Press release optimization doesn’t get the attention it once did, at least within the SEO community. But a considerable number of releases are distributed over the wires and added to online pressrooms every day, so it is still an important tactic for PR professionals. Why wouldn’t you try to increase the search engine visibility of your press materials?

Last week I needed to dust off a press release optimization checklist that I’d written several years ago, so I thought I’d share it here.

I hadn’t published this previously because there are already a number of other good resources out there. Todd Defren published a useful checklist back in 2008 and Lee Odden, probably the strongest advocate, has written multiple posts such as Essential Press Release Optimization Tips.

But since SEO and PR are my main areas of focus I thought I’d share my version as well.

I’d originally put this together in 2006; I found it interesting that there wasn’t too much I needed to update. Some of the research tools have changed but the fundamentals for optimizing the headline, body text and links are largely the same.

One thing I want to emphasize is not to put too much focus on keyword frequency or density in the release. You certainly want your target keyword phrase in the title and it should appear within the body too (ideally in the opening paragraph). But there’s no need to get caught up in making sure it appears X times or represents X% of all words.

Press Release Optimization Checklist

Keyword Planning

1. Select the main keyword phrase for the release

• Brand and product/service names will be naturally supported so choose a literal, descriptive phrase that matches how people search for the topic
• Use keyword research tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Insights for Search to evaluate and refine candidates and discover popular variations. Look for keyword phrases with reasonable search volume that accurately convey the key concept
• Check what news stories and press releases currently come up for your top candidates in Google News and Yahoo News. How much competition is there?
• Use Google Trends to compare keyword candidates, seeing how often they have been searched for in Google over time and how frequently they have appeared in Google News stories

Content Optimization

1. Title/headline

• Include the main keyword phrase in the title, close to the beginning when possible
• Reduce unnecessary words to improve keyword weight
• Put the most important information first

2. Subheading/summary (when present)

• Include the main keyword phrase or a common variation

3. First paragraph

• Include the main keyword phrase in the first paragraph, ideally in the first sentence

4. Rest of body

• Include the main keyword phrase (and/or variations of it) approximately one time for every 100 words. This is a very rough guideline not a strict rule. The key is to blend in keyword support without harming readability
• Total length: 250-500 words total is optimal, however longer releases are often necessary and not a problem
• Avoid over-use of “marketing speak.” Use direct, straightforward language
• Use the full form of terms throughout the release, unless the shortened forms or abbreviations also have search demand
• As possible, include the keyword phrase in executive quotes as that content may be highlighted by some services or used in resulting media coverage
• Optimize/tag images and multimedia content with target keywords

5. Links

• Link directly to specific pages in the release (not just the home page)
• Use keywords in the anchor text of links (3-4 links per release maximum)

6. For press releases on your own site

• Optimize the page’s title tag, URL and META description tag based on SEO best practices

So that’s my checklist. Have any additional suggestions or a different approach? I’d be interested to hear from you.

Related posts:

1. Email Press Release Optimization Circa 1999
2. A Look at Muck Rack’s Twitter Press Release Service, 51 Releases Later
3. PRFilter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent

While going through some old documents I came across an article I’d written on email press release best practices back in 1999. It’s a fun look back at the early days of online media relations so I thought I’d share it.

I started doing online public relations activities in 1995 and from 1996-2000 I managed an online PR team and helped run an email press release service called Internet News Bureau that was eventually acquired by Internet.com.

By 1999 we’d been sending press releases via email for several years and this article was meant to help others avoid some of the pitfalls of pitching the media in this way.

I’m not sure when “press release optimization” became a common concept but it wasn’t being used at that time. Our main focus was direct delivery to journalists via email. (As a side note “e-mail” was the more common spelling then as the AP did not standardize on “email” until this year).

One thing I enjoyed is the fact that I called out the use of terms like “unique” and “revolutionary” since I’m still doing that now through posts like The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases and PR Filter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent.

It’s also interesting that the common sense concepts haven’t changed much, nor were they new at the time. Communication vehicles continue to evolve but the fundamentals remain largely the same.

So without further ado here is my article on e-mail press release best practices from 1999:

E-mail Press Releases: Do’s and Don’ts

by Adam Sherk, VP Internet Public Relations, Multimedia Marketing Group
October 20, 1999

Sending press releases via e-mail can be a great marketing tool – if you do it right. As with offline media relations, you need to cater to your press contacts just as much as your clients. With this in mind, I’ve put together some basic tips for writing and distributing e-mail press releases:

Length

Keep it short: online journalists are bombarded by e-mail; long, wordy releases will often fall victim to the delete key. It’s best to use short paragraphs, as they are easier on the eyes in an e-mail.

Get to the point right away, and skip all the fluffy PR stuff. Avoid words like “unique” and “revolutionary” – they’ve heard it all too many times.

Formatting

Proper e-mail formatting is essential. If your release comes through as gibberish or with over-wrapped lines, it will never be read, and worse – it will annoy the journalists. The safest way is to keep it simple: left justified with hard line breaks at 65 characters or less.

Don’t use special characters like the trademark symbol. A lot of e-mail programs read them fine, but not all of them, so why take the chance? Instead use text abbreviations, like: [tm].

Also, it’s best to compose a release in your e-mail program instead of a word-processing program. Even basic things like quotation marks from a word-processing program can come through as gibberish in someone else’s e-mail program.

Avoid the temptation to send attachments, even if the file is small. You don’t know how it will come through on the other end. A long download – or worse, a mail server crash – will not endear you to the “victimized” journalist. Instead provide a URL where they can view, download or do what ever you’d like them to do.

Relevance

Don’t just blast out your release to every journalist’s e-mail address that you can find. Avoid sending unsolicited releases (it’s still spam) and make sure that your material will be relevant to each individual journalist.

Unsure what a journalist covers? Ask. A short e-mail can do tremendous good. With one message, you can find out what they are interested in, get permission to send them material, and best of all, build a relationship.

Another good option is using an established online distribution service with a subscription-based list.

###

Good stuff, huh?

Related posts:

1. Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips
2. A Look at Muck Rack’s Twitter Press Release Service, 51 Releases Later
3. PRFilter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent

While watching the film The Social Network over the weekend one scene in particular caught my attention. Mark Zuckerberg and key members of the early Facebook team are meeting to discuss roles and ownership stakes in the company.

To quote the Mark Zuckerberg character in the film (emphasis is mine):

“Now here’s the arrangement. Eduardo is CFO and owns 30% of the company. Dustin is vice president and head of programming and his 5% of the company will come from my end. Chris is director of publicity and his compensation will depend on the amount of work he ends up doing. Any questions?”

I had to laugh at the implication that the PR guy might not end up doing much work or contributing substantially to the success of the company.

Certainly team members that were providing capital or creating the actual product had greater value at that point, and Facebook was doing well through word-of-mouth so a comprehensive PR plan was probably not a primary concern.

But based on public reports the real life Chris Hughes did apparently make a valuable contribution to Facebook and he went on to do good work for the Barack Obama campaign and then found Jumo. [See FastCompany and The New York Times for more on Hughes.]

And few would argue against the importance of PR and marketing in launching and growing any new business regardless of how formalized those efforts are. Rand Fishkin covered this well on SEOmoz earlier this year.

So the question is: how much is a PR professional worth to a startup?

The short answer is it really does depend on the situation; how much of a role PR will play in the early phases of the company, what the specific PR person brings to the table, etc.

It also depends on who you ask! Those more focused on technology or finance may have a different perspective on the value of public relations in getting a company off the ground. There may also be a tendency to not assign as much value to things that are not necessarily as tangible early on.

But that doesn’t mean that PR and marketing do not play a vital role in the development of a company. So what do you think a PR person is worth to a startup?

Related posts:

1. Paywalls, Media Coverage and User Access: What’s a PR Pro to Do?
2. Your Mom’s Coming to Facebook But She May Not Stick Around
3. Smart Move from Condé Nast: GQ and DETAILS Should Have Their Own Websites

Twice in the past year I’ve covered the most overused PR buzzwords and marketing speak and press release buzzword abuse. It is fun to point out the biggest offenders but even well-intentioned marketing communicators can find it difficult to avoid them.

Ready to stop being a “leading provider” of “unique,” “innovative” and “award winning” overused terms but need a solution? (Doh! “Solution” is an overused term too. But not in this context, so I get a pass.)

Enter Better than Great, Arthur Plotnik’s new book containing nearly 6,000 alternate terms for praise and acclaim. Arthur mentioned that he was working on it in the comments of my first buzzwords post and now that it’s been released I’m happy to say he achieved his aim and then some.

Better than Great covers a wide range of fresh superlatives in a number of categories, pulling from rare gems and vintage gold all the way through current phrases influenced by hip-hop.

To show the book in action while proving the point that portions of press releases do sometimes get picked up in media and blog coverage I’ll quote directly from the release that Associate Publisher Brenda Knight sent to me:

“Better than Great is the must-have reference for anyone seeking to rise above tired superlatives when the quality of acclaim matters….Critics, copywriters, journalists, poets, speakers, sales reps, bloggers, Twitterers – word-slingers from the whole digital and literary spectrum – should find it to be a concussively brilliant, euphoriant, supernal, larky, trill, spikeable, epiphanic, über-cool, soul-juddering experience, an upful of endorphining jubilee to make the heart warble.”

While we probably need to call out the use of “must-have” that paragraph sure is jam-packed with non-overused terms.

Now admittedly the best antidote for marketing speak in press releases is to explain things simply in clear, direct terms and let the media professionals take it from there. So blending in some of Arthur’s fresh superlatives won’t always be the right approach.

But there are plenty of forms of marketing communications that could use of an injection of less-worn adjectives and even press releases can benefit from some of Arthur’s offerings in the right situation.

So for writers of all shapes and sizes Better than Great is indeed just that.

Note: The book is just $10 on Amazon right now. I’ll avoid the link so this post doesn’t get misinterpreted as a play for affiliate revenue, but go check it out.

Related posts:

1. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
2. Search Marketing Dwarfs Social Media in Interactive Marketing Budgets
3. Corporate Social Media Marketing is about Two-Way Communication

Social media news releases have lots of advantages, and what’s not to like? They offer a clean, simple format that encourages companies to be clear and succinct. While multimedia content can be added to any press release, SMNRs are much more likely to incorporate images and video. It is easy share and repurpose the information in the releases and in many cases they are strong enough to stand on their own as an ongoing resource.

That all sounds great, but do social media news releases actually generate more media coverage? According to research from the UK’s RealWire, they do.

After an interview with Shel Holtz on the value of press releases RealWire CEO Adam Parker revisited some previous research to see how SMNRs are faring against traditional press releases.

Based on data from 1,044 releases distributed via RealWire from September 2010 to March 2011, social media news releases earned three times more coverage than traditional releases:

There are any number of things that influence the success of a press release, most of all the content of the announcement itself and its relevance to particular news outlets. And as statisticians like to say correlation does not imply causation.

But the data is certainly encouraging and it is good to see evidence that social media press releases are performing well.

Related posts:

1. Where Do You Want Your Social Media Press Releases to Live?
2. Press Releases Do Get Shared on Google News
3. My Top Posts of 2010 on SEO, PR and Social Media for News and Sports

Press release search engine PRFilter came out of beta last week. It aggregates press releases from 10 wire services and distribution services and pulls them in directly from 60+ technology and media companies. Users can filter by specific industries, countries and time periods and create personalized accounts for further customization.

It seems to work fairly well. The user interface is simple and easy to use and the sample queries I tried brought up decent results. Press releases from PR Newswire, Business Wire, PRWeb and Marketwire frequently appear in the listings. PitchEngine releases do not appear to be in the index.

While testing it out I thought I’d revisit the press release buzzwords research I did last year. So I pulled the top 25 overused terms from that post and ran them through PRFilter.

UPDATE:
PRFilter’s Adam Parker was kind enough to pull more accurate data on the terms (see the comments below for information on why my original figures were incomplete).

Here are the updated results, covering 3,000 press releases in a 24 hour period. I’ve left my original table and the associated analysis intact below.

In this sampling of releases “leading” edges out “solution” as the most overused term.

–original post resumed–

Here are the matches for each term in the past 24 hours:

“Solution” was the most overused term but that figure is skewed by regular usage of that word. “Leading provider” also suffered considerable abuse which is a shame because that one really is devoid of meaning.

It was good to see that six overused terms from my full list did not have any instances in the past 24 hours, but the holiday weekend in the US slowed down press release activity.

A few notes on searching with PRFilter:

• The index gets updated very quickly. Checking some of the terms even 15 minutes later resulted in more matches.
• Using quotation marks to limit the results to exact matches for multiple word queries (e.g. “cutting edge” instead of cutting edge) did not seem to work.
• There was a lot of overlap in the results for “innovative,” “innovator” and “innovation.” While I wanted exact matches for this list combining those results does make sense for the average searcher.

For more information on PRFilter see the launch press release and this video:

Related posts:

1. Email Press Release Optimization Circa 1999
2. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
3. Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips

The results of the Vocus 2011 PR Planning Survey are out and the number of organizations that plan to focus more on SEO and social media has declined.

In this year’s survey 51% of the respondents indicated that they would focus more on SEO in 2011, down from 57% in 2011. And the number of organizations that stated they would focus less on SEO increased from 4% to 6%:

While these are small changes I find the trend discouraging. The PR industry has made good strides in its understanding of SEO in recent years but more often than not implementation beyond basic best practices falls short. So if anything more attention needs to be paid to SEO.

There may also be a tendency for some PR pros to think that social media has reduced the need for SEO, as evidenced by the “SEO is Dead” memes that resurface from time to time. The reality is quite the opposite; social media marketing and SEO are completely intertwined and each strengthens the other.

Speaking of social media, last year it dominated the mix with 80% of the respondents stating they would increase their focus on it. In the 2011 survey that figure drops to 69%, which is still very high considering how much attention is already being paid to social media in the PR world.

For comparison here is the 2010 chart that I included in my post on last year’s Vocus survey. At that time 57% for SEO was an encouraging figure:

Let’s hope the SEO trend shifts back up in 2012.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Dominates 2010 PR Planning, But SEO Increasingly in the Mix
2. My Top Posts of 2011 on SEO, PR and Social Media for Publishers
3. Does Social Media Increase a Journalist’s Value?

In reading a post on Google Operating System about the Most Shared section on Google News I found it interesting that a press release from NASA was among the leaders.

I checked today and it is still at the top of the list for the week:

Press releases tend to be the ugly stepsister when it comes to Google News visibility but here’s a sign that they do sometimes get traction from users.

So what does it take to break through? For NASA it was promoting an announcement that will “impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to apply a similar angle to typical business press releases.

But jokes aside, if you have something of genuine interest to announce people will pay attention and spread the word.

Related posts:

1. Social Media News Releases Get 3x More Media Coverage
2. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
3. Where Do You Want Your Social Media Press Releases to Live?

Being the savvy, well-connected PR pro that you are, you just helped bring about a great piece of editorial coverage in a major media outlet. The client is thrilled, you’ve won the praise and envy of your colleagues, all is well…except that online the article is behind a paywall so hardly anyone will ever see it. Doh!

There is a lot of discussion these days about paywalls, metered models, paytags for individual articles and the like. Publishers are desperately trying to come up with new business models and hopefully they’ll figure out a system that works. But from a media relations perspective this reminds me of the “if a tree falls in the forest” saying:

If an article about your company or client is behind a paywall and no one is around to read it, does it make an impact?

The credibility that comes from positive coverage in a respected media outlet remains, but a significant decrease in exposure certainly diminishes its overall impact.

The good news is that some of the models currently being considered include free access for users who come in from links in blogs and social media, so at least in some cases exposure will not be limited solely to paid subscribers. But it is too early to know how well these hybrid models will work so we may see publishers move to less porous paywalls over time. And some sites are already choosing to show only short excerpts of articles for free.

So if not many users are reading the coverage, just how valuable is it?

The rise of social media has already resulted in PR professionals relying less on the major media middle man and directly engaging their target audiences. So maybe it won’t really matter in the long run.

But companies like to frame newspaper articles and glossy magazine covers on their walls and PR professionals still need to deliver big wins. Has anyone ever framed a good comment thread from a company blog, or a collection of “likes” on a Facebook Page? So it’s hard to imagine mainstream media relations falling too far out of the PR toolkit.

Here’s another question:

Would you foot the bill to give users free access to coverage of your company or clients?

Imagine reaching out to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and offering to pay the bill for unlimited user access to content about your company. That would certainly be one way to try to maximize exposure.

But that would cause all kinds of problems, not the least of which the publications’ editorial integrity being called into question. Do sponsoring companies start getting more coverage? Does coverage tend to be more favorable because the content is essentially subsidized? It just wouldn’t work.

So as more major publishers move to subscription models, it will be interesting to see what impact this has on mainstream media relations.

Related posts:

1. Social Media News Releases Get 3x More Media Coverage
2. Pro PR Tips: 100 PR Tips from Rafe Needleman Published as a Book
3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media

Unique, one-of-a-kind, best-of-breed…blah, blah, blah. We see this type of marketing speak over and over in press releases and promotional materials. And let’s be honest, we’ve all used it at one time or another — shame on us. But which buzzwords are the most overused?

I saw an item in PR Daily recently using the MoMA press release archive to demonstrate how press releases were much better years ago. That got me curious about which terms are currently being most abused. I hadn’t come across any anti-buzzword content lately so I thought I’d do my own research.

So I searched PRWeb’s press release archive for a selection of overused terms, buzzwords and marketing speak using a “site:prweb.com” search on Google, for example:

I opted for Google over PRWeb’s internal search because internal search results are not typically very good. I chose PRWeb over PR Newswire, Business Wire, etc. because it was among the first search-friendly services so I figure its content is fairly well indexed. And from what I can tell the PRWeb archive dates from 2006 so that is a good way to check press releases from just the last four years.

To come up with the list of buzzwords I started with the usual suspects then got some more ideas from Wikipedia and TechCrunch. This led me to David Meerman Scott, who I realized did something similar back in 2007 and then again in 2009 using a different set of terms and a larger range of press release services.

My list of terms could have gone on endlessly but I decided to cap it at 75 100 (the list is growing based on suggestions in the comments). A lot of what I have included is more marketing speak than technology or industry buzzwords since I wanted to look at overused words across all industries. If there are any glaring omissions please let me know and I’ll add them in.

So here are the most overused buzzwords and marketing speak in press releases based on the number of times they appear in releases currently archived on PRWeb. Any phrases that are sometimes hyphenated are grouped together with the non-hyphenated version (e.g. award-winning and award winning).

“Leader” was the most used term by far — funny how many companies, products and services anoint themselves as “the leader” or “a leader.” And it is not surprising to see “unique” in the top five since we all think we’re special, now don’t we.

I was glad to see “revolutionary” with less than 5,000 mentions. That one was overused like crazy in the 1990’s.

Which terms do you think are the biggest offenders? What would you love to see stricken from marketing speak forever?

Related posts:

1. Better than Great: A Cure for Buzzwords and Marketing Speak
2. PRFilter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent
3. A Look at Muck Rack’s Twitter Press Release Service, 51 Releases Later

Yesterday Cision released the results of their Social Media and Online Usage Study, a survey of social media usage by print and Web journalists. Conducted with Don Bates of George Washington University, the study measures the journalists’ use of and attitudes toward social media for researching and reporting stories.

While it could be argued that some of the findings come down to common sense there are some interesting statistics in the report.

Here are a few things that I’d like to highlight:

55% of the journalists said that social media was “important” or “somewhat important” for reporting and producing stories:

I tend to focus on how social media helps news sites to engage with audiences and promote their content, but it also offers a great way for journalists to research stories and gain insight into trending topics and public sentiment.

The flip side to that is that not everything gleaned from monitoring social media activity is accurate or reliable. So it’s not surprising that 84% of the journalists indicated that news and information delivered via social media was “slightly less” or “much less” reliable/vetted than news delivered via traditional media. The number one reason for this lack of confidence was a “lack of fact-checking, verification or reporting standards.”

Blogs were by far the most used social media tool (I’ll avoid the discussion on whether a blog is a publishing platform or a social media tool – or both) but microblogging and social networking sites also had significant usage:

Social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook were particularly utilized by journalists writing for websites (71%) as opposed to print magazines (61%) or newspapers (49%). A similar difference exists for microblogging sites like Twitter.

Newspaper journalists were the most likely to report using no social media tools (21%).

The section on sources used had an interesting stat that relates to the discussion of press release usage by bloggers and local news sources. According to the survey:

Less experienced journalists use information from press releases and PR professionals more now than five years ago to write their stories – more so than their more experienced counterparts.

So I guess the takeaway there is go after the new folks.

There is a lot more data in the Cision study so I recommend downloading it to get the whole story.

Related posts:

1. Does Social Media Increase a Journalist’s Value?
2. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
3. Social Media News Releases Get 3x More Media Coverage

A new whitepaper from Vocus with their 2010 PR Planning Survey results has some encouraging statistics about the increasing role of search engine optimization in the overall PR mix.

Not surprisingly, social media gets the most attention with 80% of respondents indicating they plan to do more with it in 2010. But 57% also indicated that they plan to increase their focus on SEO:

That’s good news, because even just 2-3 years ago many companies’ efforts to integrate SEO and PR activities did not extend much beyond press release optimization. That’s certainly important but it’s just one tactic; there are a lot more opportunities to explore.

Greg Jarboe and Lee Odden are at the forefront of evangelizing the importance of SEO in public relations and in teaching how to actually implement integrated efforts. Both rightly deserve credit for increasing awareness industry-wide.

Another chart of interest in the Vocus whitepaper demonstrates how social media monitoring has become an essential part of the PR practioner’s toolkit:

News monitoring and online media databases have traditionally received the lion’s share of PR tool spending. Over time I’d expect to see social media monitoring tools grab more budget at the expense of both, as more and more focus is placed on direct communication with target audiences.

I was surprised to see only 36% of respondents are using online press rooms, since that should be a fundamental part of any corporate website. Perhaps some of the respondents took the question to mean third-party online press room services.

Related posts:

1. Fewer PR Organizations Plan to Increase Focus on SEO and Social Media in 2011
2. My Top Posts of 2010 on SEO, PR and Social Media for News and Sports
3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media

I’m definitely a fan of Muck Rack – it offers an easy way to track major media journalists on Twitter and pick up on trending topics. So I’ve been curious to see how their Twitter press release service would do.

Muck Rack charges $1 per character to send out a 140 character press release, with a minimum fee of $50. Releases are posted on their press release page (and in its RSS feed) and tweeted via @muckrack, which currently has 5k+ followers.

Based on their press release page and RSS feed, since the service launched in late July they’ve distributed 51 press releases, a small number being their own. That’s an average of about 4 press releases per week, so there’s not a lot of volume yet.

Of those 51 releases, 28 included a bit.ly URL, so I tried using bit.ly search to get click data on each of those shortened URLs. My intent was to show the average number of clicks for bit.ly URLs in Muck Rack releases. Unfortunately I discovered that the “total clicks” figures bit.ly reports from its search page are not very complete or accurate (you get better data on URLs you’ve personally shortened in your history when signed into bit.ly). So I wasn’t able to learn anything meaningful there.

bit.ly search did have data on the URL in the most recent Muck Rack press release, reporting 65 clicks:

That doesn’t measure up to the hundreds or thousands of clicks that popular content often gets via Twitter, but press releases are in a different category. It’s less important how many people click and much more important who is clicking and what they are doing with the information. If you look at @muckrack’s followers there’s a mix of media and non-media professionals, so there’s certainly an opportunity for the press releases to get some exposure.

To see how Muck Rack stacks up against the competition I checked the volume of activity on some other Twitter press release services, but there aren’t a lot of apples-to-apples comparisons to be made. Much of what’s out there is established press release services that now send out releases via Twitter in addition to their main distribution methods, or services like Brian Solis’ microPR that connect PR and media professionals without the use of press releases.

Probably the closest competitor is Journalism.co.uk in the UK, which charges £30 to distribute a release through Twitter and RSS. As of today their @pressreleases Twitter account has 6,600 followers, a bit more than Muck Rack’s 5,050. Their Latest Press Releases page shows their most recent 50 releases, the oldest being from October 7th. So in less than a month they’ve distributed as many releases as Muck Rack has done in its first three months.

Of course the larger question is whether or not companies will use third-party services to distribute press releases via Twitter when they can do so for free on their own. The answer lies in how much additional value the services can provide in terms of exposure and activity.

UPDATE:
In addition to hearing from Chris Evans-Roberts of Journalism.co.uk in the comments below, today I corresponded with Greg Galant, CEO of Sawhorse Media, the company behind Muck Rack. Greg noted that they encourage users to use bit.ly so that the metrics will be open and verified by a third party. He also agreed with the notion that it’s important who sees a press release, not how many people, and that they are focused on making the service more useful for journalists to increase its value.

Related posts:

1. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
2. Press Releases Do Get Shared on Google News
3. Videos in Press Releases are Cool – If They Provide Meaningful Content

Yesterday I received a copy of Rafe Needleman’s Pro PR Tips in the mail from ITDatabase. I’d seen some of the tips previously via Twitter and on the Pro PR Tips blog, but the book presents them in a nice, clean format that makes for a good read. I ended up going through all 100 tips in one sitting.

In the book the PR tips are broken down into various categories like PR basics, pitch tips, demo tips, etc. Some are practical and useful, others are pretty entertaining.

Among the ones I liked, here are a dozen that stood out:

Tip #7: Don’t thank me
When you thank me for a good review, I get suspicious. I think I must have missed something and let you off too easy.

Tip #14: Dirty Secret
Every now and then, press releases work. (Yes, writers hate blind press releases. Except when they are good).

Tip #16: Not BFFs
Dear PR Person,
We didn’t “work together” back in 1999. You pitched me. It was beautiful, but don’t make it more than it is.

Tip #21: Guest List
People I want to hear a pitch from, in descending order: CEO, CTO, VP Product Development, Janitor, Brand Marketing Manager.

Tip #25: Black list
Yes, I really do have a list of PR people I won’t talk to. It’s shorter than you probably think, though. Everyone deserves a second chance.

Tip #27: You do your job, I’ll do mine
Will we take a submitted article? I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

Tip #37 Uh-huh
If we’re doing a demo via phone and WebEx, at least 25% of the time that you’re talking, I’m reading my email.

Tip #42: Flair
A sure way to get your email noticed: Use colored backgrounds, fancy fonts, and complex templates. Journalists love that.

Tip #44: How not to pitch
“As seen on TechCrunch” is a bad way to start a pitch to me.

Tip #49: Where’s the fire?
The flag on your email says, “Urgent.” My brain says, “Meh.”

Tip #73: Decoder ring
You say: “Google’s entry into this space validates our market.” You mean: “We’re screwed.”

Tip #74: Restroom pitch
Yes, I would like to hear your pitch, but not until you zip up, wash your hands, and we leave the bathroom.

What are some of your favorites? By the way, ITDatabase is giving away free copies of the book to tech PR professionals; you can fill out a form on their blog.

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Executive quotes in press releases are notorious for lacking any kind of substantial information. It’s the most common place to find fluff in a release, and they tend to be largely ignored.

Yesterday’s Microsoft – Yahoo press release featured video quotes from both Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, partially shown in this screenshot:

On the surface this seems pretty cool, and the press release even includes links to additional video clips for broadcast media:

But unfortunately these videos offer little more than a multimedia version of the typical executive fluff.

I commend Microsoft’s PR firm Waggener Edstrom for incorporating video content into the release, but it would have been great if the videos had been more substantial.

They can probably counter that both videos have had a significant number of views. But that’s all the more reason to make the most of the opportunity.

Do the videos add value or are they more executive fluff? Watch and judge for yourself.

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The discussion about HubSpot’s post on the syndication of social media press releases vs. traditional press releases called my attention again to PitchEngine, a platform for creating and sharing social media releases (SMRs).

PitchEngine is a good tool that provides a useful service and it’s reasonably priced (in fact it’s free if you only keep your SMRs on their site for 30 days). But what caught my eye were the options for archiving releases and creating a custom newsroom.

With archiving you can use RSS to feed links to your PitchEngine SMRs into your own newsroom, as GerberGear does:

Or you can host a custom newsroom entirely on PitchEngine.com, as Brunton does:

Both options create opportunities for additional exposure on PitchEngine and they are useful for sites that lack the resources to maintain their own pressrooms. However there is also a downside. Whether it is individual releases or your entire newsroom, hosting on PitchEngine means that the content is not on your site so your domain loses the SEO benefit of the links pointing to that content. Essentially you are helping to build up PitchEngine.com’s link equity as opposed to your own.

Some may consider this issue a worthwhile trade-off if they feel they will gain greater overall exposure through a third-party site than they would by hosting their releases on their own site. However long-term it is much better to strengthen your own domain as opposed to someone else’s.

I want to stress that this issue is not unique to PitchEngine, it applies to many third-party release hosting services. For example on The New York Times Company’s corporate site press releases are hosted by Thomson Reuters on http://phx.corporate-ir.net URLs:

Last year Todd Defren wrote that social media releases are best kept in your company newsroom for a variety of reasons. Specific to the SEO implications I believe that is still the best approach. Keeping the content on your own domain allows you to benefit from internal and inbound links to both the newsroom itself and individual releases.

Related posts:

1. Social Media News Releases Get 3x More Media Coverage
2. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
3. A Look at Muck Rack’s Twitter Press Release Service, 51 Releases Later