Press Releases: Dead or Alive?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
North Hollywood, California, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) September 23, 2010 -- The first thing most people associate with Public Relations is often a press release. And that is no surprise. After all, press releases have been the most widely used tactic that PR professionals have employed in order to get their client’s message across in a timely and organized fashion.

But has the effectiveness of the press release come to an end?

Through my experience working as a partner in a full-service PR firm for the past four years, I have come to think of a press release like a mannequin in a clothing shop. A store, whether in a mall, boutique or even on New York’s Fifth Avenue, usually sets up an array of mannequins to display each new style. These mannequins are arranged in order to show shoppers what it would look like to wear a particular outfit – usually the retailer’s newest lines. Mannequins act as a way of suggesting to customers how to piece together a great ensemble. This is similar to a press release, which intends to show a reporter just how a news story should be written.

But In recent years, many have questioned the importance of press releases in today’s rapid-fire society of social media. Are they still an integral part of the news cycle, or are their best years behind them?

A true PR professional will properly counsel clients on the correct use of press releases, so as to not waste any of their account time on tasks or projects that will not work to their utmost advantage. By utilizing a pragmatic approach, I have personally learned over time when press releases are worthwhile and when they are not. Press releases are great for things like company, brand or product launches, new releases of music albums or films, or to announce an event, but simply do not carry the weight they once did for general story ideas or angles. They are also essential in providing editors or producers with background information to accompany a pitch. But for story ideas, pitch letters offer up a much more personalized approach for reporters, and most of the time act as a call-to-action to drum up more substantial press exposure.

Consequently, with the emergence of social media marketing, press releases are quickly being replaced by the media release or SEO press release, which is a revamped, modernized version of the traditional press release. While media releases may not usually help in pitching a story and are not generally suitable for personalized press outreach, they are wonderful tools for gaining visibility directly in front of your target audience and for building Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings, because of their ability to include meta keywords or tags, which get picked up by crawlers from sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo!, and other news aggregators.

In addition, media releases allow publicists and marketing specialists to embed images, videos, audio and slideshows, as well as links to a company’s website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn account, and RSS feeds. They can also include social bookmarking links to sites like Digg and del.icio.us. Their potential is endless.

However, with new technology always comes a rift between the excitement of early adopters and the fear and rejection of traditionalists. This particular new technology has already begun to cause a division between the older generation of traditional publicists and tech-savvy Integrated Marketing specialists, causing people such as award-winning marketing strategist David Meerman Scott to offer up his “New Rules of Marketing & PR.”

Both sides bring up valid points. Traditional press releases have their time and place, just as much as media releases do. So, why limit ourselves to one over the other, when they both serve a different purpose?

Steven Le Vine is a partner and co-founder of grapevine pr (www.theprgrapevine.com), a full-service luxury lifestyle and entertainment PR firm, based in Los Angeles.

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