Fri, 02/18/2011 - 15:14 — myrnag

 

 (P-O-P-S)  Weeks ago I wrote a post for this RSS feed all about syndicated articles publicity to state that Sally Falkow had blogged that the press release had been transformed. This week Sally underscored that fact by presenting a webinar with Rebecca Lieb, a journalist turned publicist, about the role of the PR person in supplying journalists with what they need to be effective.
 The webinar highlighted once again how to serve many journalists, including the citizen bloggers, with a social media press release that can result in original, articles publicity across the Internet.   Both agreed that once you publish a release, you have broken your own story. Why?
·         91% of journalists search Google
·         64% use social networks for “experts”
·         89% use blogs
·         70% of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis
 If you want to appear in a multitude of spaces on the Internet, you have to deconstruct the press release into special sections and tag the information. A good publicist needs a phone, a camera, a video camera, a recorder to achieve the new press release format.
 A good release is not just 300 words of text but must present news in sections. Therefore, it includes images and quotes, using news tags. These tags make it search friendly, giving the variety of journalists the ability to find it through search. Then you give them the embed code, so they can put it in a feed and make it available on social sites. Lastly, they agree you should aggregate your news content and social content in one place to make your news room social media ready.
Images and video become more useful than ever because the Internet is a visual medium. The Internet facilitates the sharing of useful content, allowing marketers to listen and monitor the conversation. It allows for engaging customers in dialogue. 
If you are a PR person interested in being covered by the media, or if you are acting as your own in-house publisher, the object of the game is to identify your influencers and give them access to the information they can use to formulate original articles utilizing the data you have supplied.
With newsrooms cut to shreds, with internet news sites gaining in influence, with thousands of bloggers out there needing to replenish content quickly and efficiently, the PR person still can be responsible for generating the publicity and conversation. You just have to supply the information in an easy to reach newsroom in a correct format to keep your company ahead of the rapid pace of the Internet.