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The Evolution of the Online Press Release

Jay

When it comes to the Internet, an industry I’ve been involved with since 1994 – one that constantly inspires, confounds and elates me – you simply cannot rest on your laurels. No truer example of this exists today than the evolution taking place in online press releases.

Of course, most websites feature press releases – nothing more than a copy and paste of whatever is prepared for the media – uploaded as an afterthought. But as Greg Jarboe pointed out recently in his article The Crowded World of Press Release SEO, that tactic has already become passé, in favor of the “search engine optimized press release”. And while SEO press releases are hardly new in the internet marketing space, (and Ten Golden Rules has done hundreds of these for our clients with great success) Greg predicts 75% of PR professionals will be adopting this tactic within the next year, too.

So, with mainstream adoption at critical mass, what is an internet marketer to do to stay one step ahead? Enter Social Media press releases. This emerging trend is the latest method to get your news noticed by both the media and search engines. Check out some of the pioneers of this method, which “mashes up” the socially collaborative nature of the internet with the typical text-based news release:

Crayon produced social media press release for Coca-Cola

Brian Solis’ PR 2.0 Blog

SHIFT Communication’s Social Media Press Release Template

This tactic inspires me to keep thinking of new ways to leverage the internet for our clients. Adding photos, videos, pre-created del.icio.us pages, DIGG links, RSS and the like to a press release will completely change the face of many corporate online identities. For those of us in the internet, it’s just the next logical step.