Blogging Tips

The press release was once a traditional marketing tool that was used by mid to large size companies.  However, with the Internet and social media this world is changing as small companies and bloggers have access to the world of press releases.  The traditional press release world is not standing still, a prime example is the public relations industry’s effort to develop the social media news release (SMNR). Many journalists use the Internet as their primary research source when compiling a story.  SMNRs are designed primarily with journalists and bloggers in mind and encapsulates all the information, multimedia and images needed to prepare a story, and offers contact details for more information.

Services like Pressit and PitchEngine are striving to be a social platform that enables you to package stories and automate the creation of social media press releases or sharing with journalists, bloggers, and influencers worldwide via the social web.

PitchEngine is an established player (as established as you can be in an industry that is less than 2 years old and changing daily) with more than 13,000 companies using the service including such big brands as Anheuser-Busch, Albertson’s, Cisco, Dell and MySpace.  PitchEngine uses the freemium model so you can create aSocial Media releases and have it hosted for free – but the hosting only lasts 30 days! For longer service you will need to upgrade to a paid subscription.  Bloggers who want to use these services to find information can use PitchEngine entirely for free and perform filtered searches for topic areas of interest or use RSS feeds to monitor for press releases on the topics of their choice.

Pressitt, which is still in beta, tries to bring your news to life with a simple and intuitive SMNR creation process that allows you to add core facts, videos, images, documents, relevant links, quotes and press contacts.  Like PitchEngine your final SMNR will be published on the site via pre-selected categories, is available via RSS feeds and is shared via more than 15 social media sites.  As shown by the integration with sites Bebo and Propeller, Pressit has more of a European presence at this time.

These tools and SMNRs are not perfect as was shown in Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective Than Traditional Press Releases.  For example, many portal sites where you want your releases to live don’t accept formatting so use caution with bullets, italics and other features that complicates the code.   Multimedia is a similar risk – most sites accept this, but various sites place different restrictions on the number and size of files.  This is one place services like Pressit and PitchEngine excel as they have the knowledge of the specifics for various news and portal sites and are constantly looking to ensure that their postings get the maximum exposure.

Trying our social media news releases can be a good tool as part of your overall marketing strategy.  As PR 2.0 author and speaker, Brian Solis puts it, “The days of creating and pushing one press release are over. These are the days of reaching diversified and equally pivotal communities when, where, and how they choose to be reached.”