Press Releases 2.0

In the 20th century, the world of public relations (PR), much like the world of advertising, was less complex. In the good old days, traditional press releases were written for journalists to take notice and hopefully run with the story. Of course, there are many other aspects to public relations other than press releases, but for the purpose of this article, let’s focus on how this tool is evolving thanks to the power of the Internet.

Press releases can and should be published on the originator’s website. However, there are other outlets for press releases and methods of consumption by Internet users. For example, prnewswire.com is a popular site for disseminating press releases. Performing a search of online press release distribution will return millions of results (although what search doesn’t return millions of results these days?). Many of these services will distribute your press release through their website and network through email and RSS feeds. One advantage to this is the effort required to reach a multitude of journalists has decreased dramatically. An even bigger advantage though is the near instantaneous impact of your news release. Rather than waiting for weeks for your story to get picked up, it could become news the same day.

What could be argued as the biggest advantage of online PR are the benefits related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That is if you have optimized your releases for search. For example, all of your releases should include back links to your website. Once you start optimizing your releases, it should have a positive impact on your search rankings for a variety of keyword terms and phrases.

If you thought the old way of distributing press releases was too big of a task, the new world of PR is for you. At the very least, optimize the releases you post to your website so search engines can index them. Eventually, you can experiment with some of the other options available. So don’t delay, get your stories out now!