Public relations professionals design media blitzes to seduce journalists and newsmen to write and report about a client’s product or story. The weapon of choice has always been the press release. Originally, press releases were tightly written teasers focused on presenting cold hard facts so that media officials could then follow up and write a news piece with journalistic flair. However, in the last decade, the Internet has changed the face of public relations and the theory of news publishing as a whole. With the advent of web-based PR distributors like PRWeb, Marketwire, and Vocus, prospective clients and consumers are able to read press releases directly. Not only does this remove media professionals from the equation, it changes the way a press release should be written.

Back when a press release was, well, just a press release, there were certain criteria involved. For one, the only people who actually read the press release were a handful of reporters and editors. When this happened, it was requisite that the client had significant news for a press release to be written. Often, quotes from customers, analysts, and experts were par for the course in order to bring relevance to the story. And, finally, a press release’s success was only measurable when and if media picked it up and actually wrote an article based on it. This is far from the case in today’s Internet-rich culture.

In the age of Web 3.0, marketing professionals are using a new strategy when it comes to the press release. Throwing out the PR rules of the past, PR professionals are now writing web-savvy, client-targeted pseudo-articles that pass for what a press release used to be. It’s pretty much as if the web has allowed companies to publish their own articles directly, without having to bait journalists and other media officials. As such, bare-bones press release writing has been replaced with client-targeted language. SEO keyword rich articles, RSS, and blogging are now as influential as the old school who, what, when, where, and whys of PR writing.

When actually writing today’s press releases, marketing pros are using new strategies. For instance, they don’t just generate press releases when a client has “big news.” Instead, marketing teams are coming up with constant content all the time, regardless of magnitude. Press releases are hitting the wire about everything from product features to new customer wins, from white papers to CEO public speaking engagements. Also, the content tends to be keyword-rich and website-linkable so as to broaden its search engine proliferation. And finally, press releases are now written with the sales pitch already imbedded instead of being a medium that will perhaps, eventually, lead to a sale. In this new web-based PR, immediacy is king.

The Internet has made life more immediate for everybody. Most of our daily informational needs are derived from Internet searches. Businesses no longer have to strive to generate traffic. The traffic is already there, in vast numbers. The key is to walk out into the middle of traffic and get hits, and web-savvy press releases are the crosswalks.

Guest Post by: Ian Sawyer of BuzzSaw Editorial (http://www.buzzsaweditorial.com). BuzzSaw Editorial was established to fill a much-needed niche for writing projects that hadn’t found a home. The goal of BuzzSaw Editorial is to deliver top-notch writing at unbeatable price points.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_Sawyer
http://EzineArticles.com/?Press-Release-Strategies-in-the-Web-3.0-Age&id=2316510

A must watch from Gary Vaynerchuk. He makes some very good points about leveraging your brand on the Internet and how if a company isn’t they need to be.

Recently Google screwed up. The search giant found a bug that shared unshared documents in Google’s famed Google Docs with others. According to their figures only affected 0.05% of users, the the implications are huge for the idea of putting everything in the cloud.

Dear Google Docs user,

We wanted to let you know about a recent issue with your Google Docs account. We’ve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.

To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually. For your reference, we’ve listed below the documents identified as being affected.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. We want to assure you that we are treating this issue with the highest priority.

The Google Docs Team

Granted there is an inherent risk to putting your documents online, but a snafu like this could have cost companies using the Google “operating system” tons of money.

The draw to using the Cloud for computing is simple. You can access your documents and files from anywhere in a “secure maner.” Now Google says it’s fixed the problem, but should we trust that it won’t happen again? I’m not so sure.

What are your thoughts. Post them in the comments.

Gary Vaynerchuk had another great video posted today about how a hip/swanky hotel’s brand was damaged because of a decision they made. Never under-estimate the power of social media. Check Gary out on Twitter at @garyvee

I was in Miami last night and we had a little run-in with the hotel, which led to some tweets about the situation, which led to a person changing their mind about using the hotel. Watch as Dave Morin and Josh Elman of Facebook and David Recordon of 6 apart tell the story.

“Every Touch Matters”

Gary Vaynerchuk has a great video about following your passion and not a buck. He talks about how those who are passionate but not as talented as those who are just out for a buck in an industry will still do better because they will put in more effort and in the long run do better. Gary does a better job of explaining. I’d like to hear your POV. Post your comments below:

Image Credit: Max-Bro.net

Today across the Web, people have been buzzing about the new Terms of Service over at Facebook. Upon reading the TOS, the legalese makes it appear that Facebook owns your content once it’s put on the service. The TOS also states that Facebook can use the data for whatever it wants.

Now, as expected, people were outraged at this new clause. There were strong debates across not only throughout the Internet, but the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere.

Finally, Facebook head honsho Mark Zuckerberg, obviously seeing the chaos that the TOS has caused, released the release below on the Facebook blog to set the record straight (the post is below in complete). Users own their data on the service.

Now in the post, he says that they are trying make the rules more understandable. They are? Did I miss something.

I’d  like to hear your take below in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I’d like to address those here. I’ll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people’s information.

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.

We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I’ll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.

via The Facebook Blog | Facebook.

Image credit: greek-islands.us

So Twitter really does have power, it really works. This month I got a shock in the mail. My Comcast bill arrived with a surprise. Apparently my promotional period had ended, sending my TV (not HDTV yet) from $39.99 to $95.65. I was horrified and immediately began to complain on Twitter. I shot a quick note to Frank Eliason at his Twitter handle @comcastcares about the situation.Within minutes he said he’d look into it for me. I then gave customer service a call. I have to admit I was less than impressed with the billing department’s response to my quandry. The first lady said there was nothing that they could do (which I knew was a load of bull) and when I talked to the supervisor she passed me off again to the retention department. After a day of being bounced around the corporate phone system, I managed to get some kind of promotion, but I was still not impressed with the outcome. I decided to wait a few more days and see if Frank could do anything.

Like many areas, Verizon Fios is being installed. The thought of switching, I admit, began to enter my mind. Though the product loyalty that was developed by Frank’s hard work on Twitter made it really hard to bare leaving Comcast. Yes I admit it, the old saying is true: “You buy from people you like.” And well I really like how Frank and his team are always just a few minutes away from solving my problems on their network and it was this safety net that made me contact Frank and his team in the first place.

Image credit: Shel Israel

As promised he said he would look into it for me and sure enough within a day an angel from Comcast (I’ll leave his name out because I don’t think we wants to be bombarded with emails or inquiries) wrote me an email and set me up with a deal that I couldn’t refuse. Let’s just say I originally though what he was writing was a joke. It was that good of an offer and didn’t involve signing over my soul.

This situation proves that not only is Comcast rehabbing it’s customer service through mediums like Twitter and the other social networks, but they are doing their best to please those customers who might have left if they decided to not give a hoot (sorry for the bad bird pun). Though they still have lots of work to do on their phone customer service. Their presence online has definitely helped them greatly.

The moral of this story is simple. Don’t judge a social networking/media service based on its naysayers and criticism, judge it based on your experience with the service yourself. If you’re not interested in it fine. But don’t put down those who do use it until you’ve tried it for yourself.

It is all about community building and growing your “social” network. Twitter and these other networking platforms are like traditional networking, it’s how you work it that makes it valuable.

I’d like to hear your feedback and comments. Please post them below!

Found this via Twitter and @prsarahevans and Mashable. It’s a good slide to illustrate the validity and usefulness of Twitter. I’d like to hear your comments on this slide. Please comment below.

Image: Flickr/ogilvyprworldwide

Image: Flickr/kpmarek

With revenue down and marketing budgets tight, there’s never been a better time to generate some free publicity for your business. So, put your Public Relations hat on and get started promoting your products and services. Here are some tips and PR “best practices” to help get you started.

Share the news
The key to gaining exposure in the media is to share information about your company, products and services.  Don’t wait for the news release on your website to be discovered. You need to proactively reach out to media contacts with news and information about your business. This can be accomplished through the distribution of formal news releases, or with a simple phone call, email or “What I’m working on” post on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Be relevant
Relevancy will help you obtain media coverage. The more you can tie your activities to a major news story or emerging issue, the greater your opportunity for coverage. For example, in the Fall of 2007, I was able to generate incredible coverage for one client by tapping in to the media buzz surrounding the lead paint tainted toy crisis. My client was a gourmet grocery store, which may initially seem like an unlikely match given the nature of the crisis. But, by helping them host an event to provide free lead testing as a community service for concerned parents, I got them several pre-event interviews, as well as event coverage by three television stations, two newspapers and a local radio station, as well.  Not only did the event create a huge amount of media coverage, both pre and post-event, it also drove consumer traffic to their store and website.

Communicate and repeat
In any marketing activity, repetition is critical for success. Your submission may not get picked-up the first time, but don’t let that dissuade you. Keep trying. If they didn’t think your submission was interesting one day, they may on another. Circumstances change and so do attitudes in newsrooms. Keep sharing your updates. Eventually, your story will gain coverage.

Think big
Your story may or may not merit national television coverage, or a guest appearance on Oprah, but you need to allow the networks and producers to make that call. One thing is certain, you will never receive major media coverage if they don’t know about you. Spread your message far and wide.

Adhere to these PR “best practices” and you will generate substantial coverage for your business. I’m looking forward to reading about you in the news!

Tanya C. Bamford is the President of TCB Marketing LLC–a Marketing Services firm based in suburban Philadelphia, PA. Follow Tanya’s posts on Twitter @TCBMarketing.