The Evolution of the Press Release

Comes today a dated -- nonetheless, apropos to our craft -- treatment of the social media release by Future Works, Brian Solis.

Press releases come in different flavors and serve different purposes. Well-written press releases are far from dead. In fact, when developed strategically, their opportunities, appeal and benefits are only expanding in conjunction with the groups of various influencers and consumers who rely on them for relevant information. Read more about the evolution of the press release as TechCrunch.

How is your agency using the new SMR?

Comments

[Jamaison]

This is good stuff, Rodger. Thanks for sharing. We're certainly not using SMR at my office, and I would argue that we're not even at the SEO stage. This has some great info though to get us thinking more about the applications for us.

[Rodger D. Johnson]

You know, PitchEngine is an SMR platform that truly takes advantage of search. Not only does it allow for keywords, but embedded video hosted on YouTube provide added search engine optimization. But my personal favorite of any SMR platform is the standard blog.

Services like WordPress and TypePad can be optimized for search just as easy as PitchEngine, or any other SMR service. (PRWire, MarketWire, or BuainessWire for example.) Unlike the paid services, once you have a blog formated for SMRs, anchor links, trackback and all the connecting tools Google likes to see are there. You get better rankings, and more "cyber real estate" because as news organizations link to them, Google like that. And since studies show many reporters are getting most of their information from Google and Yahoo news, migrating to a blogging platform to create SMRs makes sense.

Saves tones of money. Create better search. And builds on the authority blogs have established. So long as the content is simple, credible, concrete, unexpected, emotional, and tells a story.

I think we'll see more and more organizations using blogging platforms for SMRs -- George Fox University already uses them. Whether we see them making compelling copy is a different story.