The press release as a public relations tool is in transition. Before the World Wide Web, before everyone was online, press releases (or news releases) had a straightforward function: persuade a reporter, editor or producer to cover your story in some fashion. Sometimes that coverage was in the form of a fully reported story that the press release kicked off, sometimes the news release itself was printed more or less as is, and sometimes a highly edited and shortened form of the release made it into the paper.
These days, however, press releases are increasingly published as stand-alone content online. They show up on web sites and in online news feeds, thanks to services such as BusinessWire and PRNewswire. More and more journalists, under pressure to produce exclusive content that provides more value to their readers and audiences, will first ask “who else have you sent this to” or “where else has this news appeared” before doing anything with a release.
Most of the time, if you want to get news coverage a well-honed pitch to the right journalist at the right news outlet is your best bet. But a pitch is a different thing from a news release. It’s not intended for distribution beyond individual journalists and is designed to earn fully reported coverage, not to be published as is or revised.
Too many people still think PR means “press release,” so I think it’s time we rethought the press release, and other forms of content that public relations pros like me spend time trying to get out. It’s time to more clearly define the role of the press release in the public relations ecosystem.
A new role for press releases
A press release should:
- Enhance search engine optimization.
- Provide a full package of content – the whole story, not just part of it – in a form that’s easy to share through social media (hence the increasing use of the “social media release“).
- Be written with a broad, general audience in mind, not just journalists.
- Be considered a public document. (For public companies and some other organizations, in fact, issuing a news release is sometimes considered a form of disclosure under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules.)
There are still times when the news release is what you send to journalists to announce something. But increasingly, a news release should communicate directly to other audiences as well. We need to start thinking of the news release as just another form of content – like white papers, newsletters and blog posts – that are a part of the public relations toolbox. Sometimes that content goes to journalists in hopes that they will then publish a news story about it, but increasingly that content will go directly to end users.
This does create some new challenges, though. Companies need to do a better job of including noncompany voices in their news releases and making the content more compelling and authoritative. Companies also need to make sure they’re working just as hard to get their news releases out to other audiences as they do to get them to journalists.
Tools for earning media coverage
Does that mean I’m advocating giving up communicating with journalists? Absolutely not. But I think when it comes to journalists, PR pros should concentrate more on pitches – whether delivered over the phone, via email or in-person – when trying to earn coverage. What’s the difference between a pitch and a press release? A pitch:
- Is designed to elicit interest and follow-up from the news media.
- Should be personalized and customized, as much as possible, to each individual journalist’s needs and preferences.
- Gives just enough information to demonstrate the news value to the journalist.
- Is less formal than press releases and other forms of company content.
My overall point is simple: If you want to communicate to a broad audience, particularly one that’s online, a press release may be a great tool for that. But if you want coverage in the media, because of its greater reach and the added credibility that comes from making it through a news outlet’s filters, then don’t immediately turn to a news release. A pitch might be a better choice.
Here’s the situation: I was laying in a hospital bed, with an IV in my arm and a chest tube in my side attached to a gurgling machine that provided suction. I was on some pretty hefty drugs – morphine and then other narcotics for pain. At 38, I had been hospitalized for a totally unexpected reason.
For those of you who don’t know the story, I had woken up early on the morning of March 2 to chest pain, and after several hours of dithering around (because I was pretty sure it wasn’t a heart attack, so it couldn’t be serious, right?) I went to an urgent care where x-rays showed that my right lung had collapsed. Think of a balloon popping; that’s more or less what happened with my lung. As it turns out, you can function on one lung, especially if you’re relatively healthy, as I was (at least up to that point). The condition is called spontaneous pneumothorax, and no, the doctors don’t really know what caused it.
My wife was sending out emails to a select group of friends, co-workers, my boss and some relatives about my condition periodically, but there are many more people not on her email list – other colleagues, friends, etc. – who were interested in how I was doing. Fortunately, when I had driven myself to the ER (yes, I made several bad decisions that day), I brought along my BlackBerry. That not only allowed me to call my wife (”Honey, I have a collapsed lung and am going to be admitted to the hospital”), and send email to my boss (”Um, I’m not going to be coming in to work today”), but it also allowed me to update my Facebook status. And that is the whole point of this post.
I spent 12 days in the hospital, almost the entire first half of March. And without that BlackBerry and the ability to send email and update my Facebook status, it would have appeared to dozens and dozens of friends and acquaintances that I had disappeared. In addition, some friends who wanted to know – people who stopped by to visit me – would have never known that I was hospitalized with a serious medical condition. Even my sister, who called me almost every day, sometimes more than once, relied in part on my Facebook status updates to keep tabs on me.
I had lunch with a friend this week who said that my status updates on Facebook during my hospitalization really made him appreciate the power of social media. I have long been a social media enthusiast (and, professionally, an advocate), but this whole incident really brought home to me the power of these tools. I received wishes to get well, messages of concern and requests to visit through Facebook, which were instrumental in keeping my mood mostly positive during the experience. (In fact, I should say again to those people – thank you so much for your support. It made a huge difference to me.)
Most of what we post on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites is ephemeral – a fleeting thought, an interesting link, a comment or question you’re likely to forget in a few hours or a few days. But in some circumstances, these interactions can be incredibly powerful, engaging, and socially and emotionally meaningful. So the next time someone tells you that all this online stuff is just a waste of time, or it’s just for kids, or it’s not important, tell them my story.
Clive Thompson has an interesting article in the current issue of Wired that looks at why even though we live in a world awash with information, more than ever, people seem to be less knowledgeable about all sorts of important issues.
Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?
You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven’t. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It’s 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the ’90s, according to Gallup.
It turns out that even though there’s more information, there’s also more misinformation. The ease with which anyone can publish information makes it easier for interest groups to sow doubt about things that might otherwise be taken factually. It’s what the tobacco industry did for years to try to cast doubt on the enormous weight of scientific evidence that smoking is dangerous.
Read the story here.
