Press Release Strategies in the Age of Web 3.0

Public relations professionals design media blitz to entice journalists and journalists to write and report on a client’s product or story. The weapon of choice has always been the press release. Originally, the press releases were rigorously written teasers focused on presenting cold and hard facts so that media officials could follow up and write a news story in journalistic style. However, in the last decade, the Internet has changed the face of public relations and the theory of news publishing as a whole. With the advent of web-based PR resellers like PRWeb, Marketwire, and Vocus, prospective clients and consumers can read press releases directly. Not only does this remove media professionals from the equation, it changes the way a press release should be written.

When a press release was, well, just a press release, there were certain criteria involved. For one thing, the only people who actually read the press release were a handful of journalists and editors. When this happened, the client was required to have important news for the writing of a press release. Quotes from clients, analysts, and experts were often part of the course to make the story relevant. And finally, the success of a press release could only be measured if the media took it and wrote an article based on it. This is far from the case in today’s rich internet culture.

In the age of Web 3.0, marketers are using a new strategy when it comes to the press release. Throwing out the PR rules of the past, PR professionals are now writing web-savvy, customer-oriented pseudo articles that go through what used to be a press release. It is more or less as if the web has allowed companies to publish their own articles directly, without having to bait journalists and other media officials. As such, basic press release writing has been replaced by customer-focused language. Keyword-rich articles from SEO, RSS, and blogs are now as influential as the old-school who, what, when, where and why of PR writing.

When writing press releases today, marketers are using new strategies. For example, they don’t just generate press releases when a customer has “big news.” Instead, marketing teams are creating consistent content all the time, regardless of magnitude. Press releases are hitting the wire on everything from product features to new customer earnings, from technical reports to CEOs’ engagements to speak publicly. In addition, the content tends to be keyword rich and linkable to websites to expand its proliferation of search engines. And finally, press releases are now written with the sales pitch already built in rather than being a medium that may eventually lead to a sale. In this new web-based PR, immediacy is king.

The Internet has made life more immediate for everyone. Most of our daily information needs are derived from Internet searches. Businesses no longer have to live to generate traffic. The traffic is already there, in large numbers. The key is to walk into the middle of traffic and get hit, and the expert press releases on the web are crosswalks.