Author Archives: Sarah Skerik

4 Ways to Build Storytelling into Press Releases

Posted on May 22, 2013 | 4 Comments

The classic storytelling arc is a structure on which you can build many communications – including press releases.

Assuming that you need to stick to dry language and a certain format when drafting a press release can limit the appeal (and ultimately the success) of your message. Press releases have the potential to reach huge audiences, and constituents of every stripe.  

smpr“We’re kind of stuck on making an old format meet a new purpose,” notes Jeff Domansky, CEO of Peak Communications and author of the popular public relations blog, The PR Coach.  “ The first social press release format came out 7 years ago, but we’re not using it. People are falling back on the old format, and complaining that it doesn’t work.” [Editor's note - Shift Communications used PR Newswire's multimedia press release ("MNR") to issue their social media release template.  The MNR remains popular today.]

So what does work in crafting messages today?  Building storytelling into the mix.

“Write a good story that communicates all the salient information you need to get out there, and do it in an interesting way,” suggests  Steve Farnsworth, chief strategist at Jolt Digital Marketing, and publisher of the widely-read Steveology blog.“Stories are how we understand things.”

In addition to building understanding, framing messages in the context of a story makes them relatable and memorable.  Stories provide contextual glue that makes key messages stick.

“You can tell the story, and press releases are a great way to do it,” says Farnsworth. “Press releases should be journalistic, not formulaic.  Trustworthy content has a balanced point of view.  It asks and answers the right questions. It doesn’t love itself. It tries to inform and educate.”

Adding narrative elements to your press releases

Building a story into a message as succinct as a press release can be challenging.   The key is to add narrative elements to your press release, such as:

  • A quote from the member of the product development team (instead of a canned exec quote) discussing the genesis of the product, and problem it solves or the opportunity it creates.
  • A video clip of a customer describing a successful outcome or demonstrating the utility of a product
  • An account from an employee on the service side of the business, describing decreases in support or other indications of customer happiness.
  • An infographic illustrating potential savings or efficiencies that could accrue over time.

“There’s a huge opportunity for communicators who are brave enough to deviate from the status quo and try new things,” notes Lou Hoffman, CEO of the Hoffman Agency, a leading Silicon Valley PR firm and author of the Ishmael’s Corner blog, where storytelling is a common theme.

But storytelling can be a tough sell to executives, who may be focused more on promoting the brand than serving the audience.   Hoffman is waging an ongoing war against “corporate drivel.”    He believes that a good story can fit strategically within the PR message, as long as the message answers two questions:

  • Does the content deliver the “frame” that today’s journalists need to write a story?
  • Does the content resonate with the target audience when reaching out to customers/prospects directly?

The storytelling arc

Putting the audience in front of the brand is one challenge when it comes to writing more engaging copy.  Figuring out how to build the story into the content – especially when you’re drafting a press release – can also be difficult at first.   But the classic storytelling arc, in which the scene is set, the conflict arises and is resolved in the climax, which then leads to the denouement, is a structure that works for a press release, too.

Borrowing from Hoffman's post on storytelling techniques, this is our simplified vision of how the storytelling arc structure can work for press releases.

Borrowing from Hoffman’s post on storytelling techniques, this is our simplified vision of how the storytelling arc structure can work for press releases.

If you frame the message in terms of the story of the experience you would expect your audience to encounter if they bought your product used your service/read your book/ attended your event/ etc., the storytelling arc structure makes a lot of sense.  To the point of the aforementioned war on drivel, it also leaves precious little space for, shall we say, the wandering narrative that folks up and down the approval chain are tempted to stick into your press release.

Though they’ve been around for decades, the press release is ripe for a re-think.

“Look at the release as the executive summary of any newsworthy things that comes out,” suggests Eddy Badrina, co-founder and chief strategy officer at BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency.  “Break the formula.  Dive into the value proposition, the benefits, case studies, the feature set and the CEO’s visionary take on what the announcement means to the company and the market.”

There’s no reason for any message we issue to be classified as boring, dull or dead.  Taking pages from the storytellers’ playbook will help keep your messages lively, relatable … and effective.

Have you experimented with different approaches to your press releases?  I’d love to your out-of-the-box approaches to press release writing!   Stick a link in the comments for me to admire and tell me the story of YOUR stories!  :)

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing,  and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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The Press Release as Discovery Tool

Posted on May 21, 2013 | 1 Comment

Today’s noisy media environment poses challenge for brands:  how to get for important messages when there is so much fragmentation of the audience — and competition for their attention.  People share and consume incredibly granular information, and a fundamental communications vehicle – the press release – is proving remarkably adaptable and effective, provided communicators refresh their approach to using this PR workhorse in this new environment.

“Press releases have a chance to be something so much more relevant,” notes Steve Farnsworth, chief strategist at Jolt Digital Marketing, and publisher of the widely-read Steveology blog. “But they have to be immediately specific and relevant.”

Who’s reading press releases (and why?)

A couple minutes' worth of press release tweets from this morning. Click the image to see the live feed.

A couple minutes’ worth of press release tweets from this morning. Click the image to see the live feed.

According to research PR Newswire conducted with Forrester on the visitors to PRNewswire.com, a significant portion of millions of monthly visitors are engaged in researching a product or service, and they find  press releases through their use of search engines.  People are also accessing press releases increasingly on mobile devices –views to PR Newswire’s mobile site have almost doubled in the last year. 

What’s the attraction? Press releases, as on-record statements from the organizations issuing them, are viewed as credible sources of information, and they are read and shared by the public, as well as journalists, analysts and bloggers.

“Most press releases that are produced aren’t read by the media, they’re read by the people,” says Farnsworth. “Your readers are going to be your stakeholders, and you’ll reach more directly that way than through the media.”

The long tail of the press release

Many communicators distribute the press releases in one way or another, whether through an email to industry players, a newsletter to customers or a commercial newswire service.  Once distributed, press releases develop an amazing ability to work their way into key industry niches, attaining the credibility of earned media status as they are liked, commented upon and shared.

Additionally, press releases are read long after they’re issued and the PR department has moved on to other things.  PR Newswire’s data indicates that most of the views the average press release will accrue over the four months following the distribution of the message – longer than many communicators expect.   A good message can actually increase its audience’s attention span.

To capitalize upon the ongoing attention the message generates, the press release also needs to provide direction for interested readers to take.

“The press release needs to be a guide to something bigger or better than itself, such as an infographic or ebook,” commented Eddy Badrina, co-founder and chief strategy officer at BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency.  “In fact, all those things you spend time creating probably deserve a press release.”

The recent “Dove Beauty Sketches” campaign included a exemplary press release that – while also loaded with multimedia elements – was also masterfully written to capture attention behind-the-scenes information about the wildly successful social media campaign.

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

 

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Press Release RX: 3 Ways to Improve Reader Experience

Posted on May 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

PR RXYou can’t read an article or blog these days on web design or SEO without seeing a reference to “user experience design” (or “UXD” if you want to look cool.)   It’s a hot topic, and for reasons that go far beyond aesthetics.   The experience users of a web site encounter have a direct effect on that site’s search rankings and conversion rate.  And in the advice offered by UXD pros and SEO gurus are some important lessons for writers.

First, a little background.  When we’re talking about web site user experience, we’re referring to all the different aspects of content, structure and navigation that enable a site visitor to do the things he or she wants to do, whether that means reading a white paper, registering for an event, browsing information or purchasing things.  Poor UXD means that something on the site prevents the visitor from doing what he or she intended to do.

pr as leadgen

This blog post was actually inspired by a press release I reviewed for a client last week.  It was long, wandering from topic to topic.    It tried to tell the story of a new product along with the story of the product pipeline as well as the story of a successful acquisition.  It tried to achieve too much, and as I read through it, I really wanted to stop reading.  And that is exactly what we don’t want our readers to do.

As we’re drafting press releases, we should be thinking about what exactly we want our readers to do, and then structure the content accordingly.  But how do we design press releases (and other content, for that matter) to encourage readers to move forward, to the outcome we want them to take?  Here are a few ideas.

  1.  Identify the specific outcome you want your primary audience to take.  In most cases, you’ll want other constituents to read the story, too. But trying to serve all audiences in one message is tough to do.  Focus the content on one audience, and one outcome, such as getting industry media and bloggers to write a particular story, generating social shares of an image or getting readers to click on a specific link.
  2. Focus the content of every paragraph on leading the reader to that outcome.  If your writing starts to veer from the path, so will your reader.  Stay focused on the key message.   Other messages will need their own separate vehicles, whether that means another press release or something else, such as a blog post or inclusion in a customer newsletter.
  3. Structure the content to enable the reader to get to the desired outcome.  It’s important to assume that most readers do not read all the way through a piece of content, unless it is meeting their needs and hooking their interest every single step of the way.  This means that in addition to keeping the message focused, you need to put links where people will click them – such as right after the first paragraph, rather than at the very end of the copy where they could be easily overlooked.   Weave links and access to supporting information throughout the content.

As writers, we need to think first about what our readers want to read and accomplish, rather than what messages our organizations want to convey.   Press releases should march the reader straight to the key points of the story and wrap up with an inevitable conclusion.  Just as marketers strive to prevent their sales funnels from leaking, and webmasters focus on increasing the time visitors spend on the site, writers need to be thinking about maintaining reader attention as they author content.

 Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

 

 

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PR in China: Does Your Brand Translate?

Posted on May 8, 2013 | 2 Comments
Click to access our free white paper on media in China.

Click to access our free white paper on the media environment in China.

It’s surprising that so many companies use English when communicating within China, even though the official spoken language of China is Mandarin, and the official written language is Simplified Chinese.  It’s not hard to imagine the negative effect this language disconnect has on campaign results,  and the reason is simple – most Chinese journalists and consumers use internet search as their primary research tool, and they are searching in their own language, even if they speak English.  Any communication not in local language will not be seen.  Think of it this way – if you are searching for a computer do you type in “Lenovo” in Google or Bing, or do you type in 联想?  The same logic applies to users and consumers within China.

Don’t forget the SEO angle

Another point to consider is your target audience will most likely be using search terms that have to do either with a problem or a solution.  To be included in results, your keywords will need to address at least one.   If you have key words or phrases in your release or documents in English instead of Simplified Chinese, your communication will not show up in organic search results.

Just as your keywords are carefully thought out and researched, the translations should be researched just as thoroughly.  In most Asian languages, the keyword itself differs from the rest of the world.  Your product names and technical terminology should be in widely used characters – creating your own “Chinglish” term may be catchy, but unless you’re a name brand with a large advertising budget you will not get the results you wish.

Branding in Chinese

Lenovo's Chinese homepage displays the brand in both Chinese and English.

Lenovo’s Chinese homepage displays the brand in both Chinese and English.

Even your company name should be in Chinese.  Decide upon the proper characters you will use during your branding process.   If you have a local PR, branding agency, or local marketing support, put this into their hands, and listen carefully to their suggestions.  Once you decide upon the characters for your company name, stick to them going forward.  If you change them for any reason, it will require a full re-branding.  Lenovo’s Chinese home page is a very good example.  The English brand is there, along with the characters they chose for local branding.

Where to get help!

There are several agencies and consulting services outside of China that will do all the research and character creation for you.  These services can be pricey, but if you are serious about successful communication in China, they are an excellent investment, and will give you the best ROI.

If you do not have the resources for a branding consultant or agency, find a good translation service that you can trust to accurately translate your company terms.  The best ones will give you several suggestions for you to choose from, and perhaps even do some research for you.  If you do not know of any services, PR Newswire will be happy to give you some recommendations.  Next, you’ll need to check trends on each of the suggestions and pick the one that matches your needs best.   There is a free keyword index on index.baidu.com that you can use to check trends on specific keywords, but the Baidu paid keyword tool is the one I prefer.   I find the results to be more accurate due to the wider search results.

Once you have your product, technology and company names in Chinese characters, then you can start working on your marketing and communication materials.   That doesn’t mean you can’t still use your English brand names and technology terms – it is acceptable to use both the English and the Chinese characters for company name and keywords on your website and your printed and online marketing material.   For press releases that will be posted on third party news sites, as well as paid advertorials, use Chinese only for best ROI results.

Following these steps will help you increase your visibility and return on your brand’s investment in the important Chinese market.   Whether your audience is B2B or communicating in-language will dramatically increase your online visibility.

学一门语言，就是多一个观察世界的窗户。To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.

Author Colleen Pizarev is PR Newswire’s vice president of communication strategies and works with our clients on crafting global communications campaigns.

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Social Influence on Business Strategy: Empathy is the Secret Sauce

Posted on May 2, 2013 | Leave a comment
This post originally appeared on the Business4Better Blog.

Ed note: Today is the second day of Business4Better, a new event produced by PR Newswire’s parent company, UBM plc., designed to foster partnerships between non-profits and corporations. As I was scanning the blog posts recapping the first day, I spotted the post below and decided to share it with you.  It’s an interesting illustration of the degree to which social influences have permeated business decision making and strategy, and the importance of empathy to an organization’s success.  - SSReconciling a balance sheet or analyzing data for the next great product is not the only metric that drives the success of great companies. Rather, the secret sauce has to do with empathy for the world around you.

It is not just business for better, it is better for business, says Dev Patnaik, CEO of Jump Associates and author of Wired to Care who opened up the Business4Better show here in Anaheim.

He implored businesses to reconnect with their humanity and gave examples of companies that are doing this today. “When we are fact-based and living our lives with PowerPoint data, we are only bringing in a part of our brains every day to work, says Patnaik. “You have to have that connection and get out beyond your walls and spend the time in the real world.”

Harley Davidson is a company that embraces these ideals. “The minute you walk into Harley Davidson headquarters, the parking lot is overflowing with Harleys, the building smells like leather and the company keeps the connection to the world around them. There is an authenticity. We are them and they are us,” said Patnaik.

Patnaik also compared the culture of Nike and Reebok. Nike is a culture of athletes and Reebok is a culture of MBAs that sell shoes. Great companies have a gut sense to know what is right, the passion to leap on something new and the courage to stick with something shaky; he added.

Some view empathy is a lovey-dovey word but Nike and Harley Davidson are hard charging places, he said. “When you care about people more than yourself, you will innovate and grow. You will have a sense of mission and reason to come into work every day.”

Kelley DamoreAuthor  is Chief Community Officer at UBM Tech. 

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Finding the Link Between Content & Conversion

Posted on April 30, 2013 | 1 Comment

There’s a lot of discussion these days about the role of content in the public relations and marketing strategies, and much of it is focused on the awareness-generating and attention-acquiring benefits a stream of content can produce.

However, as an organization builds out a content strategy, it’s also important to consider the role the published articles, case studies, press releases, blog posts, white papers, etc., work together to create a pathway for readers that ends (ideally) in conversion.

“Content creates the context for consumption,” noted Ninan Chacko, PR Newswire’s CEO, at the Content Marketing Summit hosted by the Business Development Institute last week. “Earned & paid media historically have been separate silos, but that’s changing.  Social media has brought the two together.  Audiences don’t live in the paid or the earned environments. The challenge is now how to craft content that lives across different media.”

The challenge for communicators, he went on to say, is in understanding the resulting metrics, and how engagement activities, such as social interactions, contribute ultimately to conversion.

“Ninan made a great case for engagement as a metric. While retweets, likes, and other signs of engagement might not directly translate to leads, they are invaluable when it comes to measuring the success of your efforts,”  wrote blogger John Brhel of Social Eddy, in his own recap of the event titled “Top 5 Quotes from Content Marketing Summit 2013.“

Here is Ninan’s presentation deck, which illustrates the connection between content and customer conversion: 

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Content We Love: the Press Release Behind the Dove “Real Beauty Sketches” Campaign

Posted on April 19, 2013 | 6 Comments
A snapshot of the Dove "Real Beauty Sketches" MNR. Click the image to see it live.

A snapshot of the Dove “Real Beauty Sketches” MNR. Click the image to see it live.

The biggest viral story of the week was undoubtedly the latest in the Real Beauty campaign from Dove. Titled “Real Beauty Sketches (#wearebeautiful),” this installment clearly illustrated the issues women have with negative self-perception.    And while I could spend a lot of time talking about the genius of this campaign, for this edition of Content We Love, I’m going to focus on how the organizations behind the campaign – Unilever, Ogilvy Advertising and Edelman – chose to promote the campaign.

Days later, the global Tweet stream is still going strong.

Days later, the global Tweet stream is still going strong.

It’s not unusual at all for a brand to promote a new advertising campaign with a press release.   In most cases, the press release is pretty standard, describing the campaign, the related calls to action and special offers for customers.    The press release for the Dove campaign, however, took a different angle.

An exemplary headline:

Instead of focusing on the campaign, the PR team at Edelman focused on some of the stories underlying the campaign, and they did so right out of the gate with a compelling headline:

FBI-TRAINED FORENSIC ARTIST CONDUCTS A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT TO ILLUSTRATE THE ONGOING STRUGGLE WOMEN HAVE WITH RECOGNIZING THEIR OWN BEAUTY

Dove® “Real Beauty Sketches” Campaign Reveals the Dramatic Difference Between Self-Image and What Others See

This is a fantastic headline, for a few reasons:

  • The headline elegantly captures the two key themes of the press release
  • Credibility for the story is built immediately noting that an FBI-trained forensic artist is at the center of the social experiment the campaign illustrates.
  • It doesn’t waste space with the brand name or campaign title.  Those are relegated to the subhead, which neatly describes the Real Beauty Sketches campaign itself.
  • It is almost tweetable, checking in at 136 characters (with spaces) but I’m not going to quibble length, because the descriptive language employed in this example works, and is necessary.

This is the kind of headline treatment I’d like to see on more press releases – one that leads with facts and story elements, rather than a brand announcing something.   It reminds me of advice I heard Kevin Helliker of the Wall St. Journal give PR people and years ago:  write the headline you want to see in the paper, and use that in your pitch email and press release headline.

Followed by a near-perfect lead:

The writer of this press release set the hook with the lead sentence, and followed immediately with salient facts that ensured the reader didn’t go anywhere but onward:

The way women depict themselves is dramatically different from how others perceive them. Over half (54%) of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic1, which equates to a staggering 672 million women around the world.2

Once again, we see restraint employed when it comes to brand mentions.   The brand and campaign aren’t mentioned until midway through the opening paragraph.

Now, let’s be clear.  I’m not anti-brand, not at all.  But I think most will agree that the lead sentence from this release is leagues better than the more standard-issue (and let’s face it, boring) lead we  see so often.  You know the one I’m talking about:

XYZ organization, a leading provider of whatever, is proud to announce today a jargon-laden description of something.

The lead paragraph doesn’t exist for to extol the virtues of the organization issuing the release.  It exists to set up the story and develop the reader’s attention. Whether the goal of the press release is gaining media coverage or engaging the audiences or driving social awareness (or any combination thereof,) a well-written lead will go a long way to securing the results you want to see for the campaign.

My advice when it comes to leads is simple:

  • Don’t confuse the lead with the boilerplate.  Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to leave company information out of the lead.  The exception is  material news from a public company, when putting the company name and ticker symbol in the lead is standard practice.
  • Use the lead to develop the story.
  • Think back to the inverted pyramid of journalistic writing.  Put the key points at the top of the message.
  • The lead and the headline should work together to describe and then start to develop the story – even in a press release.

“Unselfish” story angles

The body of the release is devoted to developing two stories, offering an up-close look at the forensic artist who did the sketches of the subjects, and at the underlying issue of negative self-perception.  I use the term “unselfish” to describe this approach, because it puts the audience first.   The focus on the artist’s professional background and his experience with the campaign is meaty stuff.  Any reporter covering this story would be interested in these details.  And for the more casual reader – the millions of individuals who read, tweet and share press releases each month – the detail on the artist lends powerful credibility and authenticity to the story.

The issue of self-perception, which is at the heart of Dove’s ongoing Real Beauty campaign, is also discussed.  Again,  the press release writer provided substance – in this case, survey data – that is useful to professional media and credible with other audiences.

Multimedia

If the press release for this highly visual campaign had been text only, the brands behind the message would have left a lot of visibility on the table.   Instead of using a plain text format (which by far still the most common press release format used today,) the team wrapped the excellent release in equally good multimedia.  Delivered in the form of a multimedia news release (“MNR” in industry parlance,) the message is fully formed, wrapped in three videos that illustrate how the campaign worked and offering interesting insights into the artist and subjects.

There’s no question that the Real Beauty Sketches campaign is a fantastic piece of work.  My own Facebook feed has been full of commentary from my own friends for days.   And in true Internet style, it’s even spawned a funny parody.   I really like this campaign.  But I truly love the treatment the team gave the press release.  Kudos to all of the people behind one of the most effective press releases I’ve seen.

Update 5/20/13: Less than a month after launch, the Dove Real Beauty Sketchesfilm became the number one viewed online video ad of all time.  The film, which explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see, has been viewed more than 114 million times to surpass all previously recorded video ads, according to the Viral Video Chart reported globally by Unruly*.  In addition, Dove Real Beauty Sketches has garnered another 15 million views in China where it just launched.  Not only has the film been viewed in record numbers around the world, it is also the most shared video ad in over a year and the third most shared of all time, although closing the gap.  Dove Real Beauty Sketches was uploaded in 25 languages to 33 Dove YouTube Channels and has been viewed in over 110 countries.

Want to explore new ways to tell your brand’s story?  We’d be happy to chat with you about creating a video or a designing multimedia distribution strategy that will increase discovery of your brand’s messages.  We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.

 Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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What the Pulitzers Tell Us about Successful Storytelling Strategies

Posted on April 16, 2013 | Leave a comment

The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced this week, and the winning stories represent a variety of different angles, techniques and tools that provide good ideas – and more than a little inspiration – for public relations and marketing communicators.

Breaking news:

The big winner in breaking news was the Denver Post, for their use of “journalistic tools, from Twitter and Facebook to video and written reports, both to capture a breaking story and provide context,” in their reporting of the movie theater shootings in Aurora CO.

The lesson:

A review of the Post’s response to the tragic event reveals a comprehensive approach that did a variety of things well – it delivered information quickly, created a hashtag around which people could coalesce, told the across platforms, and did a great job managing the extremely fast-moving story.

So what’s the lesson here for brands?  I’m going to step away from the obvious (but relevant) crisis communications parallel, because the real lesson here, in my mind, is how effective communications can be when an organization makes full and specific use of the myriad channels available to us today.   The Post blended channel-specific content and interaction with a heavy dose of the human touch.

Investigative & explanatory reporting:

The New York Times garnered awards in the investigative and explanatory reporting for long-form pieces on Wal-Mart’s use of bribes in Mexico and the business practices of Apple and other IT companies in Asia, respectively.

pp nyt infograf

This infographic is a small component of one of the rich elements the Times used to illustrate this story. Click on the picture to access the full presentation of assets.

The lesson:

It’s no secret that we’re living in an age of radical transparency. News travels fast and sways opinion immediately.  However, there is still plenty of interest in the deep dive.   Even though we may spend a lot of time whipping together blog posts, case studies and social status updates, there is still interest in the nitty-gritty – and from a brand standpoint, those are the details that can influence a potential customer.   Brands shouldn’t shy away from developing longer-form, meatier content.

Feature writing:

The New York Times racked up another win in this category, for a reporter John Branch’s “… evocative narrative about skiers killed in an avalanche and the science that explains such disasters, a project enhanced by its deft integration of multimedia elements.”

A snippet from the NYT story "Snow Fall." Click the image to access the entire experience.

A snippet from the NYT story “Snow Fall.” Click the image to access the entire experience.

The lesson:

The winning story the Times published looks nothing at all like a traditional newspaper story.  “Visually compelling” doesn’t even begin to describe it.   The presentation is immersive, and encourages the reader to delve deeper into the story by embedding an array of interesting multimedia components that do more than illustrate the story.   The take away for brands is the sheer effectiveness and stickiness a variety of good multimedia elements can create.   Utilizing a variety of multimedia elements has another benefit too – in addition to presenting the set of content holistically, chances are good the content elements can stand alone and create their own gravitational pull and traction in and of themselves.

Here’s the complete list of Pulitzer Prize winners.  Clicking on each winner’s name will enable you to access the winning story and related materials, where you’ll undoubtedly find even more ideas and inspiration.

Want to explore new ways to tell your brand’s story?  We’d be happy to chat with you about creating a video or a designing multimedia distribution strategy that will increase discovery of your brand’s messages.  We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.

 Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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An SEO Expert’s View of Public Relations

Posted on April 10, 2013 | 6 Comments
The pyramid of media influence.

The pyramid of media influence.

We spend a lot of time in the PR space thinking about how to optimize our press releases for maximum search engine visibility, and I’m one of the purveyors of that sort of information.  Ask me about  press release headline writing best practices, and be prepared to strap in for at least thirty minutes while I babble happily about keyword placement, headline length, reader drop off rates and how these factors can ultimately impact the results your message generates.

But let’s face it: fine-tuning press releases and other  content individually, piece by piece, for max visibility is a bit shortsighted, because it ignores some bigger opportunities – specifically, the opportunity to help the brand’s web site (which has a lot more gravitational pull than the odd press release, blog post, backgrounder or tweet) build rank and visibility.

How PR can positively impact SEO

In reality, a good PR campaign that results in media pick up, relevant industry blog posts and social buzz can have a profoundly positive effect on crucial web site rankings.  And those web site rankings play an important part in lead generation — and ultimately sales.

“A few years ago, I launched a website called FindHow, and we gave it a full-court press from a PR standpoint. In the first month of FindHow’s existence, it surpassed 15,000 unique visitors and eventually grew to around the 100,000 uniques (editor’s note: unique web site visitors) mark. After about five months, the Public Relations effort had resulted in a total of around 18,000 links to the site, primarily because of prominent media mentions that boosted the site’s credibility and aided word of mouth.” – Ted Ives, “Public Relations for SEO.”

The quote above is an SEO expert’s take on PR results.   In my many years of experience with PR Newswire (eighteen, to be exact), I know that plugging PR into the brand’s SEO strategy is something many – heck, most – public relations departments overlook.    In most cases I’ve seen thinking about SEO starts and ends with the optimization of a particular message, with the goal of getting the press release itself to rank in search engines.  In reality, we should be thinking about how to help our brands’ web sites rank, not individual messages.    PR sells itself short when the focus on results is too narrow.

Integrating PR & SEO

To get a good look at how the results a good PR campaign can integrate (and improve) a brand’s SEO program, you can’t do better than to read the first of the series on PR and SEO just published on Search Engine Land.  Author Ted Ives (@tedives) (the aforementioned SEO expert) lays out a new view of PR in the series,  offering perspective on how brands can more fully capitalize upon media pick up and other public relations outcomes to effect business outcomes.

Results & effectiveness – the benefits of integrating PR & SEO programs

Understanding the follow on benefits of press release distribution and media mentions in the context of a brand’s web site and SEO initiatives can do a couple things for the PR department.  First, as you can see from the paragraph above, the SEO guys have measurement down.   They know where traffic comes from; they know which keywords have the best conversion rates.  If measuring results is a bugaboo for your PR department, cozy up your SEO team.   Chances are good they already know a surprising amount about the results your PR campaigns generated.

Secondly, integrating with the brand’s SEO program can lend real power to the messaging the PR department creates.  Keyword research is another facet of audience behavior that can (and should) inform the content strategy.  In addition to simply using the language of your audience, paying attention to larger keyword trends and usage patterns reveals what your marketplace actually cares about.  For a content creator, this information is golden.

The other two parts of the series focus on targeting and pitching journalists, offering good, solid media relations advice, tuned for today’s newsroom realities, and are also worth reading.

So next time you’re drafting a PR campaign, don’t limit your goals to simply generating reads for a press release or media placements. Working with the SEO team can increase the measurable results the PR team generates, and the business impact it delivers.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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