They’ll press release anything these days
I was flipping through my Google Alerts this morning, sifting through the latest news on Internet search, or public relations, or marketing, when I came across a little gem titled, “Search Engine Optimization for Online Marketing.” In it, I was informed that Internet search is really, really important.
And that was about it. There was some other stuff in there about how back links are important, how you should update your site with new content often, that you should target relevant keywords… and so say all of us. Several other articles, some of which were merely blog posts or thinly veiled content pages, made the same proclamation: Search is really important. Like, really, really important.
Really.
Which is tantamount to proclaiming that chocolate is yummy and The Beatles were a great band: Good to know, but you probably already do.
What these articles are really designed to do is inform the world about the person writing the press release, and how you should hire them to do your search marketing. In order for a press release to be truly valuable, it has to contain information people might want to know. Simply regurgitating altruisms about your industry without giving any details reduces a press release to another form of print advertising.
The idea, then, is to create press releases that contain real information people might want or need. Interviews with industry professionals, steps to achieving specific goals, actual industry news, or why your product is significantly different than anyone else’s, make for much more effective press releases. The idea is not to just send one out because it’s good for you, but to provide value to someone else. This improves the chances of someone placing a link to it, or referring to it in their blog, adding it to their del.icio.us account…
At its best, your press release should be an exchange: You give readers valuable information, they give you business or at least a referral in the form of a link or blog post or what have you. If you keep this in mind when you create one, you will have far more luck.
