The PR business buzz for 2006 seemed to be around the social media release. But my guess is that the “Betamax versus VHS” competition that’s emerging will cause confusion and slow the acceptance of this approach down in 2007 as the various formats fight it out.
What’s really new about the change in the press release is its shift over the past couple of years from being a narrowly focused media tool to becoming a broad based tool for getting company information out. In fact, the research firm Outsell LLC issued a report saying that knowledge workers look to press release over trade publications as their top news source.
There’s another press release trend to watch. Let’s call it the “incentive press release.” It’s standard practice to put the URL of a company in the press release. But it’s there primarily for reference. Because press releases are viewed more and more as news sources by everyone on the Web, there’s an opportunity to use the advertising technique of a call to action in them along with an "incentive." A new product release could include and incentive such as a link to a data sheet or white paper along with the release. The company could set up a landing page and drive readers to that page. If they did, they would know how many downloads they got and could have a better idea of the impact of their press release.
The same approach could be used with white papers and case studies and other marketing materials that are normally buried deep in a company’s Website. Companies can create a release based upon the content of these documents and then drive readers to a specific landing page for them.
In addition, these releases continue to be accessible to searcher after the big PR push is over.
Tags: press release, PR, social media release, marketing, smart marketing, incentive
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