I got asked a question recently from a marketing executive about HubSpot's press releases and why our format was "non-traditional". For example, this press release about closed loop marketing is a list of facts, quotes and links, not the typical narrative that is written as if it could be cut and paste into a publication.
Let's back up and talk about the goals for doing press releases for the vast majority of small and medium sized businesses. For most companies in the world, very few people read your press releases. If you are Microsoft, Google or another huge company, then it is different, because everyone reads your press releases very carefully. But, for the other 99% of companies out there, just sending out a news release is not going to get you media coverage.
The two biggest reasons to do press releases for most companies:
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Brand and Positioning - Most growing companies like to use news releases as a way of showing the market you are a real, growing company because there are stories on third party websites about your company. Announcing news on a regular basis, usually at least once a month, is a great way to show you are growing as a company.
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SEO (search engine optimization) - Publishing more content about your company on the web and building more links back to your website help increase the chances that people searching for products and services like yours will find your company.
The old days when people would cut and paste your release as a story are over. Today, I think people want the facts quickly (in bullet points) along with some links to related information and maybe some files to download to use in the blog article they are writing.
At HubSpot, generally we have been using our own version of the Social Media News Release Template. The idea behind the "SMNR" is to do a few things to make the format of a press release more relevant to the way news releases are used today.
Benefits of a Social Media News Release Format:
- Embrace Multimedia - The web is the major distribution point for news releases now, and multimedia is a great tool for the web. Unlike the typical press release, this format is a bit easier to add different pieces of multimedia. For instance, Guy Kawasaki downloaded the logo from our Website Grader press release for his blog post about Website Grader. NOTE: We currently don't add a lot of multimedia in the press releases we send on the wire - it is expensive and I do not like how the services post the files. I recommend you post the multimedia on your own website (free!) and then link to it from the press release you send on the wire.
- Enable a Dialog - The Internet has become a medium based on interaction and conversation, so the SMNR and using a blog engine to post news releases on your own website allow you to better stimulate discussion and follow the conversations that result. If your news release starts getting a lot of coverage and conversations started, the features like the Delicious page can be useful, since you can update those in real time. NOTE: We have not used these features much in the releases we send on the wire, because we have this blog that gets a lot more traffic, few people actually read our news releases on the wire services, and we would prefer if the conversations happened here.
- Enable Sharing and Re-Mixing - All of the elements of the SMNR are easily downloaded and copied, so people on the Internet can use all the pieces to create other content. For instance, a blogger can easily write an article using an image, plus a quote from an executive, without talking to anyone at the company. The old format made it sort of hard to boil the story down to its key elements, in my opinion.
I am not sold on every element of the Social Media News Release, especially if you plan on sending a release with all of these factors over a news wire service. It is expensive and I think it encourages conversations to happen on the wire service website, rather than your own website. But, I do think that there are some benefits to the format, and posting news releases in that format to your website can be a great idea.
What do you think about press release formats? Have you considered switching to the Social Media News Release ("SMNR") format? Leave a comment so we can discuss.
