Ten Steps To Optimising Your Press Release For Social Media Philip Van Zyl

Ten Steps to Optimising Your Press Release for Social Media Philip van Zyl Twitter: @philipvanzyl Email: philip@getsocialmedia.net

Overview
How communication has changed and how that effects us in releasing news to the “press”.
Inbound vs Outbound marketing (paradigm shift).
Traditional vs various online press release (including social media press releases)
The ten steps to compiling and optimising your SM press release.
Some software that can help us with the process.

Three kinds of Press Releases
Traditional press release
2. Optimised press release
3. Social Media press release

Ten steps to compiling and optimising your SM press release
Step 1
Understand basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and use it.
Don’t glaze over here. It’s simple. It’s step by step.
You are going to post your press release on your blog/website (or your client’s).
SEO is 25% on site and 75% off-site.

Step 2
Do keyword research.
Google is going to rank your release according to specific keywords (you need to tell Google which).
What is your release about? Look out for obvious keywords.
Use Google’s free external keyword tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Step 3
Find your news hook for your subject.
(PR 101 still applies to social media releases).
Yahoo news
Google news
Google search
Twitter advanced search
http://search.twitter.com/advanced

Step 4
Gather all of your media resources and get them in the format you require.
This is a chunk of work upfront. Thankfully, much of it can be used for future releases too.

Step 5
Write your headline and subhead
Include your keyword / keyword phrase as close to the beginning of your headline as you can.
Headline no longer than 65 characters.
Subhead approx twice as long.

Step 6
Write the body of your release.
Use keywords throughout, particularly at beginning and end of release.
Don’t “keyword stuff”. Aim for 2% keyword use.
That means in a release of 300 words = max 6 uses of keyword/phrase.

Step 7
Post to your own site/blog (your client’s) first.
Your own “press release” page or “news room”
Google credits the author as the first site to post it.
You’ll benefit from the Google “love” in pagerank.

Step 8
Syndicate your release using RSS
RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication
User selected feeds to information according to source (e.g. Your blog/website).
There are RSS aggregators that will spread your feeds even further afield.
A South African blog RSS aggregator service is http://myscoop.co.za/

Step 9
Distribute your SM press release
Consider distributing it through a wire service (e.g. Marketwire.com). Paid and free versions
Increased change of getting onto Yahoo and Google news.
Distribute it through as many social media channels as possible, including...

Step 10
Track the spread and biggest leverage from your release.
Type your release header into Google search after one day and see where it turns up.
Add Google analytics code to your release page on your website/blog (your client’s) and track the source of all incoming links.
Track the links that appear in your release and see the number of clicks and their source.

Using Press-Feed Browser Toolbar
Download the toolbar from http://www.press-feed.com/toolbar/
Available for: Firefox, IE, Safari

One day workshop on all details of online and social media press releases:
Topic: How to optimise your press release
for Social Media.
Contact Philip van Zyl for details of ongoing Social Media workshops and Strategy consulting.
Philip van Zyl
Twitter: @philipvanzyl
Email: philip@getsocialmedia.net

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Ten Steps To Optimising Your Press Release For Social Media Philip Van Zyl

by Philip van Zyl on Mar 02, 2010

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Ten Steps To Optimising Your Press Release For Social Media Philip Van Zyl — Presentation Transcript