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Press Releases: Not Dead, Just Evolved 
By Harry Hoover (c) 2005

Mark Twain once said the rumors of his death had been greatly
exaggerated. The same may be said for the press release. It's
not dead, but its mission has evolved.

Those PR practitioners who are spreading these death rumors
would have you believe that press releases should never be
written, nor distributed. I take issue with this old-school
thinking.

Now, inundating the media with press releases has not been a
good practice since shortly after Edward Bernays opened the
first PR firm in 1919. Any competent PR person has known for
years that garnering media coverage almost never directly
happens due to a press release. However, that is fodder for
another article.

Let's talk about the evolution of the press release into a solid
tool for helping organizations deliver key messages to multiple
audiences in the digital age.

In the not-so-distant pre-Internet past, press releases were
aimed solely at trade and consumer media outlets. The media
acted as the gatekeepers, taking your information and making
decisions about how, or if, to use it. Organizations today are
able to bypass the media filter in a number of ways, thanks to
the net.

Consider this: both journalists and consumers use the web for
research. More than 550 million searches are done daily via the
web. And, every month, US web-users conduct 27 million searches
at Yahoo! News, Google News or other news search engines.
According to recent surveys by Middleberg/Ross and the Pew
Internet Project, we learn that:

– 98 percent of journalists go online daily

– 92 percent do it for article research

– 76 percent to find new sources and experts

– 73 percent to find press releases

– 68 million Americans go online daily

– 30 percent use a search engine to find information

– 27 percent go online to get news

But you need to think differently about writing your releases in
this new age. You can extend the power of your press releases
beyond the media by positioning them for search engine pick up.
In effect, your press releases become a long-lasting, online,
searchable database about your organization.

Once properly written with both readers and search engines in
mind, you need to distribute the release. PR Web™ and PR Newswire
are my two favorite ways to get the message out. Both services
help you reach into the newsroom and beyond.

PR Web emails press releases daily to between 60,000 - 100,000
global contacts points. Journalists, analysts, freelance writers,
media outlets and newsrooms, as well as your average web users
are signed up to receive this information. Also, it distributes
releases via FTP, XML feeds and through a network of its own
websites. PR Web-related sites are in the top 2,500 most visited
sites. Every release sent out through PR Web is optimized for
search engines, and PR Web guarantees your release will be picked
up by Yahoo!, which is the number one most visited website on the
Internet.

Does it work, you ask? Let me provide a recent example. I used
PR Web to send out a release about my client Brent Dees and his
Focus Four training for entrepreneurs. The editor of Leadership
Excellence emailed me after seeing the release and asked Brent
to write an article for his magazine.

The granddaddy of press release services is PR Newswire, which
distributes directly into the central editing computers at daily
newspapers, newsweeklies, national news services, trade
publications and broadcast newsrooms. It reaches a total of
22,000 media points in the US alone. All releases are distributed
to and archived in more than 3,600 web sites, databases and
online services. Additionally, PR Newswire's website is in the
top 2,000 most visited sites on the Internet.

Finally, let's take a look at the online media room. Its primary
purpose is to provide journalists with easily accessible data
about the organization, such as executive bios, earnings
figures, key contacts and other solid, factual information. An
organization also should place news releases here, particularly
those aimed at key stakeholders like employees, strategic allies,
and investors. Technology savvy consumers often visit online
media rooms for the same reason journalists do: they expect to
find factual information there.

Churning out releases and dumping them willy-nilly on the media
is a dumb practice. But using releases as a strategic weapon to
reach key audiences across the digital divide is smart PR.
Practitioners who believe the news release is dead need to
evolve, or they will be the moribund ones.

================================================================
Harry Hoover is managing principal of Hoover ink PR
(http://www.hoover-ink.com). He has 26 years of experience in
crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success
for serious businesses like Brent Dees Financial Planning, Focus
Four, Levolor, New World Mortgage, North Carolina Tourism, Ty
Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX and Verbatim.
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