October 3, 2009

Social Media Press Release Blown Away in Hail of Bullets

This week, I saw an optimized press release blown away by Google News because it was mistaken for a social media press release. It fell under a hail of bullets, an innocent victim of a formatting decision. Before I share this tragic story, let me provide some background.

Two years ago, I asked, "Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?" I had just finished reading Seth Godin's book, Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?, which defined "meatball sundae" as "the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas." And I answered my rhetorical question by accusing the "social media press release" alias "social media news release" alias "social media release" of being a meatball sundae.

I said the meatballs were the press releases, which should be optimized for news search engines, and the sundae toppings were the "Technorati tags, Digg buttons, del.icio.us bookmarks and other Web 2.0 features," which should be added to online stories and blog posts.

And I pointed out that adding Technorati tags to your social media press releases doesn't get them into Technorati, submitting social media news releases to social news sites like Digg was social media suicide, and using a jazzy new format that features bullet points and del.icio.us links wasn't going to make bloggers care about your content.

Six months later, I took a second look at the questions I'd raised in a blog post entitled, "Does Social Media 2.0 deserve a second life?" Instead of jumping to conclusions, I said the right approach to Social Media 2.0 was to test it, test it, and test it again.

Many of the new distribution options and PR measurement tools worked. But adding social media elements to press releases didn't. Blogs and other social media enable two-way conversation, but most press releases - even many of ones that use the social media format - are essays, not interviews; broadcasts, not conversations; lectures, not discussions.

One of the things that I didn't test back then was the suggested use of bulleted text in social media press releases, versus the narrative format of traditional press releases. Although I prefered the narrative approach, I figured that it was totally fine use bullets. I mistakenly figured that format isn't content, so it probably didn't matter.

Then, this week I drafted an optimized press release about an iPhone application for a client who shall remain nameless. As a courtesy, my client sent the draft to a third-party firm that had designed and developed the iPhone app. The final approved version came back -- with bullet points listing the key features.

Since it had already taken a month to get Apple's approval to even announce the new iPhone app, I didn't make a big deal about using a list of bullets in the optimized press release. Hey, I'm open minded.

But the next morning, I was shocked, shocked to find that Yahoo! News had indexed the optimized press release, but Google News hadn't. The optimized press release had top rankings for targeted keyword phrases in Yahoo! News, but I couldn't find it -- even when I typed the entire headline into the search box and hit the Search News button.

Now, Google News can be arbitrary, whimisical and capracious when it comes to crawling press release distribution services. For example, its automated system is currently best able to crawl headlines or anchor text links that have 22 words or less.

But, I already knew that. So, I talked with the technical gurus at my press release distribution servce. Then, I went looking to see if anyone else had encountered this phenomenon before, or if it was the result of a recent change to the Google News algorithim.

That's when found a post by Rebecca Corliss on HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog entitled, "Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective than Traditional Press Releases." In May 2009, Corliss conducted a study comparing the results of social media releases and traditional releases by publishing them across five newswires.

As you can see in the graph to the left, the traditional release format performed much better.

And one of her findings jumped off the page. She said, "Don't use formatting. Many portal sites don't accept it. (For the technical folks, we're talking about XHTML.) Ditch the bullets, the itallics and bold type. It complicates the code and makes it more difficult for your release to be syndicated. "

Corliss added, "Use social media and multimedia elements in your PR strategy, not your press releases."

So, after conferring, conversing and otherwise hobnobbing with my fellow wizards, I decided that it was time to test the narrative format in a second press release versus the bulleted text in the first.

Now, I also made some edits to the headline -- changing "launches iPhone app" to "iPhone app launched by" -- and I revised the subhead and lead paragraph. But, these were just to put a fresh look on the announcement for Yahoo! News users.

The most significant change that I made was to rewrite the bulleted text into the narrative format.

Two days later, I submitted the second press release -- selecting the same news release distribution package -- and found that both Google News and Yahoo! News had indexed it. Oh, and it had top rankings for targeted keyword phrases in both news search engines. So, press release optimization still works.

But, what's the net-net? The excessive use of bullets can kill press releases. The Associate Press doesn't use them -- even for AP News in Brief. And according to Newsknife, the Associated Press was the No. 1 source in Google News for September 2009 as well as for the year to October.

So, write your next press release the same way that AP writes its online stories. Oh, and this isn't some dyed-in-the-wool defense of traditional journalism. Check out the number of YouTube videos from The Associated Press that appear in Google News.

Back on June 28, 2009, the YouTube Biz Blog invited any professional news outlet that is already included as one of the 25,000+ sources in Google News to become an official partner on YouTube and more easily share your news videos on both YouTube and Google News.

So, I'm all for innovation -- as long as it works.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

March 28, 2009

Death of newspapers or new era of online journalism?

I just received an email from an old friend about The Christian Science Monitor, which published its final daily print edition yesterday. This prompts me to ask, "Should search engine marketers mourn the death of newspapers or celebrate the new era of online journalism?"

Before I tackle this emotional question, let's review the facts objectively -- as any good journalist would do.

The key words in my first sentence are "daily print." Or, as John Yemma, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, wrote yesterday, "As of today, we are shedding print on a daily basis."

In his Editor's message about changes at the Monitor, Yemma acknowledged, "To survive in today's business environment, newspapers everywhere are taking radical steps. Some are decreasing the frequency of print. Some are now Web-only. Some have shut down or surrendered to receivership."

For example, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News announced in December 2008 that both would cut back home delivery to only Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays starting in spring 2009. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has just gone to a web-only version. And the Rocky Mountain News and Ann Arbor News have shut down completely.

Meanwhile, the Project for Excellence in Journalism has just issued The State of the News Media 2009. As the inverted pyramid style of news requires, the introduction of the annual report on American journalism captures the "gist" of the story: "Some of the numbers are chilling."

It continues, "Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23% in the last two years. Some papers are in bankruptcy, and others have lost three-quarters of their value. By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet."

So, when Yemma said in his Editor's message, "Saying goodbye to daily print closes an era," he was talking about more than the Monitor. He was also addressing the looming death of the newspaper industry.

However, Yemma then turns to this new thought: "But the Monitor itself - the century-old journalistic enterprise chronicling the world's challenges and progress - is becoming more daily than ever."

Yemma added, "No longer inked on wood pulp, no longer trucked from printing plants to your mailbox, no longer published only five days a week, the daily Monitor is now a dynamic online newspaper on all days."

And he concluded, "Two million individuals now engage with us online each month, about 40 times the number that have been subscribing to the print daily. We are linked deeply and extensively across the Internet."

Before joining the Monitor in July 2008, Yemma oversaw editorial operations of the Boston Globe's Boston.com website and led the efforts to transform the newsroom from print to multi-media. So, he has the chops to make that statement.

Or, as Yemma put it, "Think of it this way: We are putting on new clothes for a new era, but we are the same Monitor, committed to the same objective we have adhered to since we were launched a century ago."

And according to Newsknife, The Christian Science Monitor was one of the top six sources in Google News in February 2009, and #1 in terms of most appearances on the home page as a percentage of site total.

So, maybe there is something for search engine marketers to celebrate here.

To paraphrase Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and cofounder of The Well, The Christian Science Monitor is now just bits flying around rather than atoms, but it remains a steady and reliable source of information about the world.

I'll link to that.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

NYC Public Relations Firms: Give PR Jobs to CCNY Students

If top NYC public relations firms are smart, they'll give PR jobs or paid internships to The City College of New York (CCNY) students that I met last week. Why? Because most of these kids know something that most of us don't and it is crucial to our survival as an industry.

Let me explain.

I played reverse hooky last Wednesday afternoon. I attended school when I didn't have to.

Professor Philip Ryan invited me to visit his Introduction to Public Relations class at CCNY. He was covering Chapter 13 of Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, (9th Edition) by Dennis L. Wilcox of San Jose State University and Glen T. Cameron of University of Missouri. Published by Allyn & Bacon in February 2008, Chapter 13 is entitled, "New Technologies in Public Relations."

But, as one of the students in Professor Ryan's class pointed out, "There's nothing in our textbook about SEO PR."

So, I asked for a show of hands. "How many of you use Facebook?" Virturally everyone did. "How many of you use YouTube?" Nearly everyone did. "How many of you use Twitter?" Almost everyone did.

So, I observed, "Well, SEO-PR was founded 2003, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. So, just because these new technologies aren't covered in your textbook doesn't mean they aren't fundamentally changing public relations as we know it. I'm speaking at Search Engine Strategies New York this week and these new technologies are all on the agenda along with social media and blogging."

Another student observed, "When I Googled the term 'SEO' you weren't ranked #1."

I replied, "Well, that's not one of my target terms. Now, if you Google the term 'SEO PR', you'll see my firm is ranked #1."

The student countered, "But that's the name of your company."

And I responded, "The term 'SEO PR' gets about 320 searches a month. Not bad for a keyword that didn't exist in 2003. But, if you Google 'blog outreach', you'll also see my firm is currently ranked #1. How many of you think blog outreach is an important part of media relations services, especially with 900,000 blog posts every day?"

Then, I added, "Besides, what I really want you to do is conduct a query at Google News for the term 'Online Marketing Summit' and find the optimized press release that we distributed yesterday for ClickZ."

I think that's when they started cutting me a little slack.

Then, Professor Ryan asked, "How is contextual marketing changing public relations as we know it?"

I explained, "Contextual advertising is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content. This means there is the opportunity to create editorial content targeted at the contextual advertising that you want to attract to your news blog or YouTube channel."

Yes, these were tough questions from sophisticated students and their professor.

Which means these CCNY students are exactly the kind of people that NYC public relations firms need to hire if they are going to survive short-term or thrive long-term.

Yes, they are still acquiring the skill of writing a press release. But they already understand that an optimized press release can get a high ranking in news search engines.

Yes, they are still becoming acquainted with the fundamentals of persuasion and communications theory. But they have already mastered how to make friends on Facebook.

Yes, they are still beginning to recognize how PR relates to other fields of marketing. But they're already familiar with how to upload YouTube videos.

Yes, they are still learning the key ethical issues affecting the practice of PR. But they've developed an appreciation for the acceptable use ofand unacceptable abuse of Twitter.

Unfortunately, most NYC public relations firms won't give PR jobs or even paid internships to these CCNY students?

Why? Short term, the recession is the primary excuse. But even if there is an opening, most of the job descriptions in the public relations industry were written back in the 20th Century. So, these square pegs won't fit into the round holes.

For example, is your HR department trying to hire an entry level public relations specialist? Does the job description read: "Prepares and disseminates information regarding an organization through newspapers, periodicals, television and radio and other forms of media. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 0-2 years of experience in the field or in a related area. Has knowledge of commonly-used concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field. Relies on instructions and pre-established guidelines to perform the functions of the job. Primary job functions do not typically require exercising independent judgment. Works under immediate supervision; typically reports to a supervisor or manager."

So, don't blame your HR department if they aren't looking for someone who can prepare and optimize information regarding an organization through news search engines, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

And who is at fault if someone who doesn't have a bachelor's degree gets filtered out during the screening process even through they could have brought knowledge of new concepts, practices and procedures to the table?

And ask yourself, honestly, do you want someone who relies on instructions and pre-established guidelines to perform the ever-changing fuctions of the job? Or do you really need someone who doesn't typically exercise independent judgment in an emerging field that didn't exist when you went to college?

In other words, are you giving PR jobs to the people you will need in 2009 and the decade after this? Or, is your HR department rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

Now, if I were you, I'd find a way to play reverse hooky at CCNY.

Other "guests" to Professor Ryan's class have included Garrett Glaser, a corporate communications consultant and former reporter for CNBC, and Rena L. Lewis, the Director of Brand Management, Industries & Marketing, at KPMG, and will include David Grant, President of LVM Group.

And television journalism icon Dan Rather will deliver the Spring 2009 Samuel Rudin Distinguished Visiting Scholars Lecture at The City College of New York on Thursday, April 2. Mr. Rather, who was anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 1981 to 2005, will speak about "Democracy and the 24-Hour News Cycle."

This kind of "higher education" doesn't fit on the normal resume.

That's why it's time to overhaul the job screening process at most NYC public relations firms to ensure that you're giving PR jobs to CCNY students and others like them who are crucial to the survival of the public relations industry.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm not even mentioned in the college textbooks.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

February 4, 2008

Does Social Media 2.0 deserve a second life?

Okay, okay, so I've already weighed in on the question, “Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?” Last November, I provided four pieces of empirical evidence that demonstrated that social media press releases are the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas.

Now, I've been asked to take a look at today's announcement by Marketwire of Social Media 2.0, or what the newswire calls, “the industry's most authentic and comprehensive social media newswire product.”

The Marketwire Tower in Second Life

According to Marketwire, “Social Media 2.0 advances today's press release format, offers public relations professionals a multitude of content options, and distributes news in a variety of mediums to distribution channels beyond traditional media distribution networks.”

Now, you might think I've pre-judged Social Media 2.0. But, I haven't.

As I wrote way back in May 2003, “Failure is an option.” SEO-PR's initial efforts to create optimized press releases didn't produce instant success. But, as I wrote almost five years ago, “It was our approach to PR measurement, which tracked precisely what worked and what didn't work, (that) enabled all of us to discover the formula for long-term success.”

So, my initial take on Social Media 2.0 will be to test it, test it, and test it again. Believe it or not, I agree with Bob Geller, an SVP at Fusion Public Relations, who wrote in Flack's Revenge, “At the end of the day, the %#@!!&& things either work or they don't.”

Amen, brother.

So, here are some of the “exclusive features” of Social Media 2.0 that have caught my attention: • Distribution to more than 1,200 in-network geographically targeted websites. • Distribution to YouTube, iTunes, Second Life, Pheedo, Photobucket and Twitter. • In-release performance statistics on search engine cataloging. • Trackbacks for easy monitoring of online performance. • Search engine, Technorati and Digg results.

In other words, there's a nice mix of new distribution options and PR measurement tools. This will enable me to tell if “Social Media 2.0 offers increased social network visibility to a prospective audience of more than 200 million Internet users.” If it does, that would be very cool.

On the other hand, I'm still skeptical that “Social Media 2.0 transforms a press release into an authentic social media tool by enabling two-way conversation via an in-release comment box that feeds directly into a client-monitored online newsroom.”

Blogs do this exceptionally well. But most press releases – even many of ones that use the social media format – are written like essays, not interviews; broadcasts, not conversations; lectures, not discussions. So, while adding social media elements to blogs generally works, adding them to press releases typically haven't up to now.

This, of course, can change.

As Kevin Dill, social and multimedia product manager, Marketwire, says in today's announcement, “The social media release is an invitation for dialogue based on social media elements. Marketwire's Social Media 2.0 expands upon that idea, taking that dialogue to the next level by allowing conversation to be initiated at the press release level.”

And, as Todd Defren, principal, SHIFT Communications, adds, “The democratization of news is the singular principle behind the Social Media News Release. By allowing anyone to access, re-purpose and engage directly with a newsmaker's content, the SMNR empowers conversations between a company and its diverse user communities.”

So, if early versions of the social media press release were the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas, let's give Social Media 2.0 the benefit of the doubt. It deserves a “second life.”

How will we discover if Social Media 2.0 provides us with increased Internet visibility and greater search engine performance for our news? As I wrote back in May 2003, the only way to find out is to “Measure, measure, measure and measure some more.”

Or, as Bob Geller put it so eloquently last November: “At the end of the day, the %#@!!&& things either work or they don't.”

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:33 PM | Permalink

December 22, 2006

News search terms vs. web search terms

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has written a detailed analysis entitled "The Lies Of Top Search Terms Of The Year" that provides another explanation of why the top news search terms for 2006 don't match the top web search terms highlighted in press releases issued by Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search engines.

According to Danny, "The short answer, as I've written before, is that they are all heavily filtered. That's why you don't see popular terms like 'sex' and 'porn' and navigational queries like 'google' showing up."

If you are trying to figure out which news search terms to use in an online press release or news article, Danny's column also offers an advanced SEO tip that can help you quickly -- and at no cost. He shows you how to use Google Trends to identify news search terms as well as web search terms.

For example, his first chart uses Google Trends to show the relative search volume for bebo, myspace, google, and sex. But, below that, Google Trends also displays a second chart showing the relative news reference volume for the same keywords.

Danny uses Google Trends to show the similarities and differences of other keywords -- including bebo, myspace, world cup, metacafe, radioblog, yahoo, hotmail and amazon. If you use Danny's technique, you can identify potential news search terms, as well.

Of course, I should offer two words of caution.

First, as Google Trends itself says at the bottom of a page of results, "Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it."

Second, there is a lag of about a month in the Google Trends data. So, don't use it to find potential search terms for breaking news. To do this, use either the Google Suggest for Google News or the Yahoo News “also try” feature. They seem to be much more up to date.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:52 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

New Sitemaps For Google News

Is your site included in Google News? Is your site in English? If so, you just got new support from Google Sitemaps. You can submit your news articles for inclusion and also monitor crawling stats. More from Google in Introducing Sitemaps for Google News.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:11 PM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Press Releases: Legitimate SEO Tools or Manipulative Spam?

The first press release was issued 100 years ago, and today there's a spirited debate raging about the value or legitimacy of press releases in a search marketing campaign. In today's SearchDay article, The 100th Birthday of the Press Release, guest writer Greg Jarboe offers a brief history of the press release and frames the debate over using press releases in online marketing campaigns.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:17 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2006

How To Game Digg & Why You Shouldn't

Peter Da Vanzo shows how you can pay someone to Digg your content for a fee. SEO Blackhat reveals a guaranteed way to get your content on the front page of Digg. But after-all, is it worth gaming the Digg system or any social networking type of site's system to get that exposure? Rand explores the pros and cons of gaming Digg - it may not all be positive.

Posted by at 9:17 AM | Permalink

July 31, 2006

Google News Search Engine Explained

Philipp Lenssen has an excellent write up on How Google News Indexes. He goes through how news sources get included, how news stories are clustered together, which sources get found on the Google News home page, and then some other tips. Philipp also explains how the news breaking source normally gets the top spot in the results and how to create content specifically for Google News. This can make a very useful and interesting read for anyone interested in Google News.

I also wrote about Submitting Your News Site To Google News back in June.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:42 AM | Permalink

March 22, 2006

A Deeper Look At Personalized News Search Engines

Mark Glaser at MediaShift wrote a great review named Your Guide to Personalized News Sites. He reviews the history of personalized news sites, and discusses many of the new free options people have to search news with a personal touch. Here is a listing of some of the engines he reviewed;

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:31 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2006

Search Marketing for News and Blog Services

While a good search marketing campaign is obviously targeted first and foremost at the major search engines, other sources of traffic are becoming increasingly important. News and blog services are among these sources, and they require different strategies and tactics that many search marketers aren't yet taking advantage of. In today's SearchDay article, News Search Engine Optimization,guest writer Shari Thurow recaps a recent Search Engine Strategies panel that focused on these increasingly important sources of search traffic.

A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members offers specific tips on copywriting for news releases, creating unique URLs and landing pages for specific purposes and tips for crafting a powerful public relations strategy that complements your search engine optimization efforts.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:48 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2005

Search Engines and Reputation Management

Many companies cry foul when competitors or activists manage to get top search rankings with negative or false information about the company. Whining to the search engines usually isn't an effective way to cope with this type of situation. Instead, try getting proactive by using alternative search marketing strategies, including blogs, press releases and other tools to counter the negative messages. A panel of experts at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference offered specific advice on how to do this, and guest writer Cat Seda covered the panel for today's SearchDay article, Using Search for Public Relations & Reputation Management.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 5:37 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2005

All the News that's Fit to Crawl

News search engines and headline aggregators are playing an increasingly important role in the way people consume online news. These services offer a wealth of information from news sources and blogs all over the world, making it easy for a reader to take in multiple opinions. But these services also offer intriguing opportunities for savvy search marketers to get even broader distribution, if they follow a few guidelines for optimizing content. Guest writer Shari Thurow has the scoop in today's SearchDay article, Meet the News Search Engines.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:09 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2005

New Reprise Feedcast Tool To Get News Publishers Quickly Into Paid Search

Reprise has a new Feedcast tool out designed to scan articles and other newsworthy content and create paid search campaigns for related topics automatically. In short, imagine you are a news publisher wanted to get ads out quickly, to attract interest in a recent news stories. Feedcast is designed to make that happen quickly.

The link takes you to a page with more info, including a helpful Flash demo. Introducing Feedcast on the Reprise SearchViews blog has more info. A SEM Tool for Content Creators from ClickZ has details on those already using it through a private beta.

Somewhat related, Leverage the News for Search Engine Success is a fresh look at why publishers and others might want to ensure they're tapping into news searches as a means to reach an interested audience.

And spotted via Threadwatch, Forbes.com Aims to Improve Search Rankings looks briefly at how publisher Forbes is tapping into SEO via company 360i -- and in particular, free listings rather than paid ones as the New York Times and Washington Post do.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:41 PM | Permalink

February 1, 2005

Your Press Release Point Was???

The point of a press release is to let the world -- and in particular the media -- know something new that your company has done. In contrast, this press release Gary spotted does nothing of the sort. From an SEM firm, it's more a news article about Google's support of the nofollow attribute that any announcement about the company. Nice article -- but press release? No.

It's just another sign on how press releases, as I've written before, have become a trusted feed for Google News. Do a search for google at Google News and what do you get? This "press release" coming up to in the news results. It also does well for a query on search engine marketing, which ought to please the firm that put it out, given they make ample use of links within the release to describe themselves with those words.

The firm's not doing anything wrong, by the way. They can put out whatever they want as a press release, and plenty of other firms make use of them now purely as Google fodder. The fault lies with Google. It's come under fire for carrying press releases within its news service in the past, a problem that was largely solved by specially labeling press releases as such.

Now that more and more press releases aren't really releasing anything, it's overdue for another look at how the service carries this material. The same is true of Yahoo and other services that allow press releases to be injected into their systems. In the meantime, here's a post about another recent absurd press release, which in term links to more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:35 PM | Permalink

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