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.

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.

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.

A Couple of Upcoming (free) Webinars on SEO Tips for Press Releases

We’ve set the final 2007 dates for our free webinar series on tips to enhance the search engine optimization of your press releases. Here are the two event topics and their remaining dates:

• The Importance of SEO and Social Media for Press Releases (November 7, November 30)
• Optimizing Your News Releases for Search: Developing Effective Keyword Strategies (November 9)

The webinars focus on ways to maximize the search engine impact of your press releases, with tips on how to identify and optimize relevant and popular keywords and phrases. Discussion also focuses on best practices in release formatting of content such as utilizing text links and design elements to enhance traffic and interaction with your audiences. Click here for more details and for webinar registration.