Social Media Marketing requires you, as a marketer to play by new rules. Product, pricing, promotion and placement are important, however interaction, influence, people and change have become increasingly more important. Social Media Marketing wouldn’t be possible without the fundamental changes brought by the Web. The (Social) Web has changed the rules for marketing – Social Media tools magnify that change, and open up new opportunities for marketing and reaching customers – for those marketers who are savvy enough to take them.
The most important aspect of Social Media Marketing (and one with which many marketers still struggle) is that the balance of power has shifted to customers. Passive one-way communications that invite no interaction are old style marketing. Companies need to go beyond this to where their customers are.
Reach Buyers with News Releases
Using News Releases (rather than Press Releases) your audience is no longer limited to a small group of journalists, and media outlets. Your audience is now the world… millions of people with an Internet connection, RSS, Google readers and social media bookmarks to mention a few. Among these millions are potential customers looking for companies to help them solve pressing problems.
Write a news release and it’s easier than ever for you to reach – and engage them.
With a simple news release you can:
- Reach your buyers and prospects directly
- Deliver news that’s targeted and that appeals to your buyers
- Drive people directly into your sales process
The Social Web Means New Rules for News Releases
Don’t wait until you have something big happening. Find reasons to write and send news releases all the time. Develop an ongoing news flow. For example:
- Launching a special report? Write a news release.
- Upgrading your web site? Write a news release.
- Launching a blog?
- Launching a forum?
- Enhancing your service or product?
- Adding a new product line?
- Launching a new initiative?
- Win a new customer?
- Publish a whitepaper?
- Speaking at a conference?
- Have a trend-setting piece of information to share?
- Reach a milestone…?
… write a news release.
Rather than “Press” think “News.” What newsworthy things is your company doing? Tell your potential buyers – and your current ones. People often want to “see” what you’re about business-wise before they engage with you. Regular news releases are a good way of opening up… and much more effective than a static web site.
Tips for Writing Your News Release
- Write for your buyers, don’t make it all about you, and what you do or how great you are. Keep jargon to a minimum, use language your customers would use
- Make your news release copy key-word rich so that when buyers search they find you.
- Place links in your news release to targeted landing pages on your site. NOT your home page which is likely to be general.
- Add social media tagging for Technorati, DIGG, del.icio.us and other bookmarking sites.
- Offer something to visitors – a free report, white paper, free ebook, newsletter or other valuable content.
- Distribute your news release to your site and a news release wire service.
Many news wires distribute to other channels and web sites, which considerably widens your potential exposure. I used PRWeb, with excellent results, however there are several others. Including:
Businesswire: www.businesswire.com
Market Wire: www.marketwire.com
PR Newswire: www.prnewswire.com
Experiment with a few and see which ones work for you. Some services will also walk you through writing your press release as well as help you choose geographical relevance. I personally haven’t used any free services for my news releases, however have heard there are some. If you’ve used them and recommend them feel free to share – telling us why they’re good.
Actions Steps
- Make a list of all the possibly newsworthy things you may wish to share with your audience. Remember think “news” not “press” and don’t overlook anything
- Make a schedule for your releases
- Select a wire service
- Write your news release – and send to the world
If you’re not using News releases as part of your marketing, start now. I am still getting traffic from two news releases I wrote in June 2008. Not to mention more continued downloads of my own special report.
And for about $200 you can talk to the world with a well written news release and have people find you. That’s money well spent in my book. You can see my own news releases here and here.
Stay tuned for more, including RSS, using keywords, links, the importance of social media tagging and writing a buyer focused news release.
What do you think? Are you using news releases as part of your marketing? What results have you achieved? If not, what’s holding you back? Share your thoughts and suggestions.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Nicky. Valuable stuff, particularly the news release wire services. Can those handle local news releases, or are they just designed for national distribution? And do you do any types of distribution on your own, or do they handle it all?
I agree that the news release is invaluable. In Mark Hughes book on Buzz Marketing, he alludes to five types of news stories the media writes about: The DAvid and Goliath story, the unusual or outrageous story, the controversy story, the celebrity story, and the What’s already hot in the media story. The titles kind of sum what your content should look like.
Thanks Greg, great points. As far as I understand you can pick the region you want to distribute your release, whether that’s local or national. So you can go both narrow and wide – at least I could for PRWeb. Always best to check with the particular service first though. In my case I chose to go wide… but I picked the main locations.
In the case of my own news release I didn’t send it anywhere myself (e.g. to media stations, radio stations etc.) but did post it to my website. Actually the response from PRWeb was so impressive, I was a little taken aback. I think that was partly because of the topic, however it was still pretty good. For PRWeb they have different options so you can choose to distribute to local and even national media outlets. My objective in terms of distribution wasn’t the media though, it was the search engine visibility. Given the subject of my report, it was very important.