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.  

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.

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? 

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.

Business Wire Announces New Website Design, SEO, and Multimedia Features

  

Following a successful soft launch in December, we are glad to officially announce our new website upgrade. Over the next few blog posts we’ll discuss the changes we made on our site. The overarching theme of all these updates is making the content we distribute on behalf of our clients as accessible as possible to all the different user groups who look for it, and in the ways they look for it. First, our new and improved website design and accessibility. 

So how is the new website design different and better now? Here’s what we did:

Redesign: 

After successfully introducing a few new international websites in 2007, we were ready to shower our main website with some additional attention as well. So in order to make the site look more up-to-date we decided to make it a bit cleaner, less cluttered, and make more effective use of white space. We’ve also reorganized some of our pages in a way that makes important content visible to those looking for it, and in a way that fits the ways in which they look for it. Below is a screen grab of the new homepage design:

  

    

In addition to the improved look-and-feel, the new homepage structure strikes a good balance between offering news content and highlighting Business Wire’s key products and services. It highlights various important products such as our PR, IR, and Media services, while still displaying our news feed in a visible place on the page. It also highlights more clearly many important features such as our RSS links, tradeshow news, Business Wire’s own news, and more. This updated look and structure extends to our internal pages as well. Here is a screenshot of our new Products and Services section: 

 

 

Search and User Visibility: 

On the accessibility front, we’ve updated our website code to include improved labeling and tagging of different parts of our pages, in order to make it easier for search engines to spider our content; made it simpler and leaner under the hood so that pages load faster; optimized the site for some newer versions of web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari; and switched to a unified URL structure that also makes our content more search friendly and enables more accurate traffic measurement. All these increase the likelihood of our clients’ press releases showing up higher in search results, and of users being able to more easily and quickly access our clients’ releases.

Search Engine Optimization is a moving target, and there are no silver bullets. However, we continuously enhance our SEO efforts. Examples of this include offering our EON: Enhanced Online News search and social-media-ready platform; continuously providing our clients with tips and best practices on how to better communicate in the new media landscape and make their content as web-friendly as possible; and helping clients understand how to combine SEO efforts across press releases, new online services, and their own websites. Our continuous upgrades, like the one we’ve announced today, is another example of how keep making our content as accessible as possible.  We encourage you to check out our new site design, and as usual, feel free to let us know what you think.

The official press release is here. Stay tuned for more on our multimedia and sharing updates.

How the Testy Topic of Tags Applies to Press Releases

Our first webinar of the year, Lost in MySpace?, hit a chord with clients. Almost 500 people showed up last Friday…and we’re STILL answering questions for those who attended.

The 45-minute presentation targeted those inexperienced in Web 2.0 and while we made some progress, it’s clear our clients are hungry for as much enlightenment as we can provide on how this organic landscape applies to press releases.

One of the thorniest issues seems to be user generated tags–NOT metatags, which are the coding on a webpage that helps search engines categorize the content for serving up to searchers. We had dozens of questions on tags.

What are tags and why should PR practitioners, marketers and even savvy small businesses care about them?

Fact is, Web 2.0 presents huge opportunities for your press releases to be shared, re-purposed, reformatted and reused–in other words seen and read–by the billions of people surfing and searching the Web. The more you embrace tools like tags, the more you facilitate that sharing and re-purposing, therefore increasing the chances of your press release being seen and your message communicated.

Tags help by making it easier for people to find, share and read the copy you so painstakingly have put together. Think of the Internet as this big, fat filing cabinet. In it are billions of documents or web pages. Consider your press release a web page–because that’s exactly what it is, once it slips from being a Word or Mac document to an interactive webpage hosted by Business Wire, EON Enhanced Online News, or posted on your website.

Continuing the filing cabinet metaphor, the press release is the document you’re going to file. How should you label it so you can find it later? How will others interested in that document find it? And, Mom was right: you’re judged by the company you keep. Think about the kind of content with which you want to be associated, because it will also come up when tagged like yours.

The tag is the the label you put on the page to facilitate finding, storing, and sharing of the content. The tag helps give your press release a life BEYOND that first news spike, since it facilitates the saving and sharing of it later.

For more press release tips, check out our delicious page. Also, leave us a comment with your take on tags.

Lost in MySpace? Our free webinar series offers tips and hints to help you navigate the maze

We have just posted the dates and times in January and February so you can register for our free webinar series which you can find on the Business Wire Events section of the Business Wire website.

This popular webinar series has provided thousands of Business Wire members with tips and hints on how to use the wire and EON: Enhanced Online News to morph the press release from a straight-up media relations tool to a well-integrated web page which is widely available online and which can be found by search engines and viewed directly by consumers and investors in addition to reaching journalists and bloggers. 

In our January and February 2008 webinar series, we continue our ongoing webinar called Optimizing Your Press Release for Search Engines: Demo of EON: Enhanced Online News Optimization Tool powered by Newsforce showing you how to conduct keyword analysis and research and then write those search terms and links into your press release.  

We have also scheduled new dates for our very popular webinar EON: Enhanced Online News - The Importance of SEO and Social Media for Press Releases which shows you how to use the press release that you send on the wire or on our EON: Enhanced Online News platform powered by PR Web, to put the public  back in your public relations efforts by extending the reach and relevancy of your press release online. 

Our brand new webinar series is called Lost in MySpace? It was created to answer the most frequently asked questions from our EON: Enhanced Online News webinar. We demystify the jargon associated with SEO and Social Media and start from the beginning clearly explaining the various tools, technologies in plain English and tour you through the sites that are most often referenced showing you how you can get involved with them quickly and painlessly.  

Register for one or all of these free webinars and in an hour, you will have learned a new trick or two to expand the reach of your news to reach new audiences online.

New Surveys and Rankings Show Business Wire’s Strong Presence in Both Traditional and New Media

 

As the blogsphere establishes itself as a meaningful and reliable source of information — with some tech, media, and political blogs wielding as much influence as, if not more than, some traditional media outlets in certain areas — we at Business Wire are happy to see that we are still able to continually serve both worlds well.  

A recent journalist survey by the Arketi Group found that news releases are used by 90% of business journalists as sources for story ideas, sharing the top spot with industry sources. 54% of journalists mentioned they currently use blogs for story ideas, while 84% said they may report on stories that originated from blogs.  

A larger survey with a slightly different focus, conducted by PR industry news site Bulldog Reporter and online newsroom provider TEKGroup (fair disclosure: all the above mentioned companies have ties with Business Wire), shows that 69% of journalists follow at least one blog regularly, 44% visit social media sites at least monthly, 37% are subscribed to at least one RSS feed, and 20% actively seek multimedia content from companies at least once a month. (this survey also shows some different data on commercial wire services. Michael Tangeman of Media Mindshare makes a few interesting observations on methodology and findings).

Finally, the recently published Techmeme Leaderboard, which ranks websites based on how frequently their stories appear on Techmeme’s increasingly popular technology news application, places Business Wire as its 24th highest source for news (as of the writing of this post), with similar ranking to traditional news organizations as the Wall Street Journal and the BBC, and blogs such as Search Engine Land and PaidContent.org.  

In recent years Business Wire has put substantial effort into enhancing our multimedia capabilities for video, audio, and photo distribution; enabling our EON: Enhanced Online News search-optimized platform; introducing social media sharing features; reaching new-media sites and platforms; and creating robust RSS offerings. These initiatives are intended to help our clients reach end-consumers directly, interact with the blogsphere, and reach the young and young-at-heart generations of journalists who use new technologies and new media as tools and resources for their work.  We are thrilled to see that these efforts are paying off with both new and traditional media, as indicated by the Arketi and Bulldog Reporter/TEKGroup surveys and Techmeme’s Leaderboard. 

Malcolm Atherton, our eloquent and new-media-savvy account executive, who is one of the strong proponents of our digital media offerings, provides some great info in an interview with podcast site Rocky Mountain Voices during the recent Blogging for Business conference in Salt Lake City. Malcolm sums it all up fantastically. Check it out:

Posted by Ken Zamkow, Director of Product Development, Business Wire