Marketers, Start Your PR Engines
If you think of your PR releases as simply a way to shotgun out the exact message you want in exactly the way you expect it to be received, wake up and smell the 21st Century. These days releases are distributed and discovered in entirely new ways that should affect what you put out, how you get it found, and what effect you can expect on your marketing goals.
“The differences are real-time search and consumers spending increasing amounts of time on social networking sites,” says Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, an agency that handles both digital PR and search engine marketing. Real-time search is the increasing publication by Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines of social update information from Facebook, Twitter and other platforms — places where users are also increasing their content sharing.
“As companies become more savvy about putting up content in a press release distribution system and measuring the effect, they’ve begun to use those systems not just for the purpose of announcements or earnings reports, but are actually modifying the message, the tracking and the call to action to be more of a marketing tool,” Odden says.
This PR optimization strategy can go to work for two distinct but often interlocking purposes, Odden says. Marketers who want to extend the reach of actual news announcements should optimize that content for keywords likely to be used both by consumers and by journalists. Brainstorm some word lists by talking to customers and looking at the competition; then test those keywords using research tools to see which convert best. (And don’t neglect Google Insights for some free keyword analytics.)
The other tactical approach is to create content specifically for the purpose of release distribution and give it a call to action by offering up something new and interesting: a research study, some case examples, or a link to something that’s already in the news, from the health care debate to Tiger Woods’ return to Augusta. Journalists are time-pressed and will often appreciate the empathy behind an offer of research or access to expert commentary.
In either instance, include a link in the press release to a Web destination that can be tracked, Odden recommends. “By doing A/B testing or some kind of version testing, we can then get into what syntax works best, what word placement, whether we use embedded images, video or even audio, and then pursue that format with future releases.”
