Join Ann Wylie for her online training session, “Anatomy of a 2.0 Release: Write Releases That Get Posted on Portals, Help Google Find Your Site, Reach Readers Online and More,” on June 28, at 3–4 p.m. This public relations writing training sesssion is free to PRSA members.

Today’s online releases serve several functions: They drive traffic to your site through search engine optimization, inform your readers and spread your message via journalists and bloggers.

To make your 21st-century release most effective:

Keep the headline short. Aim for 65 to 70 characters if you want your release to show up on Google News, according to a 2010 study by Schwartz Communications. Still, despite Google’s preferences, the average headline in Schwartz’s study was 123 characters long, and the longest more than 1,000 characters.

Get to the point quickly. Keep your lead to around 25 words. If it’s longer, then it starts looking too thick to invite readers. If it’s shorter, then news portals might not recognize it as a paragraph. Google News, for instance, rejects releases that are only bullet points and one-sentence paragraphs.

Tighten the release. The best length for a news release: 250 words. If your release is:

• Longer than 700 words, then Google News may reject it for being too long.
• Longer than 500 words, then portals may cut it off in the middle.
• Shorter than 125 words, then Google News may reject it for being too short.

Plus, reading online is onerous. Releases of about 250 words are easier on people’s eyes.

Cut the fluff. Nobody searches for “world-class,” “cutting-edge” or “next-generation.” Hype not only clutters your copy, but it also dilutes your keywords. And that makes it harder for Google and other search engines to find your site.

Instead of piling on the jargon, write about what your product, service or idea will do for your clients and customers.

Write for people. Today’s releases serve two audiences: search engines and people. In the rush to optimize for the former, we sometimes forget the latter.

Sure, you’re going to place keywords and phrases in the page title tag, headline and maybe a few more places. But don’t “optimize” your release until you’ve rendered it unreadable to your intended audience — the people you hope will find your information through a search in the first place.

Copyright © 2012 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

Continue reading " Five Tips to Bring Your Online Releases into the 21st Century "

Join Ann Wylie for her in-person training session, “Writing That Sells — Products, Services and Ideas,” on June 22 at 9 a.m.–4 p.m. EDT in Boston, Mass.

Writers usually say that they use the inverted pyramid because readers stop reading after the first paragraph.

Meanwhile, readers typically say that they stop reading after the first paragraph because writers use the inverted pyramid.

Before you pound out your next pyramid, check out the following three trends in story structure:

Continue reading " Three Trends in Story Structure: Beyond the Inverted Pyramid "

Join Tyrha M. Lindsey and Bruce Kirton for their Digital Impact Conference session, The Digerati: Social Media Habits of Multicultural Consumers.” The PRSA 2012 Digital Impact Conference, to be held April 2–3 at the Sentry Center in New York City, offers workshops where public relations professionals will hear from entrepreneurs and others who specialize in technology communications or social and digital media.

Multicultural consumers wield a significant amount of influence on popular trends in the general market, and consequently, smart marketers understand the importance of engaging this segment. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the African-American segment in this article, but each ethnic segment has particular online behaviors and habits that can be leveraged to build a relationship with those consumers.

Continue reading " Leverage Online Dialogue and Conversations to Create Multicultural Brand Ambassadors! "

Join Tyrha M. Lindsey and Bruce Kirton for their Digital Impact Conference session, The Digerati: Social Media Habits of Multicultural Consumers.” The PRSA 2012 Digital Impact Conference, to be held April 2–3 at the Sentry Center in New York City, offers workshops where public relations professionals will hear from entrepreneurs and others who specialize in technology communications or social and digital media. 

When Mr. Lewis founded UniWorld Group in 1969, the only media outlet was EBONY magazine. The only other way that African-Americans found out about the news in their community was through “word of mouth.”

Fast forward to 2012. There are many media outlets of color — African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Haitian, Chinese, etc. Nevertheless, as a public relations professional, how do you REALLY tell a positive multicultural news story that is not related to celebrities, sports or crime? Since current studies say that multicultural consumers’ rate of Internet usage is now nearly indistinguishable from that of the general population, at 80 percent (versus 88 percent in the general market), African-Americans and Hispanics are now online more than ever before.

Moreover, according to “Brand Information Sources Among African-Americans,” the new study by One Solution and UniWorld Group, “ ‘Advisers’ in the African-American community are “advice exchangers” — they both ask and are asked for opinions of products or services.”

Continue reading " How Do You Tell a Multicultural News Story In 2012? "

Join Malayna Williams for her online training session, “Digital Media and Today’s Digital News Release,” now available on-demand. This media relations training sesssion is free to PRSA members.  

Recently, PRSA rolled out new webinar offerings along with a shiny new system.  I was lucky to be invited to present their first webinar on the topic maximizing digital news releases. In true PRSA style, everything was buttoned up and well managed. But the most exciting change was a chat feature than enabled hundreds of PRSA members across the country to communicate with each other throughout the webinar.

Being a working mom, I like to think I’m good at juggling multiple things at once. But I have to admit, presenting while chatting was a bit too much for me. So it wasn’t until after the webinar that I really had a chance to read all the comments and appreciate how much the participants likely got from each other. This is our digital world working just as it should!

Continue reading " Chatting About Digital News Releases "