Google “how to write a press release” and you will get dozens of articles on the elements of a good traditional press release. My favorite one is “here”. A summary of the most important basic points include:

1. Make sure the press release includes useful news and/or information.
2. Make sure it is well written.
3. Make sure it answers the basic questions of “Who, what, when, where, why, and how.”
4. Put the most important information at the top.
5. Make sure you write in the active voice.
6. Avoid hype.
7. Avoid technical terms and industry jargon.
8. Keep it short (200-300 words seems to be best).
9. Try to add a customer quote for gravitas.
10. Include the company and/or product value proposition at least once.

If you stick to these points, pick a good PR firm such as Businesswire, internet.com, or prnewswire.com, and send it directly to high priority targets (i.e. local news, customers, industry experts and SMEs) you will be reasonably successful. However, in this day and age, that is not enough. To really claim victory you need to make sure your release lives on the internet forever, directs useful traffic to your website, and increases the prominence of your web site. In short, you need to marry the art of SEO with the substance of a traditional press release.

The good news is if you are familiar with the techniques of optimizing a website for search engines (SEO), than optimizing a press release for search engines is easy. The basic steps include:

1. Picking the optimal keywords (no more than 5)
2. Sprinkling these keywords throughout the title, sub-title, body, and summary of the PR.
3. Adding a handful of links back to your website. The rule of thumb is one link per hundred words but I believe you can pump that up to one per 50 myself.

You will have to accept that a press release optimized for search engines will not read as well as one optimized for humans. Keywords will be repeated through the text which will come across as redundant to human readers. They key is to make it as unobtrusive as possible without sacrificing SEO. Anyone that understands SEO will be able to spot and hopefully appreciate your strategy. Hopefully the ones that do not understand SEO should not be bothered by the redundancy. Lastly, you will have to use a PR agency that allows hyperlinks in press releases (most do today, but only a few of the free ones allow them.)

I write press releases in two steps. First I write it as a traditional release sticking to the points at the top of the article. Then I optimize it for SEO. “Here” is my first example which was released via business wire’s EON service. You will see I have embedded several hyperlinks back to my web sites which if done properly will build their prominence on the web. The keywords were carefully chosen to attract viewers based a combination of Google search data and my companies value proposition and service offering.

I chose Business Wire’s EON service because it is the first of the major press release agencies that built a PR service from the ground up to be optimized for SEO. One cool feature is if you hit refresh on your browser while looking at the release you will see it grabs different pieces of the release as a highlight. This keeps it fresh for search engines thus keeping its life longer on the internet.

This is Part 2 in my Press Release Study. The next article will show the initial results of my EON release.

Good Night,

Chris

Historically press releases have been used only to announce major events and mark historical corporate milestones. They were considered pretty big events and were primarily used to draw favorable publicity to a company. Creating press releases were expensive and time consuming and typically required either an internal PR organization or a contract with an external publicist. They were used in the marketing and sales process as a way of validating company momentum. The most obvious example is announcing a sale which would be used by a savvy sales person to tell potential Customer A that Customer B (usually a competitor) analyzed our product and came to the conclusion that it was best. You, Customer A, should do the same or Company B will use our product to kick your butt.

The advent of the web and search engine technology has radically changed the way press releases are created and used. Now, a savvy marketer can create a press release in about 15 minutes and release it for free to be picked up by all of the major search engines which will put it in front of interested people in a matter of seconds if they enter the right set of key words. In addition to driving traffic, this press release can generate backlinks to your site which in turn will increase its importance and visibility which makes it more likely to be found by even more interested parties. If done properly over time you generate a self perpetrating cycle that will really drive your business.

Knowing this but not having a background in public relations I had the following questions about the best way to use press releases to market my companies:

1. Why use major paid press release companies and when they can be done for free?
2. What is the best major PR company?
3. What is the best free PR outlet?
4. Does it make sense to release a PR through multiple outlets?
5. How much traffic will a press release drive?
6. How many back links will a press release generate?
7. How to optimize the press release to create maximum traffic and backlinks?

So like any good engineer I did weeks worth of research and designed a batch of test using my two companies Connexius and iSupport Services to answer these questions. The very first release went out yesterday which can be found “here”. I am going to release a series of blogs over the next month that hopefully will answer these questions and more so that you do not have to go through the same effort.

I saw first hand during the 90’s how the internet is the great equalizer and can and will drive all inefficient enterprises out of business. Remember when calling long distance was “special”. If I had really been paying attention I would have identified the telecom equipment market decline in 2003 and done something else whether than taking one last job in a very quickly declining industry. I was definitely on the wrong side of that trend.

Fast forward to today and look at what is happening to the newspaper and traditional advertising business. They are experiencing the exact same decline as the telecom market 10 years earlier. People will fight the inevitable and look for new ways to reinvent a dying market. Instead of fighting the inevitable, I would argue that it is much better to get on the opposite side of a negative trend. In this case it is the geotargeted ad display market. BIA/Kelsey forecasts that this market will grow 66% from 2008 to 2013. I would argue there are few businesses in the world that plan on anything close to that much growth in this day and age. This is the trend I am trying to catch with iSS and northcarolina.me.

There is a morale to this post beyond the inevitable shill for my website. Successful startups are equal parts vision, passion, execution, and a little luck (with money being a big help). Some people are just born with vision. If this is not you, look at the trends and stay a head of them with your business plan. Being at the right place at the right time is half the battle.

When you have been in an industry for 20 years you are pretty much one degree of separation from anybody that you need to meet. That is the genius of LinkedIn. With a couple of clicks and a phone call you can reach out to just about anybody of substance in your industry. However, the problem I have run across is how to get contacts and introductions in a new and less connected industry. I believe I have solved this problem with Jigsaw. I recommend giving them a try (especially in combination with LinkedIn) if like me you find yourself working in a new industry and needing to build a network quickly.

While in a meeting yesterday with a potential client someone started vacuuming outside of the conference room. The potential client apologized saying that office cleaning is now being done during normal business hours as a result of a corporate cost reduction initiative. This gave me flashbacks from 2001 when Lucent turned out half of the hall lights to save money. Fortunately, the vacuuming played right in to the Connexius value proposition I was pitching of less cost, better service.

This got me thinking afterwards about how now is the perfect time for entrepreneurs to start a business with a cost-based value proposition. Historically I have sold based on revenue generation. However, with the economy the way it is with no real prospect of imminent improvement, cost is definitely what you lead with now. Additionally, because cost reductions flow straight to the bottom line, $1 in savings equates to $5-10 in incremental revenue. I believe if you can prove that your product or service will reduce a potential client’s operational expense, you will be guaranteed a legitimate shot at their business which is really all you can ask a potential customer.