Tag Archives: Twitter

The Brand on Twitter, and its Supporting Cast

Posted on June 15, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Who owns the audience and other questions brands need to consider when building presence on Twitter

 The fourth in as series: Integrating PR and Social Media

ReadWriteWeb asked a number of tough questions after Sanchez left CNN. Click the image for the RWW story.

Twitter is undeniably an important communications channel for brands and communications pros.  It’s developed into an important news channel, and is a great way to connect with peers and to listen to what’s being said in your industry.

Before we start talking about tactics to use when adding Twitter to your communications mix, however, let’s first consider some of the ins and outs of building a presence on Twitter.

Before you jump into Twitter, think for a few minutes about what handle you’ll use.  It’s an easy decision for a brand – in most cases, the brand name will work well.  But what about employees who will be supporting the brand on Twitter?  While many people advocate using a personalized branded handle combining a brand reference and a name – e.g. @SuzieAtDell or @PRN_Sarah.  However, doing so poses a risk – if the person behind the handle leaves, the brand can lose that audience.

A good example was the situation at CNN when Rick Sanchez was abruptly dismissed.  His Twitter account, @ricksanchezcnn, had more than 140,000 followers – built on CNN’s time, under CNN’s brand, by Sanchez through his own personal efforts.    At the time of Sanchez’ firing, ReadWriteWeb summed up the situation, asking “Did CNN lose out on the social media investment they put into Sanchez’s personal account over the years? Ought they have driven all followers to an official company account instead, in case something like this happened?”

How did this shake out?   You can change your Twitter handle and keep your followers, and that’s what it appears Sanchez did – he’s now tweeting under @RickSanchezTV, and has 138,000+ followers.   In this case, he took his audience with him when he left CNN.

My own advice for brands is to stay clear of the grey area a personalized branded handle represents.  Have employees use either their own names (e.g. @sarahskerik) or a branded handle that can be easily portable between people (e.g. @CompanyNameMedia).  Though you can change handle names, there’s some value in an established brand handle.  Either way, it’s very important to work out issues around ongoing account control and succession with your social media teams (and your legal and HR departments) before becoming really invested in the social layer.   The division between the brand and the employee needs to be clear.

A snapshot of PR Newswire's presences on Twitter. Click the image for a complete roster of our employee and brand Twitter presences.

Here at PR Newswire, we have a lot of people tweeting under their own names, myself included.  We also have our flagship @PRNewswire Twitter presence, along with a number of other branded handles, including @ProfNet, @PRNalert, @MeetTheMedia and @MultiVu, to name a few.   While we do risk losing a little traction if an employee leaves the company, the upside for us is that we have a number of advocates for the brand, some of who tweet very actively about PR, investor relations, social media and marketing – our core business areas – and in the course of their own tweeting, they often choose to amplify company messages.

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.  Find her on Twitter: @sarahskerik

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Do you know where your content is?

Posted on June 10, 2011 by | 2 Comments

A weird moment at a media relations workshop I attended yesterday left me feeling as though I had spun backward in time, to the late 90’s or thereabout, before Twitter was a gleam in anyone’s eye, to a time when newspapers still reigned supreme in the information universe.

Three prominent Chicago journalists admitted they didn’t use Twitter – not for research, nor for communication.

Several Chicago PR stalwarts noted their clients only cared about print and broadcast – none of “that internet stuff.”

I sat openmouthed in the back row upon hearing these comments, given in response to a question I asked about the extent to which journalists in the represented newsrooms used social networks to build audience for stories.  (I was told that most do, but these three big leaguers didn’t.)

The conversation devolved into the same one you hear at any meet-up of PR people and journalists.  The journos bemoaned long, irrelevant, attachment-riddled e-mail pitches with stupid subject lines squealing “Check this out!”   The PR pros said a little common courtesy, such as noting whether or not a pitch was received, would be nice.

I snapped my jaw shut and adopted a neutral demeanor when I saw that one of the panelists had noticed my bewildered expression.  But inside, I was really disappointed in the media pros and in the PR reps both, for ignoring  a medium that has become the preferred news source of many, and has fueled some of the biggest stories of the year, from the rise of the Arab Spring to the downfall of indiscreet politicians.

After the panel, one of the journalists sought me out, to double check a web site I had mentioned during the Q&A.  We chatted for a minute and I mentioned my surprise that he wasn’t using Twitter, which I went on to characterize as the most awesome personal newswire a person could imagine.   The journo said he had tried it but didn’t see the value.

I asked him if he had ever set up lists in Twitter, or seen Flipboard and Paper.li. When the answer was no, I told him the story of how I changed my husband’s life forever, by setting him up on Twitter,  creating a list of NFL draft prognosticators, and hooking that into Flipboard, producing a personalized, glossy, user-friendly and up to the minute news magazine focused on the recent draft.  When I handed my husband his iPad, his eyes grew wider and wider.  He sank onto the couch, flipping through the articles and blog posts.  He was thrilled by my 5-minute creation, and proceeded to gorge himself on the latest draft intelligence and speculation.

It’s important to understand how your audience is consuming information, especially if you aren’t familiar with or don’t prefer some of the content aggregation services out there.   Pulling out my iPad, I told the journalist “You need to see this,” and sat him down for a quick tour.

First, I showed him my Twitter feed, which really isn’t pretty, and described how I built lists of people who focused on particular subjects.

A screenshot from Hootsuite, showing a couple of my Twitter lists, including "SocialPRpeeps" - a list of social-media savvy PR pros.

Then, I showed him what that Twitter list looked like in Flipboard, showing him how links are rendered into article summaries, and presented in a glossy magazine format. I handed him my iPad.  Wide eyed, he flipped from page to page, looking at the articles my SocialPRpeeps list members had tweeted.

My SocialPRpeeps Twitter list, as viewed through Flipboard on an iPad. Flipboard renders the links people tweet, and presents the content in a reader-friendly format.

The ah-ha moment came when I showed him how elegantly Flipboard served up access to the articles on their native web sites.

The abstract of an article on Flipboard. Clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the page takes you directly to that piece.

Viewing the original version of the article in Flipboard.

We were both kind of stunned – him by the presentation of content he held in his hands, and me by the fact that a big time media guy didn’t know about Twitter lists, Flipboard, and the myriad other interesting ways people are accessing news content these days.

Moments like these make me fear for the future of journalism.  Readers crave content.  It’s easier and more convenient than ever to stay abreast of the news.  The question, of course, is how to sustain the business of news in this new and fast evolving environment.

Until that big question is answered, my own opinion is that communications pros have some key imperatives, including:

  • Driving ourselves to understand all the different ways people are collecting, reading and sharing news and information.
  • Educating our clients and the C-suite about the value of online visibility and the social layer
  • Help your peers become conversant and confident in social networks.  Gently lead colleagues who don’t use social media into this new communications fray, like I did with the aforementioned journalist.  Share your knowledge freely, because our colleagues need to know this stuff.  It will help them drive more readers to news articles and more results for clients – and this rising tide will help lift everyone’s boat.

I’m glad that journalist sought me out – I hope he takes what he saw back to the newsroom, where more media pros can ponder the new information landscape, and maybe dream up that new model journalism so desperately needs.  Anyone with a vested interest in communicating with audiences really does need to stay on top of how content is consumed.

Related reading:

Using Twitter for Media Relations

Social media press release distribution

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.  Follow her on Twitter: @sarahskerik

Read the article pictured in the blog post (it’s a good one!) here: http://prbreakfastclub.com/2011/06/10/whispergate/

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Shock and Awesome. One Exec’s Twitter Journey.

Posted on May 18, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Twitter, @syfy style. Enthusiasm, engagement, and a little snark. (It's all good.)

Craig Engler is the general manager and senior vice president of Syfy Digital, the wildly popular network devoted to science fiction programming owned by NBC Universal. He’s also the voice behind @syfy, and at last week’s Mashable Connect conference, he charted his evolution from Twitter neophyte to a popular and influential presence.

Craig had a couple false starts on Twitter, but decided to check out what was being said about Syfy and, specifically, the upcoming finale to Battlestar Galactica.  Right off the bat, he was struck by the volume – and degree – of misinformation bouncing around on Twitter.   Craig jumped into the conversation, setting the record straight and having good conversations with some of the program’s devoted fans.  And from that moment, he was on Twitter for good.

Admittedly, as his engagement deepened and his followers grew, Craig found that dealing with snark and the Twitter audience’s expectations for real-time availability were daunting.

“The low self esteem of the internet comes into play when you’re everybody’s friend and you’re away for 10 minutes,” Craig noted. However, as difficult as it is to talk to tens of thousands or millions of viewers at once within the social layer, he told us, brands can no longer afford not to do so.

“There is so much information and so little context that people don’t know what to do with it,” he says, describing his interactions through the @syfy presence as a combination of conversations, polling, sharing information and responding to queries.

Unsurprisingly, shortly after he re-established himself on Twitter, Craig found himself in receipt of a cranky tweet from a viewer unhappy with a recent Syfy program.  Really unhappy – as in the the last kind of tweet an exec wants to see in a brand’s stream. Craig recalled the shock and horror he felt upon seeing this tweet, and posted a slide that captured his own feelings at that moment:

Click on the picture to see the tweet that elicited this reaction.

But then he got his wits about him.  He fired a note back to the unhappy viewer,  who tweeted that a program was so bad she had go to the emergency room – conveying his wishes for a speedy recovery.   Humor – and humanity – won the day – the viewer was flattered and amused by Craig’s rapid response.

A larger and more important lesson was looming for Craig, however, namely the power of your audiences’ enthusiasm.

“When people understand your business, people are inspired to do things to help your business,” he told us.  And being active on Twitter enabled him to find and communicate with the enthusiasts who ultimately have helped spread Syfy messages and correct misinformation.

Craig illustrated this point with a specific example.  When he wants the followers to amplify a message – he asks them to do so, adding “If you’re a fan, please spread the word!” to tweets about programming.  He noted that adding the “if you’re a fan” language is crucial.  It cuts down on the “I hate your show, why would I tweet that,” responses.  And, even more importantly, the call to action – asking fans to help spread the word – works.  His followers re-tweet @syfy messages in droves.  The business results are significant: 47% of Syfy followers have sampled a show they weren’t already watching after seeing it mentioned in the feed, Craig revealed.

Craig closed noting that social media gives audiences direct access to employees – in Syfy’s case, everyone from network execs to actors to show runners – and they don’t know what to do with it.  However, an engaged brand presence can effectively generate and channel audience enthusiasm, and garner important feedback.  At this juncture, the @syfy is one of the most influential presences on Twitter, and is invaluable to the network.

Craig offered a few cautionary tips, reminding everyone of the importance of being polite and keeping the brand above the fray.   He also noted that once you start developing connections in the social layer, you can’t stop.  However, it was pretty clear to me that ceasing to Tweet is about the last thing on Craig’s mind.

More Twitter tips from Craig:

http://mashable.com/2010/11/05/tv-executives-twitter/

Author Sarah Skerik (@sarahskerik) is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

Many thanks to MBooth Communications and Rob Longert for use of the OMG monkey photo.

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Got Twitter Anxiety? 5 Tips to Overcome It

Posted on April 11, 2011 by | 2 Comments

In her last blog post RT Tips from #smwny: The Emerging Skills of Tomorrow’s #Journalists, PR Newswire’s Media Relations Manager Brett Simon talked about the growing use of Twitter by journalists. This is also true on the other side of the media fence where PR, marketing and others in the communications field are being required to use social media in order to better engage with their audiences. But the journey from traditional methods of sharing information to using social media can be bumpy as Brett discovered. For over a year now, she’s been honing her Twitter skills and now today she is part of the @PRNewswire twitter team posting tweets throughout each day. How did she overcome her Twitter anxiety? Watch her video and find out.

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Scaling a Brand Twitter Presence To a Growing Community

Posted on April 4, 2011 by | 3 Comments

The @prnewswire Twitter team: (l-r) Brett Savage, Tom Hynes, Vicky Harres, Christine Cube

The following comes from a presentation I had the pleasure of making last week at Web 2.0 in San Francisco about the need for careful planning to scale a brand Twitter account to a growing following.

There was a time, when I first started tweeting as @PRNewswire when the account was very intimate. The community was intimate. The people I followed and those who followed me were all part of the same industry in some way. We got to know each other quite well. I read ‘everything’ people posted.

Because I could.

I read every bio of every twitterer that followed @PRNewswire so that I could understand my audience. I spent countless evenings and Saturdays doing this. It took until around follower number 2000 before I threw up my hands and decided it was no longer possible to do this. There were just too many new followers per day to keep up.

But it was a valuable lesson in understanding that audience and I don’t regret it for a moment. On a regular basis I still look through bios of recent followers to keep myself clued-in to who this community is made up of and who I am communicating with.

Community

At some point along the way I realized the followers of @prnewswire on Twitter were not an audience. We are a community. We share information, promote each other, cheer each other on and do favors for each other. When we meet in real life we often hug each other as if we were long lost friends. Pen pals meeting for the first time.

I sometimes miss that intimate community of my early days on Twitter, when the most followed person had around 20,000 followers, which may have been everyone on Twitter.

When PR Newswire reached 1000 followers it was a really big deal. We put out a news release! A multimedia release that included a video of me talking about why PR Newswire was on Twitter. We gave $1000 to the charity of choice of follower number 1000.

Things were intimate then and I really didn’t have any big aspirations about having a large following. To be honest I thought the fairly quick growth in the first four months to 1000 was a fluke. Surely it would take at least another year to hit 2000.

I’m not sure anyone foresaw the rapid growth of Twitter that would affect all our following.

Procedures

As the followers for @prnewswire grew so did my need for structure to manage the needs of my community. I started by dividing the community into groups by creating columns on a dashboard. I made decisions about what was truly useful tweeting and what was fluff or filler. I pared down and honed my content to only that which was the most useful to the community.

I started using scheduling for PR Newswire promotional tweets to both save time on something that would be very repetitious and to make sure I was spreading them out appropriately and not annoying people.

Eventually I realized I couldn’t continue managing this community on my own and enlisted the help of the three people that were already part of my audience development team at PRN. They took to it quickly aided by some guidelines I put in place for content management, engagement, editorial duties, customer service, promotions, scheduling and how to deal with crises big and small.

Humanity

People have asked me what the biggest challenge is to serving a large following for a brand on Twitter. Most think it would be customer service, but actually it’s keeping the authenticity of the voice, keeping the human touch. The greatest gift of Twitter to a brand is the opportunity to humanize it. As the following grows and the demands on the person behind the Twitter account grow, the biggest challenge is just keeping that human touch present.

If Twitter is done well, personality will replace the brand logo.

Author Victoria Harres is PR Newswire’s director of audience development.  She’s also the author of the free white paper: The Straight Tweet: Giving Voice to a Brand .

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SXSW Video Recap: TnT TV Episode 1

Posted on March 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

We call them “The Toms,” and get dizzy watching their check ins on Foursquare here at SXSW.  Tom Miale and Tom Hynes are armed with a camera, and aren’t afraid to use it.

We’re glad for their perspective and are eager to share it with you.  Tom Miale is a food blogger and one of the people behind our Blogger Media Tour service.  And Tom Hynes, our manager of blogger relations, runs Blog Briefs and spends his days  thinking of ways professional communciators can better work with bloggers.

Stay tuned for more TnT TV from the Toms, reporting live from SXSW!

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Real Time Search & Implications for Communicators

Posted on March 4, 2011 by | 2 Comments

While the concept of real time search results is fairly new to many of us, for Rob Garner, vice president of strategy for digital marketing agency iCrossing, it’s nothing new.  He’s been researching, writing and speaking about the evolution of real time search results since late 2009, and I included some of his observations in a post about real time PR last year.

We know the ability of Google, Bing and other search engines to find and display content just seconds after it was posted to Twitter has real ramifications for anyone using content to reach and engage their online audiences.   To get the latest update on real time search and implications for marketing and PR pros,  I interviewed Rob yesterday on the subject, and here’s what he had to say:

Many thanks to Rob for talking with us.  Find more of his thinking (along with others from iCrossing) on The Content Lab.

Authored by Sarah Skerik, vp social media, PR Newswire.

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Twitter, Traditional Media and SEO: the Power Triangle for PR

Posted on February 16, 2011 by | 5 Comments

The search engine optimization gurus over at SEOmoz posted something today that everyone who is interested in PR and digital communications should read.  Titled “A Tweet’s Effect on Rankings – An Unexpected Case Study,”  the post details how a simple tweet generated significant visibility for an SEO guide SEOmoz made available.

In a nutshell, a staffer noticed a lot of tweets about the Beginner’s Guide to SEO offered by SEOmoz, and traced the activity to a simple tweet by Smashing Magazine about the guide.

The folks at SEOmoz are, as I mentioned previously, search gurus.   So it was natural that they started to pay attention to search rankings.  And lo and behold, their SEO guide popped straight to the top of the search engine results page (“SERP” to use the SEO lingo) – powered by that tweet.

And the benefits in terms of SERP placement seem to be lasting.  The SEOmoz team shared details of their web site traffic for specific keywords post-tweet, and the growth in visits to their site is significant.

Can a tweet really do that?  The short answer is a qualified “yes,” because in order to work, a few things need to happen.

Generating Tweets

First and foremost, the original tweet needs to be retweeted, by real people, not bots.  So how do you get folks to tweet about what you’re promoting?  Do you track down the uuber influencers on Twitter? Pay the Kardashians?  Turns out, neither of those tactics are the answer.

A study by HP on what drives trends on Twitter published yesterday found that traditional media has a greater impact on what becomes a trending topic on Twitter.    We can work with this!

Last fall I offered up some tactics on writing a tweetable press release, and wrote about the subject for the Daily Dog a year and a half ago (“It’s Time to Make Pitches Easier for Journalist-Twitterers to Use.”)  Encouraging key outlets to tweet your content is a worthy new PR outcome that simply can’t be overlooked, as it’s one of the most reliable ways to get real traction on Twitter.

The search engine effect

As SEOmoz showed us today, search engines are paying attention to Twitter and other content in the social layer.  However, as previously noted both on SEOmoz and on this blog, the engines are pretty good at discerning between authentic social interaction and stuff generated by spambots.     The short-term benefits are undeniable, and there appear to be lasting effects that positively enhance visibility and traffic. (SEOmoz is promising to unpack that issue next.)

The takeaway for me is clear.  The power of authentic Tweets, in quantity, creates potent social media buzz, real SEO benefits and produces some lasting improvement in online visibility.   Traditional media are all over Twitter, and as HP found, they are the source of the majority of trending topics.  Given PR’s proximity and access to journalists, and considering all of the benefits of high-visibility tweets noted above, the high-visibility tweet is a valuable (and totally measurable) outcome that belongs in digital PR campaigns.

Authored by Sarah Skerik, VP social media, PR Newswire

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Communicating in context – online and off

Posted on February 8, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Creating contextual continuity between online promotions, off-line advertising and real-life sales and service staff is a challenge that can trip up small businesses and big brands.  At the very least, disconnects between promotions and in-store experience result in poor customer experiences.  And at the worst, gaffes on the national stage can take on a life of their own in social channels, and create real problems for a brand.    I’d like to look at a couple examples today, and think about what communicators can do to guard against the gaps in messaging that can sink a campaign.

A local retailer

A few weeks ago, I spotted a great looking offer from a local retailer in my Facebook news feed.  The post said, simply, that if a Facebook Fan knew the secret password (which they gave in that post) then they would get 40% off any one item in the store. Well, that seemed like a pretty good deal, but before getting in the car, I called the store to check and make sure I had interpreted the post correctly.  I was told I had, so I hopped in the car.

However, upon arrival at the counter, with the secret password at the ready, I was informed that no, the deal wasn’t 40% off for Facebook Fans with the password.  The deal was that as a Facebook Fan with the password, I was entitled to spin a wheel, which offered a variety of deals and discounts, including one shot at getting up to 40% off one item. Annoyed, because I had done my homework, I pulled out my iPhone, and showed them the Facebook post, which didn’t refer to any other terms, conditions or offer any type of fine print.

A chat with the store owner revealed part of the problem. She assumed I had seen earlier Facebook posts about the special “Wheeling and Dealing” weekend, featuring all sorts of deals and contests based upon that spinning wheel.    Ah ha.  There it was.  I hadn’t seen those other posts.  I showed her my Facebook news feed, and we scrolled through it.  The only post from the retailer that made it into the news feed was the one I had seen – because a slew of others had liked and commented upon it.   (I ended up giving her a primer on how Facebook works, and helped her correct her promotions.  She gave me the 40% off.  We both ended up happy.)

The fact is, messages distributed by social channels are subject to fragmentation.  Facebook fans may or may not see all of your posts.  Tweets may append or distort true intent.  The challenge for communicators is how to convey the big picture in this fractured environment.

Groupon

We saw another related situation this weekend.  Groupon took a lot of heat for a TV ad placed during the Super Bowl which appeared to make light of the people of Tibet and their tenuous political and cultural situations.   The underlying truth is that Groupon has serious chops in social activism – the company grew from a cause-based web site called The Point. And, importantly, Groupon’s Save The Money program is raising funds and matching donations to four different groups, including the Tibet Fund.

Unfortunately, the television ad that ran during what ended up being the highest rated US TV show ever failed to reveal Groupon’s worthy efforts or promote the Save The Money program. Viewers who were familiar with the company’s efforts may have chuckled at the ad.  However, the majority of people watching the ad didn’t view it in that context, and they were offended.

Creating contextual continuity
So the question in my mind – whether you’re a small business using Facebook to promote a sale, or you’re a big brand splurging on a Super Bowl ad buy – is this:  How can communicators close the loop between social media and real-life promotion, ensuring a continuity of context between fractured messages?   A few practices come to mind:

1)      All messaging should be able to stand alone, conveying key points and calls to action. Simply put, you can’t rely upon other communications to provide needed context.  And you should never assume your audience has seen other related messages.

2)      Keep variables to a minimum.  We’re playing a version of the childhood game “Telephone” – you know, the one where kids sit in a circle, repeating a message to each other, which invariably becomes wildly distorted by the time the last kid hears it.  When we rely upon word-of-mouth, Twitter and other means of viral distribution of messages, the original message must be clear and simple.

3)      Speaking of calls to action, a unified and consistent call to action that is recognizable will be more memorable to people who may see a variety of messages from your organization.

4)      If the offer requires fine print, communicate it.  At the very least, indicate that terms and conditions apply, and include a link to the details on any landing pages or other messages that are distributed.

5)      Be sure your real-life customer service teams are exquisitely well informed of the deals and specials you’re offering.  Ideally, allow them to see exactly what is being communicated to customers.

6)   When in doubt, don’t use politics, race, sex and religion as a gimmick in a campaign.

What advice can you share for coordinating messages between social media, traditional media and real-life?

Authored by Sarah Skerik (@sarahskerik), VP social media, PR Newswire.

Image courtesy of Flickr user mwichary.

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Optimizing Press Releases for Maximum Online Visibility

Posted on February 7, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Optimized press releases are a routine piece of many PR plans, and understanding how PR Newswire distributes your news can help you ratchet up your online strategy another notch. We’re constantly striving to ensure your messages garner as much visibility as possible – continually tweaking our search engine optimized news platform, growing the network of web sites and media outlets that receive our news, expanding our reach to individual journalists and strategically placing news within relevant social channels. With a few tweaks to press release wording and format, PR pros can take full advantage of these opportunities for exposure.

Distribution channel: Twitter

PR Newswire distribution details: Press releases issued via PRN may get additional exposure via Twitter through several different channels.   PR Newswire’s media relations team Tweets press releases they think are interesting or significant throughout the day via the @prnalert handle on Twitter. Additionally, we’ve been automatically feeding various industry-specific RSS feeds of press releases on Twitter for more than a year.

PR tactic: If Twitter exposure is important, you can guarantee placement by using our SocialPost news distribution service, which will post a Tweet you write to multiple PR Newswire Twitter channels. To position all press releases advantageously for Twitter pick up, be sure put an important keyword at the beginning of the headline to catch the eye of users, and to show up in Twitter searches.

PR Newswire press release twitter

The @PRNhealth automated Twitter feed displaying health care press release headlines from PR Newswire

Distribution channel: Search engines, via PRNewswire.com

Distribution details: PR Newswire’s web site gets more traffic from search engines than any other site in the commercial newswire business, which means that we do a good job of delivering all-important search engine exposure for the press releases we issue.  This is by design – we have worked hard on developing this visibility for your news, and we’ll continue to enhance it.

PR tactic: Write news releases (and, frankly, any other content that will wind up online) with search engines in mind.  If possible, use a content optimization tool like PR Newswire’s OptimizationMax, to fully optimize your press releases.  If you don’t have access to a tool like OptimizationMax, here are some tips for optimizing press releases that will help you out.

Here’s an OptimizationMax overview:

Distribution channel: WebMax syndication network

Distribution details: PR Newswire’s WebMax online press release distribution network syndicates press releases to more than 5,400 web sites spanning a wide variety of outlets, including:

  • Behemoth news portals like Yahoo!, AOL and MSN,
  • Business news sites like Forbes, the Business Journals Digital Network, and Smart Briefs
  • Hundreds of local newspaper and broadcast media web sites, delivering local audiences
  • Industry and special-interest web sites, reaching niche influencers and decision-makers
  • For public companies, financial news and stock trading sites.

The opportunities: Obviously, our WebMax network delivers fantastic online visibility for news, exposing press releases broadly to relevant audiences on a host of different web sites. Adding embedded anchor text links within press releases can turn that exposure into a source of qualified traffic for your web site, and by linking keywords within the press release (preferably within the lead) to a related page on your web site, you create a logical call to action for interested readers to folllow, delivering additional information seamlessly.

Additional resource:  How to add anchor text in press releases

These are some of my favorite tips for generating the most visibility possible with press releases (and other online content.)  Did I leave your favorite tactic out of the mix?  If so, let me know!

Authored by Sarah Skerik, VP social media, PR Newswire.

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