. I’m sure that at least one got a very quick #5 ranking for the keyword I optimized for. I do have to say my opinion (because I can now) and that is don’t write a press release just for the backlink. Make sure you actually have news.

Does anyone else run into this issue? When you do work for clients, how do you quantify your work? They’ve told me how effective they have been but too often I don’t have numbers, and I need numbers. Stats are my reward (along with money, the lifeblood of any business).

There is a lot of news going on in a company that is overlooked. However, just releasing news so you have new content is not a good strategy - that is a strategy for a blog post where you can update frequently without needing a full blown news angle or story. I also learned it’s a bad idea to mix SEO blogging with community blogging (more on that later). Eventually it proved too expensive for the client, which isn’t surprising at all. BTW, I found the business blog I wrote that I thought was gone).
Ideally, you combine a blogging and press release strategy which reinforce each other. Then you can add social media elements (Digg, delicious, etc). You can email your press releases to bloggers and post them on your social media profile on an RSS feed. I need to write a plan to do this or if you have one, please go to my contact form and you’ll go straight to my network of contacts (meaning I will forever be a resource for you back, even if years down the road you need a contact or expertise).
When I had access to stats I clearly saw how valuable a press release can be for search engines and for media attention. I know my editorial score and the reads (usually over 50k). It was well worth the spend for the traffic and visibility we got. It sure beat the cost of paid search and was a permanent link in the search engines.

Writing SEO press releases is the service I most like doing, because I love getting the story out and I get to use my SEO/internet marketing skills too. I love to write press releases that involve interviewing a person. Those become my best work because I really like people more than computers. The best press releases hit both search engines and are also meaningful and useful to people (the media, the public, etc, depending on your goals).

p.s. My blog URLs are fixed.