Articles

Optimizing News Releases for the Internet

By
Bill Comcowich
President and CEO
CyberAlert, Inc.
www.cyberalert.com
This article may be reprinted in its entirety with byline.

"Follow the money" was a much-quoted aphorism during the Watergate era.

Today, the dictum can lead to greater media relations success.

Advertising money is streaming, even flooding, into Internet news sites, marking a new trail for media relations specialists. With their considerable data crunching skills, media buyers have determined that consumer and business eyeballs are increasingly focused on the Internet. The media buyers have also determined that Internet advertising generally offers lower cost per thousand and better results than many traditional print or broadcast advertising venues. Internet ad placements, especially key word ads, also enable advertisers to better target those buyers who have a pre-existing interest in their products and therefore are more likely to purchase.

By following advertisers' money to the Internet, PR professionals can achieve greater success in media placements.

The following are some guidelines for Internet story placement — some of which may be at odds with traditional approaches to news release distribution.

1. Continue to perform all the traditional media relations activities...
   
   Keep pushing for placements in print publications and broadcast outlets. By getting placements in newspapers, B2B industry journals, TV and radio, you almost automatically will have the article published on their Internet sites as well. The vast majority of publications — more than 95% by some estimates — now publish the entire contents of their print and broadcast editions on their Internet site, thereby delivering the story to additional readers or viewers.



2. Specifically target the Internet or newsletter version of the publication or broadcast
   
   Many print publications and broadcasters publish more content in their Web site than in the print publication or broadcast. That has been especially true in this time of reduced advertising pages in print publications since fewer ads mean less space for content. Many Web sites also distribute e-mail newsletters with targeted content and surprisingly large circulation.
   
   Therefore, it's quite possible to get an Internet or newsletter placement even if the story doesn't appear in print or broadcast. A story that has no hope of being broadcast on CNN could well be posted on its website. It's important, then, to monitor online media sites to better understand the Internet content and services of the key publications in your targeted industry - and how best to deliver news stories to them for their Web site or e-mail newsletters.
   
   Sometimes forgotten in the news release distribution plan are industry-specific websites that have no print or broadcast version. Especially in technology and finance, many Web-only news sources are widely read and extremely influential. These include CBS MarketWatch which was just purchased by Dow Jones for $513 million (http://cbs.marketwatch.com), MoneyCentral (http://moneycentral.msn.com), The Street.com (http://www.thestreet.com), Geek.com (http://www.geek.com), Internet.com (http://www.internet.com) and hundreds more. Virtually every industry sector has at least one influential Web-only industry-specific news site that competes online with the traditional industry journals. Most all have editors and columnists who can be "pitched". All these Web sites are monitored by Internet media monitoring services such as CyberAlert.com (www.cyberalert.com).



3. Position Internet news sources that re-publish news releases at the top of your media list
   
   Major Internet news sources such as Google, Yahoo, Lycos, AOL, Excite and MyWay have daily visitor counts that far exceed the circulation of most newspapers and magazines. According to Nielsen NetRatings, Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com) has 6.7 million unique visitors each day. Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com) has over 2.6 million. AOL Personal Finance (http://finance.aol.com) has 3.1 million. CNN (http://www.cnn.com) has 5.1 million. MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com) has nearly 4.5 million. About.com (http://www.about.com), which is currently up for sale, has nearly 4 million. And Google News (http://news.google.com) has over 6.5 million unique visitors per day.
   
   In addition to large audiences, many Internet news sources offer one major advantage over traditional print or broadcast media. There are no editors to reject or rewrite your news releases. The sites automatically re-publish ("post" is the Internet term) the news release exactly as you distributed it through your news release distribution service. Your story is delivered to the public exactly as you wrote it with no human review or editorial filter. That's as close to nirvana as media relations can be.
   
   And it's not just the Internet portals that automatically re-publish news releases without change. Many traditional publications, financial sites such as brokerage houses, and news aggregation services do the same on their Web sites.
   
   In selecting a news release distribution service, then, it's important to evaluate the breadth of its distribution channel to Internet sites that republish news releases.



4. Optimize news releases for key words
   
   Most newspaper readers browse the entire contents, starting with their favored section. Magazine readers browse or use the table of contents to find articles of interest. Browsing of Internet news sites is almost impossible and the tables of contents are quite limiting. As a result, Internet readers are more likely to find information they want through key word searches — either within individual Web sites or through one of the major search engines.
   
   Key words are those words or phrases that prospective customers would most likely enter into a search engine to find information about a subject of interest. Usually, there are many different key words for any given subject.
   
   To achieve maximum exposure on the Internet, a press release must contain the specific key words that the specific targeted audience would use to search for information on the subject.
   
   A press release targeted at engineers, for instance, would include the specialized jargon that engineers use to describe the product. A press release targeted at consumers would include the most likely words that consumers use to describe either the product category or specific brands. A manufacturer of large screen TVs, for example, would include key words or phrases such as large screen television, large screen TV, plasma screen, projection television, DLP, LCD, HDTV and probably many more.
   
   It used to be pretty much verboten to mention a competitor in a news release. But consumers often use company and brand names as their key words in conducting news searches. Including competitor names and brands in news releases can now be advantageous in achieving greater readership.
   
   Optimizing key words in news releases is much simpler than optimizing key words on a corporate web page. Just make sure the key words appear somewhere — anywhere — in the news release. Your most important key word should be in the headline and/or first paragraph. If possible, use the key word at least twice in a 500 word news release.
   
   It's probably best to make a list of key words before starting to write the news release. Key words can be identified by analyzing the company's marketing literature; analyzing competitors' Web pages and news releases; reviewing recent feature articles about the subject; asking customers or customer service representatives what words they use to search; and using a key word finder such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/).
   
   While Internet news sites such as Yahoo! and Google are multinational, key words may not be. People in the United States, for example, would use the key word "elevator" as a search term while in the United Kingdom the product is called a "lift". It therefore may be necessary to localize key words.
   
   For releases on technical and medical subjects, it may be worthwhile to issue two different releases — one to consumer-oriented news sources and one to news sources for specialists such as engineers. Each release would be optimized with key words for the specific target audience.



5. Include hotlinks in your news releases
   
   All news releases intended for re-publication on the Internet should include hotlinks to drive readers to the corporate or brand web site where the prospective customer can obtain more information or order the product. The links in the news release should be unique URLs, enabling accurate measurement of click throughs from the news release. In the same way, the news release can include a unique 800 telephone number to quantify the number of leads generated by the news release.



6. Maintain Internet presence
   
   Print publications tout "pass along" circulation as an important component of readership. With Internet news sites, the added value is "persistence" over time. While newspaper stories go into the trash at the end of the day, news release published on an Internet news site often stays online for 30 days to as long as a year or more. Although no longer listed in the site's table of contents, the article remains accessible to anyone who searches for the key words contained in the release. This persistence factor provides a continuing presence for the company and brand, greatly increasing the number of readers of any given news release.
   
   Keeping story presence on the Internet is now a major key to PR success.
   
   Most PR professionals subscribe to the principle that you only issue a news release when you have real news. But Internet news sites that re-publish news releases may be handled differently. By periodically issuing news releases on the same subject - with only a slightly different angle — it's possible to maintain a continuous presence on the Internet for the specific story and product selling points. As one press release is removed by Internet news sites such as Yahoo! News, a subsequent news release with essentially the same story can be issued to replace it.
   
   This, of course, implies that you distribute certain news releases only to a specified list of Internet news sites that re-publish news releases without editorial review. To the best of our knowledge, this type of Internet-specific distribution can only be accomplished through the major press release distribution services such as PR Newswire, Businesswire, and Marketwire. PRWeb, a low-cost news release distribution service, also automatically posts news releases on selected Internet-based news sources.
   
   Each news release you issue should also be accessible through your corporate web site. In fact, there may be value in posting multiple versions of the news release with each version optimized for one or two key words or phrases. Such subject-specific stories with key words appearing multiple times have a good chance of appearing high up on the results of key word searches delivered by the full-web search engines.



7. Measure Internet exposure
   
   If you're not measuring Internet exposure, you're greatly understating the results of your PR efforts and the contribution of PR to corporate success. Internet "opportunities to see" (the equivalent of circulation figures in print publications and Nielsen viewership data for TV broadcasts) often account for a major slice of readership of any given news story.
   
   Many press clipping and news monitoring services provide media measurement data on Internet sites. CyberAlert (http://www.cyberalert.com/), a worldwide media monitoring company, provides the Web site rank, news rank, reach per million, and national OTS (opportunities to see) for all Web clips. Since most web stories also appear in print, it also includes the circulation of the print edition.
   
   In addition, PR departments and their agencies should be measuring click throughs from hotlinks in the news release to the corporate Web site. Corporate webmasters can do this quite readily by analyzing the log files for the URLs that appear in the news release.



8. Consider using key word advertising to drive traffic to the news release
   
   For certain types of news releases such as new product announcements, it may be worthwhile to use key word advertising to increase readership of the news release. For as little as five cents ($0.05) per click through (with each click through representing one visitor), you can assure front page/before the scroll placement of your ad in search engine results for all your key words. That is, your ad will appear on the first page of search results for the key words you specify. Most search engines now offer key word advertising, but Google and Yahoo! are the most important and probably sufficient to promote readership of most news releases.

In summary, the Internet has become a crucial component of any news release distribution strategy. PR professionals can extend the reach and improve the effectiveness of corporate news releases by targeting specific audiences on the Internet, employing key words in the news release, maintaining a continuous Internet presence for each corporate or brand story, and performing appropriate measurement of exposure/reach and readers clicking through to the corporate or brand web site.

By following the money and optimizing news releases for Internet distribution, it is possible to extend significantly the reach and impact of virtually any news release.