You are probably quite familiar with the following traditional news release.

It’s troubling to see how releases such as this one populate the wires and search engines. You can only imagine how many revisions and contributors the marketing and executive teams went through to ensure that every useless piece of industry-speak made the final cut. The end product usually omits the most important part of the story: what it is, who it’s for, why it’s different, and why it’s valuable and beneficial to the people to whom it’s targeted. However, all hope is not lost. In the era of PR 2.0, news releases are experiencing a revitalized life, perhaps leading to a fresh and even more diverse future.

In October 2007, Brian published a new take on the traditional release to help PR professionals experiment with different, effective templates for reaching a variety of people. The template was based on years of experimentation, evolution, and analytics to fine-tune what worked every time.

News releases today are more than just text, buzzwords, and spin. They come in various flavors and serve different purposes. We believe well-written news releases are far from dead. When developed strategically, their opportunities, appeal, and benefits are only expanding in conjunction with the groups of various influencers and consumers who rely on them for relevant information.

According to Outsell, Inc., in November 2006, 51 percent of information technologists sourced their news from releases found on Yahoo! or Google News instead of from traditional trade journals. Although this might be expected in the technology industries, we can assure you that this statistic is probably equally significant across a variety of major industries. This means that news releases are no longer limited to journalists, bloggers, and analysts; they are now also read directly by customers to help them make important decisions. People are now relying on news releases as a direct source of information, so let’s take this opportunity to tell the story that matters to them. We need to deconstruct 100 years of tradition and rebuild something that will actually work in today’s attention economy.

No rule states that we can use only one news release template. And as you learned in Chapter 6, “The Language of New PR” (which we believe was probably an eye opener or even a rude awakening), an audience no longer exists for your messages. Markets consist of groups of disparate (the Long Tail) yet connected people who look for value and benefits in different ways. Therefore, a good story requires personalization. Don’t forget that journalists, bloggers, and analysts are people, too. So if you humanize the process of writing releases as well as the content you create, you might enhance readers’ ability to connect with and share the information.

The socialization of the Web has resulted in myriad news release formats that serve different audiences and different purposes: traditional releases for media; SEO releases for customers; SMRs for press, bloggers, and also customers; and video news releases (VNRs) for broadcasters, and now just about everyone.

Perhaps one of the most discussed innovations in the 100-year-old news release is the SMR, which has rallied as much support as it has controversy. Because many PR professionals were reluctant to embrace the changes in the industry, they didn’t recognize the need for a new type of communications tool. PR professionals were also confused about its use and purpose, which to this day are still misunderstood. However, we have come a long way. For many, it’s no longer a matter of if or when you should use the SMR, but instead how it becomes a part of your approach and daily practice.

Before we dissect the SMR, it’s important to review the evolution of the news release. We begin with the traditional release, follow that with the customer-focused release, proceed to the SEO release, and then move forward to showcase the latest new shiny object in PR: the SMR. Another important template that fits into the evolution of releases is the VNR. However, today the industry is calling for a VNR redux, or VNR 2.0. We highlight the value and appropriate use of VNR 2.0 in Chapter 9, “VNR 2.0.”

Let’s start by reacquainting ourselves with basic principles for good, well-written news releases. These ten principles (more definitely exist) serve as the foundation for New Media releases:

1. Elevate the message.

2. Inform, don’t persuade.

3. Write with balance.

4. Include traditional and New Media.

5. Be informative.

6. Provide resources and add links.

7. Use available Social Media channels to open up and distribute dialogue.

8. Listen.

9. Converse.

10. Learn.

Many reporters and bloggers use standard news releases to build their stories. Let’s help them help us in the process. When expanding your news or story into a press release, it’s important to recognize that most of the wording templates that are used, as noted previously, might not serve as the best foundation. But there’s room for a well-written release that conveys value, benefits, and a story that’s relevant to each recipient. However, this is easier said than done. Most news releases are driven by product development, which can cause an inward and narrowly focused view from life inside the company. The final release usually winds up riddled with adjectives, industry jargon, and hype, with very little value stringing everything together.

The best releases will be outward focused and reflective of the state of the market, how you fit into it, and what’s in it for the potential stakeholders (customers).

We also strongly recommend eliminating the “canned” quotes. We all know you’re excited and thrilled at whatever you’re announcing. But if the quote isn’t genuinely from the person saying it and bears little or no value to the implications of the news, it only takes away from the announcement—it’s okay to leave it out.

The best advice is to make the release read like the article that you would ultimately like to see, worrying less about structure and format and more about news, the story, and the supporting facts (and media elements) that help writers build the story more effectively. With the standard news release, try to keep the announcement between 400 and 500 words.

Companies and marketers can use distribution services to complement releases written for journalists and bloggers, to reach customers directly through traditional search engines and news aggregation services such as Techmeme. Recently, BusinessWire and PRNewswire have consistently ranked in the top 100 sources for news in Techmeme’s Leaderboard (a news tracking service for the technology industry). This means that a significant number of influential bloggers are referencing original news releases in their posts related to news and market information.

The trick for this new breed of releases is to write them as the article you want to read. Keep it clean, clear, pseudo-impartial, and definitely focused on benefits for specific customers. Basically, you need to humanize the story.

Distribution of news releases via a wire service such as PRNewsire, BusinessWire, and MarketWire offers additional value in the form of SEM (search engine marketing). Integrating keywords, phrases, and embedded links optimizes their “findability” and rank within traditional search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. In this case, the greatest targets for SEO releases are actually customers, not journalists.

As noted previously, customers use search engines to find solutions, and news releases often provide them with objective information that aids them in the decision-making process.

Many say that if you’re not on the first two pages of search results, your company is losing the battle for online mindshare. SEO releases contribute to the authority of related search results, but keep in mind that other factors also contribute, such as keyword buys, keywords on your Web site, affiliate strategies, and other tools and campaigns. When drafting the release, ensure that your top keywords are included toward the front of the release, especially in the headline and subhead, as well as in the boilerplate. Choose up to three words and repeat them throughout the release, especially in the boilerplate. Search engines seem to pay more attention to the bolded words and to the repeated words in the first half of news releases.

It’s also extremely helpful to use those keywords as anchor text to link back to strategic landing pages on your Web site. Make sure those pages are also keyword optimized. It’s important not to overuse each word or to overlink.

Keyword density, the number of times a keyword or phrase appears compared to the total number of words in a page, is optimized between 2 percent and 8 percent, according to experts. We’ve erred in the middle of that range. Without ruining the flow, include industry and product names and categories in place of generic descriptors such as “the product,” “the solution,” and “the company” throughout the release. We want to match our keywords to correlate with the real-world patterns of how people search. Also be sure to link rich media or multimedia so that your keywords show up in content-specific search engines, too.

These resources are helpful in determining the best keywords for your business:

The ideal length of this release is usually fewer than 400 words.

As we’ve mentioned, the latest new shiny object in PR is the SMR. This, along with Web video and online VNRs, is one of the greatest breakthroughs in the 100-year-old history of news releases. Originally introduced by Todd Defren in response to Tom Foremski’s call for the death of press releases, the SMR represents a new socially rooted format that complements traditional and SEO news releases by combining news facts and social assets in one easy-to-digest and improved tool.

Chris Heuer helped lead an effort to propose a standard for the construction and distribution of SMRs by creating an official working group, dubbed the “hrelease project.” Stowe Boyd reminded disingenuous, lazy, or opportunistic PR people that they’re not invited to participate in Social Media (and rightfully so) if they do so as marketers. Included in this working group was also Shel Holtz, who hosted the original NMRcast and who continues to demonstrate the value of SMRs. Shannon Whitley also worked to help PR pros “get it.” Many other professionals continued to march onward, educating PR professionals, bloggers, and consumers on the subject.

Brian joined Heuer from the onset of the working group and has since spent most of his free time defining and defending the reasons for the SMR’s existence in blog posts and at conferences worldwide, while simultaneously practicing the use of the tool himself. Instead of being a spectator, as many of the critics we’ve come across, Brian has been a player on the field, helping to define the opportunities, landscape, and best practices, and demonstrating when to apply restraint with the use of the SMR, which requires careful consideration. Today the SMR continues to evolve and is heading toward official standardization, led by the International Associations of Business Communicators (IABC).

Giving everyone what he or she needs in a relevant way requires a different approach. Almost every news release distributed today goes out without video or audio, and many still do not include links to additional information or supporting content. And although these multimedia pieces represent underlying components of SMRs, it’s not just about multimedia content; it’s about connecting information across social networks, the people looking for it, and the conversations that bind them together. SMRs also help bloggers and online journalists more effectively write a rich media post using one resource that provides them with everything they need.

Picture an everyday blog post with a headline, an intro paragraph, news facts, genuine quotes, and supporting market data (with links) combined with embedded socializable content. This might include video from Viddler, pictures from Flickr, screencasts hosted at YouTube, supporting documents piped from Docstoc, the use of social tools to bookmark, relevant tags for indexing and discoverability, subscriptions via RSS, company contacts via LinkedIn or Facebook, and, most important, the ability to use compartmentalized components of the SMR as building blocks for a new story (embed codes). SMRs can also include other social elements such as trackbacks (the ability to host a list of other posts to reference the SMR as well as the ability to host and facilitate comments). They’re also findable within Social Media search engines such as Technorati, Google Blog Search, BlogPulse, Yacktrack, and Ask Blog Search.

Similar to SEO releases, SMRs offer a new and perhaps unforeseen benefit. SEO releases provide assistance to customers seeking solutions through search, and SMRs offer similar benefits through social channels. The difference lies in how people interact with it and discover it, and also the tools they use to share and rebroadcast it. Basically, an SMR should contain everything necessary to share, discover, and retell a story in a way that complements your original intent and context.

However, SMRs should not cross the wire. They should be hosted on a social platform, such as WordPress, Blogger, or Moveable Type. The platforms can easily become extensions to company online press rooms or to specific company blogs but provide a dedicated channel for SMRs to complement traditional releases, SEO releases, company blog posts, and all other outward-focused communications. Any customizable blogging platform will more than likely serve as an effective—and social—platform. Remember that a traditional Web page isn’t necessarily social, so any published SMRs on a standard Web site will most likely not appear in social search.

For all the releases previously discussed, we add a note of caution: The same tools that help you expand your visibility can also set you up for failure. Wire services edit only for typos, not for content. This means that you can publish a release riddled with hyperbole, spin, buzzwords, and hype that will only confuse and dissuade your customers from doing business with you—it will send them to your competition.

The news release has evolved during the past 100 years and, similar to PR, it is enjoying a renaissance. Although in many cases it might still take its traditional form and be search engine-optimized, it has also morphed into a tool that facilitates direct conversions and great storytelling to benefit many different people through text and multimedia.

Today bloggers, journalists, consumers, and just about any stakeholder of a company can gather, share, and communicate information easily and with more content and resources than any release template previously provided. The fact that you now understand the evolution of the news release and are (we hope) willing to change and use the SMR appropriately means that you have clearly turned the page to begin a new chapter in PR. If so, you are helping to facilitate more effective conversations, and you are also joining in a powerful movement to reinvent an industry.

Millions of people still enjoy receiving information in a one-to-one format. But at the end of the day, nothing beats relationships. Now you just need to genuinely engage, and SMRs enable you to reach the right people in a one-to-one and one-to-many approach. Branching beyond the traditional news release enables communication to truly incite; it’s what you see in Web communities today—the many-to-many conversations that will impact a brand’s bottom line. The moral of the story is to be the person you want to reach, regardless of the technology you use to get there.