Free Webinars by Business Wire Specialists Offer How-To Press Release Tips

Free press release tips are available through Business Wire

Interested in press release tips from those who handle thousands of press releases every single workday–a collection of how-to nuggets on optimizing press releases for search and simple lessons on the social web?

Then join us for Business Wire’s free webinar series, attended by thousands of communicators.   New media specialists Malcolm Atherton, Monika Maeckle, Michael Toner, and Maria Van Wambeke will share their collective wisdom in three online events this month.

The free webinars focus on using new and social media tools to turn press releases into cost effective and interactive marketing tools. To learn how to Be An SEO Hero, find your way if you’re Lost in MySpace, or figure out why Your Text Needs a Partner, register for one of these free webinars.

To view archived webinars, check out the Business Wire resource page.

The Knot Makes Case for Hybrid Media At Business Wire Event

More than 150 professional communicators gathered at the 3 West Club in Manhattan earlier this week for Business Wire’s panel discussion, “A Social Media Conversation: How PR, IR & Marketing Professionals Can Engage and Participate in the Social Web.”

Peter Himler, President of Publicity Club of New York and founder of Flatiron Communications  moderated the panel which included Melissa Bauer, Senior PR Manager of The Knot, Ryan Block, Editor-in-Chief, Engadget, Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News, Peter Hershberg, Managing Partner, Reprise Media, Rob Key, CEO & Founder, Converseon, and Jim Nail, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, TNS/Cymfony.  PRNewswer did a nice recap and you can also listen to the webcast.

The Knot’s case study in utilizing many of the new tools and strategies discussed seemed to strike a chord with attendees. Bauer’s slidedeck demonstrated in detail how the company uses ALL types of media–from Facebook, video-on-demand and interactive press releases to traditional media pitches and hard copy national and local magazines.

Let’s hear it for hybrid media.  

From IROs to Engineers: Grappling with the Groundswell

Last week I spoke at two panels in California. The topic: new media. At the National Investor Relations Institute Conference in San Diego, my friend Rob Williams at Dell assembled a robust panel on blogging for investor relations officers (IROs).   At the Design Automation Conference two days later in Anaheim, Scott Sandler of Springsoft organized a session for engineers on navigating new media. A 90-minute train ride separated these two disparate audiences, but what struck me besides the glorious California coastline was how both groups are grappling with the Groundswell.

The Groundswell, written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research, is the best book to date written on social media. Rich in case studies, data, and readable prose, the authors decipher the social web’s tools, technologies and tactics in terms that nongeeks can understand. Read this book!

Its most relevant thesis for professional communicators is that people are looking TO EACH OTHER for news and information, rather than to traditional institutions like corporations. While this is no surprise, what distinguishes Li and Bernoff’s work from others is how it convincingly presents Web 2.0 as an opportunity, not a threat.

Is it alot of extra work to understand the Groundswell? You bet. One of the best quotes of the DAC panel was a frustrated marketing exec who groused: “Great, so we’re all publishers…now we have to do that, too!” This marketer longed for the days when a print ad in an engineering trade publication accomplished the task of getting a software firm’s message out.

Is the Groundswell scary?  As Li and Bernoff point out, “It isn’t comfortable at first.”   For IROs and others trained to control the flow of their company’s information to Wall Street and elsewhere, giving up control to gain influence is counter cultural.  And yet the IROs who attended our panel were open to the change.

Many would argue control has always been a delusion–all the more reason to invest in understanding.

Business Wire’s Free Webinars Offer How-To Tips for Press Releases

Seems folks just can’t get enough of Business Wire’s monthly webinars. As the social media vanguard embraces Twitter and pushes blogging into the mainstream, I remind myself and new media colleagues that a multitude of the clueless STILL seek basic understanding of the “new rules” for press releases.

Our clients and other issuers of press releases are busy people, with intense competition for their time and attention. Press releases are a small-but-important part of their universe. It’s no wonder, then, that a large percentage of corporate communicators need remedial help in understanding the new tools, technologies and best practices for today’s press release.

As always, we’re here to help. We don’t pretend to be objective since press releases are the very core of our business. We do, however, promise enlightenment and free learning during our weekly webinar sessions, which cover everything from how to optimize your press release for search to a step-by-step lesson on how-to Digg your press releases–and if you even should.

This FREE education is easy-to-access and awaiting your registration. Here’s the schedule:

Wednesday, June 4: Your text needs a partner: Using Multimedia to Drive Press Release Results

Tuesday, June 10: Be an SEO Hero–Optimize Your Press Release for Search

Wednesday, June 18: EON: Enhanced Online News

Friday, June 27, Lost in MySpace?

We hope you’ll join us.

Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting Trading Cards Still Available for Charity

Just back from Omaha and the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting. It was Business Wire’s third meeting as a Berkshire Hathaway company and each year seems to get better and better.

In addition to getting to talk with so many Berkshire shareholders, this year we created a set of limited edition trading cards that we sold to raise money for a very important charity, CASA of Douglas County, Nebraska, an organization that provides a voice for abused and neglected children within the court system.

The cards (six different ones) feature photos of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and BW’s Cathy Baron Tamraz, along with quotes from each. We’re proud to say that so far we’ve raised $5,000 for the cause. We do have a few more sets available that you can order if you weren’t able to get to Omaha.

To order your set, please send a $10 check for each set to Business Wire (it’s fully tax-deductible - we’ll send you a receipt) with a self-addressed stamped return envelope to:

Business Wire

c/o Trading Cards for CASA

4100 Newport Place, Suite 530

Newport Beach, CA 92660

(Add: Business Wire CEO Cathy Baron Tamraz was interviewed on Fox Business News this morning talking about the cards, A-Rod and CASA)

Raising Money for Children - BW Booth at the 08 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting

At this year’s Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting, Business Wire has put together a series of six commemorative trading cards featuring quotes and photos of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Cathy Baron Tamraz as well as “stats” on Business Wire. The cards are dated to mark this year’s BH shareholders meeting on May 3, 2008.

With these cards, we’re raising money for CASA of Douglas County, Nebraska. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is a charitable organization that provides a voice for abused and neglected children within the court system. So if you’re in Omaha on Saturday at the Shareholders Meeting, please stop by the Business Wire booth and make a $10 donation for this worthy cause. If you’d like to donate to CASA directly, contact them online.

We have a limited number of these cards, so they are available only at our booth at this time and on a first-come basis.

Wire Services Don’t “Go To Technorati,” Nor Should They

Curious clients have posed the following question of late :  “Do you go to Technorati?”                                                                              

Well, not exactly.   ”Going” to Technorati is a misnomer, since what Technorati does is index blog content, not press releases.

Take the blog post you are now reading.  When I hit the “publish” button, the clever WordPress interface I’m using sends a message–or “ping”–to Technorati and other blog search engines.   When blog search engines receive the ping, they deploy a “spider,” or automated search program to come see what’s new.  

That content is then indexed against all the other content competing for your attention.  The order in which the blog search engine results are served up is based on hundreds of variables–things like in- and out-bound links, how many clicks those links are getting, what authority the blog has, how long it’s been around, how frequently it’s updated, and a slew of ever-changing factors.

So:  does Business Wire and EON Enhanced Online News “go” to Technorati?  You mean do press releases sent on Business Wire and EON: Enhanced Online News–or any wire service for that matter–show up in the Technorati blog search engine results?

Only if bloggers reference the content in the context of a blog post.  

The goal of the professional communicator should be to engage the blogosphere to write (preferably positively) about your company or organization.  Press releases, well-done, are a powerful tool for accomplishing just that.

Sorry, there’s no Magic Pixie Dust.  Wish there were.    We’re back to good content, well written, appropriately distributed.   That’s why you get paid the big bucks.

P.S.   Communicators who want to guarantee that their press releases are indexed by Technorati and other blog search engines should start their own blogs, follow best SEO practices, and figure out relevant ways to work their press release content into them.

Context As King…and other Lessons from SXSWi 2008…

Four days at South by Southwest Interactive   (SXSWi) yielded many lessons for this recently appointed Vice President of New Media.  Apart from ubiquitous guitar hero contests and a ride in a simulated racecar that was so real I got carsick,  the panels and discussions at the annual interactive and gaming festival taught me alot.         

Here’s some insights:                                                                                  

1. The Geek Nation can be brutal.   The audience at the Mark Zuckerburg keynote was vicious in  attacks on Sarah Lacy, the hair-twirling valleygirl journalist whose interview with the Facebook founder provoked an unforgiving backchannel on Twitter, the microblogging and social networking service.    While Lacy deserved criticism for misjudging her audience and a flirty approach, the ambush seemed a bad fit for her ”crime” of being lame.  As Catherine B. Taylor of Social Media Insider pondered:  “…is this…the punishment we can expect…for a particularly bad day at the office?”  The episode has made me reconsider Twitter.

2.  With new and social media it’s all about YOU.  Kathy Sierra’s presentation, “How to Create Passionate Users,” explained that what customers think of you or your company doesn’t matter.  What’s important is how your products and services make customers feel.   A tad Maya Angelou, perhaps, but Kathy’s example of the typical Help Desk experience provoking either an accepting “Ooops!” or angry ”You bastards!” from users proves her case. 

3. Social media will have it THEIR way (an extension of Insight #2 above), OR they will leave.   One FAQ: what to do when the boss “just doesn’t get” that social media takes time?  In four separate sessions, social media marketers bemoaned the “glacial” pace of change in their companies, wondering how to convince the boss to be patient with social media initiatives.  

 Advice from the experts: “Life’s too short.  Go work for somebody who understands.” 

4.  Content or Context as King?   Multiple sessions touched on the back-to-the-future notion that once again, content rules.   Valuable content, well written, appropriately distributed reaps audience.   When Social Media Club founder Chris Heuer and I debated this over beers at the Dell Lounge, Chris pointed out, “No, Monika.  CONTEXT is king.”

Chris may be right.   What do you think? 

New Multi-Platform Business Wire Widgets on Netvibes Ginger

  

We’re happy to announce our new multi-platform widgets we’ve developed with Netvibes.  

Netvibes offers personalized homepages to users where they can easily aggregate all of their RSS feeds, widgets, and other content in one place. To many Business Wire users Netvibes is a familiar name: in 2007 we’ve launched our Business Wire Netvibes Universe offering our various feeds and widgets; have been featured in the Netvibes directory and ecosystem; and offer Netvibes subscription options on our RSS page.  

Netvibes just launched its new platform, Ginger, that adds a social networking layer to Netvibes pages. So from now on, Netvibes users can share their entire Netvibes page itself (aka Universe) with their contacts. This means that their friends can see what kinds of feeds they are following, what interesting widgets they use, what networks they’re on, and more — allowing users to discover new content and websites through their friends. Users can also proactively share modules and widgets with others. While of course not every user wants all their contacts to see what they read and watch online, this is a great offering for many who wish to share and discover new interesting content sources.  

In conjunction with the new Ginger launch, we partnered with Netvibes again to create a series of four new Business Wire widgets. Each of the new widgets offers up to 15 unique content categories from Business Wire, including multimedia news and various types of feeds by industry, subject, and language. Another great feature of the new widgets is that they are compatible across platforms like Windows Vista and Live, Apple Dashboard, Opera, and iGoogle. We’re very excited about the new widgets as this makes it easier for more users to access Business Wire content in the format and platform of their choosing. As an official launch partner, our premium widgets are also featured in the new Ginger directory, as can be seen in the image below:  

 

  

Please feel free to give both Ginger and our new widgets a test drive and let us know what you think. Simply follow this link or the bookmarklet below and click to add one of our widgets to your page. To keep the widget there whenever you return, you’ll need to login or sign up for a Netvibes account. 

Press Release 2.0: Writing and Content Matter More than Tech Tricks

Tactics, the newsletter of the Public Relations Society of America , devoted its February issue to writing, and that’s good news.

Why? Because in the contest to appear more-social-media-savvy-than-thou, some industry pros are losing sight of what matters most when it comes to press releases: good writing and valuable content. After that, appropriate delivery gets your message heard.

Judging from the roiling conversation around the “social media release,” you might think that press release results are all about the technology–that sharing chicklets, trackbacks, multimedia and tags are a PR panacea.

We at Business Wire and EON: Enhanced Online News don’t buy that. We believe a well-written story, distributed through appropriate channels, gets your message across.

That DOES NOT MEAN press release content shoved inappropriately into social media networks and two-way conversations. Crashing the party and interrupting conversations has never worked for me in the past…how ’bout you?

In our webinars, we educate attendees on how new media tools apply to press releases, reminding them that tapping into social networks requires time, energy and understanding. That’s why it’s called “networking,” which applies online just as it does in person.

At a PRSA meeting, you wouldn’t barge into a group of people you don’t know, shouting “Have you seen our new product?!? It’s really great! You should buy it!”

You wouldn’t.

Rather, you’d listen, find common ground, start a conversation, develop rapport, cultivate a relationship…and maybe, just maybe…hours, days or weeks later, propose some sort of contact.

Making releases more web friendly can increase a release’s Web traction, no doubt about it. And surely you won’t be surprised to learn that IMHO Business Wire and EON: Enhanced Online News offer the best tools on the planet for delivering press releases to their appropriate audiences.

That said, even OUR superior technology is incidental to the content and the writing.