An article Ragan’s PR Daily ran last week titled “Is the Traditional PR Pitch Dead?” flirted with the notion that it’s possible to practice PR without pitching media and bloggers. The author, Rachel Farrell, concluded (and I agree) that social media is a path to news, not a replacement for it, and that pitching thought leaders and those who shape opinion is still a good idea. The art of the pitch still matters.

I’ll go a step further and say that the pitch has never been more important to PR than it is today.

The pitch is the art of describing the very core of a story, and it drives right to heart of why the story would be of interest or importance to the audience.

Just as a pitch -- whether delivered via email or phone -- is designed to attract the attention of a journalist, that same pitch can also be used to attract your brand’s publics.

In fact, we need to think about leaving multiple pictures into messages, in order to attract the reader keep the audiences’ attention and guide them along the path that we’ve created, all the way to the outcome we intend.

Even if pitching traditional media and connected bloggers isn’t part of the remit of the particular project, ultimately the success of the message hinges on the pitch, and here’s why:

The pitch will win attention: When appealing to online audiences, it’s crucial that you surface that essential why in the story as quickly as possible. Think about starting your press release, for example, with a pitch.

Keep pitching to hold attention: But don’t stop pitching for attention with the headline. Once you have the attention of the reader (or, in the case of a video, the viewer), you have to keep it. Keep pitching throughout the message to keep the audience engaged. How do you do this? Keep surfacing those crucial nuggets that describe why the story matters, and lead your audience through the message, laying a trail with these compelling ideas.

Close the deal with a pitch: What’s the outcome you want the audience to take? If you’ve kept the audience’s attention throughout the whole message, you’ve managed to generate a lot of interest. Well done! But now is not the time to take your foot off the gas. Encourage the reader to take the next step, and use a pitch to do it.

Abandoning the power of the pitch is the last thing I would do. As the availability of information multiplies and attention spans correspondingly decrease, honing the ability to craft messages designed to garner, keep and guide audience interest is important, and the pitch is a tactic that translates especially well to today’s attention market.

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

A lot of search engine optimization professionals are incorporating PR tactics into their optimization strategies these days, and there’s a very good reason for this trend: the search engines are placing premiums on authentic earned media.

The very nature of earned media has evolved, however. In addition to pick up in the mainstream media, earned media credibility also occurs when content generates social shares and develops high-quality website traffic.

So, as we are writing press releases and other content intended for online publication, it’s a good idea to be thinking about how to encourage social sharing and to keep readers on the website page posting your content.  And to achieve these objectives, first and foremost, it’s crucial to attract readers are truly interested in the message topic.

Thinking like a marketer when it comes to outcomes

This means we need to take a critical look at the press releases and other content we’re publishing, with an eye toward garnering reader attention, holding it on the page, and inspiring some sort of action such as social sharing or clicking through on links we serve. 

These types of outcomes aren’t traditionally found among the intended outcomes of a campaign, but these are the sort of things the digital marketing crowd pays close attention to, because of the importance of these factors to everything from search engine rank and social buzz to lead generation and conversion rate.

And let’s face it. If we fail to grab reader attention, hold it and inspire the reader to take some sort of positive action, the press releases we send out and the blog posts we publish won’t be seen. Content that is overlooked by readers does not generate any of the positive signals that search engines are looking for that ultimately increase the visibility of a message,  and also improve the rank of the corresponding website.

Put the audience first.

What is coming next may surprise you, however.  Instead of picking apart the the structural mechanics of the press release, I believe it’s important to spend a little time thinking about the overall message and the focus. We have to do a better job of presenting content in our readers’ context, not within the brands messaging framework.

How do you build that audience context into messaging? A good way to start is by answering the following questions pertaining to the announcement you’re drafting:

• What are the problems are opportunities the readers want to solve or harness?
• How does what you’re promoting improve their lives or make it easier for them to do their jobs better?

These are the sorts of questions we need to be asking ourselves as we start to build our message strategies.  If we fail to incorporate the audience’s point of view into our messaging, our brands are going to feel out-of-touch, inaccessible and uninteresting.

Forget SEO tactics.  Focusing the message is job one. 

Another problem I see often in press releases is jumbled messaging, with angles and themes piled haphazardly on top of one another. The release may start off talking about a partnership or a new product, for example, but then all of a sudden it veers off into a discussion of business strategy, a new hire or the upcoming product pipeline.  It starts to read like a late-night infomercial.  But wait! There’s more!

Content that has too many topics jammed into it presents a number of problems for both the readers and for search engine.

Readers lose interest when the content fears away from the topic in which they were pursuing more information.

And search engines have a hard time understanding what the content is about when it involves too many themes. That causes problems for them when it comes to indexing and categorizing the content and ultimately serving up to interested searchers.

Simply put, that once thousand word press release containing three months’ worth of announcements is probably doing the issuing brand more harm than good. Important resources were expended in the writing and distribution, but because it’s so long and so unfocused, readers are dropping off the pages, they’re not sharing the content and search engines frankly can’t make heads or tails of the meaning. The content doesn’t have a fighting chance. Before long, it will sink under its own weight, all the way down to the graveyard of boring stuff at the bottom of the interwebs.

The embedded slide deck offers some additional insight into developing content designed to attract engage and hold audiences and encourage interaction. Included in the deck are some tips for structuring the content and tactics you can employ that will make it easier for your readers to understand and scan your press releases, blog posts and other written content.  If you want to drill into this topic even more, scan the copy in the SEO section of our blog.  Here’s the link: blog.prnewswire.com/tag/seo/

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

The Financial Times this week launched FastFT, a nimble and ultra-short-form news service publishing extremely short (<250-word) stories. The reasoning behind the new service? While the 140-character limit on Twitter is a bit too confining, it’s clear that readers prefer short snippets rather than long-form. The FT is adding the short-format service to their mix, in order to, according to an interview with FastFT’s chief correspondent Megan Murphy that was published by PaidContent, “create more portals and routes for readers to consume the publication’s content.”

The idea of using alternative content formats to create portals leading readers to other related content is an excellent idea.

• For one thing, short stories are mobile-device friendly. And, in case you missed it, as of the fourth quarter of 2012, more tablets shipped than PCs and desktops combined -- just three years after the launch of the first tablet. FastFT is, by its very nature, designed to render well across devices and platforms.

• The short format also caters to online reading behaviors, which differ significantly from how people interact with print content. Online readers browse content quickly, scanning pages and following links to rapidly hone in on what is interesting to them at that moment. 

Fast FT is going to be a winner for the FT, and there are important lessons here that PR pros need to pay attention to when crafting press releases and other messages.

Focus your message on the reader’s interests, not the company’s agenda.

Let’s be brutally honest. Your audience doesn’t care about the fact that your company is unveiling a new product or announcing a new venture. They care about how these announcements will impact them. Does the new product solve a problem or enable users to capture a new opportunity? If it does, lead with that angle, and reflect it in your headline and lead.

But don’t stop with just the headline and lead. Allowing the story to wander off course will cause your readers to exit the page. Keep the pedal to the metal on the key story, and ruthlessly edit out all those attempts by others to hitch a ride on your message. This is not the time to try to appeal to every potential vertical market.  You’ve undoubtedly heard the old adage “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Don’t let you press releases turn into a confused pile of messages that lack a central focus.  Every paragraph and every quote need to support the core message. If they don’t, chop them.

Consider employing a news summary.

Many news sites and blogs are now providing readers a short summary of articles and posts, highlighting the key points of interest and offering a bit more detail than the headline, subhead and lead traditionally do. While purists might balk at summaries and complain about how they interrupt the flow of a story, in reality, summaries provide great functionality for the reader, and provide one more element that can hook the reader.

Summaries must be short. If your summary requires more than a single sentence or a few short bullet points, the content itself may need a bit more focus, because there may be too many stories or angles packed into the content lead the readers to the course of action you’ll prescribe.

Pro tip: To ensure correct rendering of your content, if you do employ a news summary and plan on sending the press release over a newswire, place the summary in the text of the release, after the dateline. Do not attempt to replace your subhead with a bulleted summary – doing so could play havoc with how the story appears on the thousands of web sites that syndicate PR Newswire content.

Move the call to action to the top of the page.

Last week we spoke to a client that was disappointed that their press release hadn’t generated the hoped-for boost in web site traffic. Upon inspection, the underlying reason became clear – the release was almost 1,000 words long, and was bereft of any links for readers to follow.  The only URL to be found in the press release was at the very end, in the boilerplate.

How do people read on the web? According to Jakob Nielsen, a leading expert on web usability and a principle of the Nielsen Norman Group, they don’t.

Nielsen’s research on how people read on the web is 16 years old, but its findings are as true today as they were when originally published. Our reading behaviors are different when consuming digital content, and this means that many readers won’t make it to the mid-point of your press release, much less the bitter end. To get the best results for your message, it’s crucial that you channel the reader’s action, and you do that by placing calls to action (“CTA”) strategically in your message.

To create the outcomes desired, the calls to action need to be placed near the top of the press release. The CTA can be subtle, offered in the form of an anchor text link from a descriptive phrase within the first paragraph. Or, when the CTA is an event registration or access to a free download or trial, the CTA can much more overt, in the form of an actual link placed directly below the first paragraph, and accompanied by a clear invitation to the reader – something like “Download the free white paper” or “For a free 30-day trial.”

Employing these tips will result in a press release that looks a bit different, but our bet is that it will perform differently as well, attracting more readers, keeping their attention longer and ultimately driving more of the desired actions and outcomes the organization hoped to achieve with the message.

Related reading: 

The press release as a tool to drive discovery

How content distribution drives message discovery & results  

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing,  and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at@sarahskerik .

As resources become more and more dear for mainstream media, brands have the opportunity to fill voids with newsworthy content. However, before we get too excited and start thinking about opportunities to promote our products within the venerable pages of the Sun-Times and other media outlets, it’s important to keep objectivity, transparency and newsworthiness in mind. Purely promotional content will not fill the bill.

Keep Branding and Promotion in Check

“Brands should avoid overtly branding their content,” advises Jill Ulicney, PR Newswire’s manager of photo products. “For example, if you add a logo to an image of a product, a journalist would be less likely to use an image than just the plain product shot.”

According to reports today, the Sun-Times plans on asking reporters to “provide” pictures and videos to accompany the stories. Including a newsworthy visual with the PR pitch or press release just became more important. To sharpen your organizations’ news nose when it comes to visual content development, spend a little time looking carefully at the media outlets you most admire and are valued by your key audiences.

Adopt the Audience Point of View in Content Planning

“When producing or conceptualizing a video, brands should take off their marketing and PR hats and instead ask themselves what grabs their attention when they’re NOT working,” suggests Brett Simon, a senior media relations manager with PR Newswire and a former television reporter. “What do you stop and watch on a weeknight after work or when you’re surfing the Web?”

Four Questions That Should Shape Your Visual Content Strategy

Additionally, there are four important questions you can ask that will help inform your visual content strategy:

1. What sort of stories do your target media outlets run? Framing your brand’s content within the context of the media outlet’s stories will increase your chances at success. 
2. What are the top stories on their websites? Many websites feature their most popular content. Look for what stories are most-read, most-emailed and most-shared. Notice how they’re illustrated, and inform your visual planning accordingly.
3. What sort of visuals to the user will illustrate the stories? Don’t limit yourself to pictures. Does the outlet use video? Do they use charts and graphs to illustrate trends? Developing content in the same vein as what you see on the media site will help you not only improve the likelihood that your visuals will be useful to media, you’ll also increase the utility of the content to your audiences across the board.   
4. What digital platforms do they publish upon, and what content do they share on those platforms? Outlets that are active socially often curate third-party content, which creates an opportunity for a different type of earned media -- when an influencer shares your content on social networks, it acquires more credibility and exposure. Additionally, many organizations are publishing mobile and tablet editions of their content. Take into account whether or not the outlet publishes shorter video segments on mobile platforms, for example, or which images from a larger gallery they decide to embed in the mobile content. You’ll pick up clues about what works that you can use in planning your own content strategy.

Using these questions and considerations as a guide for creating content, an organization can start to incorporate a more journalistic approach. In many cases, this will mean telling the story from the customer and/or audience perspective and developing the ability to frame elements of the brand story within these larger contextual frameworks. The good news: Whether or not your content actually makes its way into the outlets published work, you’ll end up with content that is more attractive to your own audiences and more effective in conveying your organization’s message.

The Ongoing Importance of Visuals to Communications

What makes the Sun-Times’ move all especially baffling is the simple fact that visual content is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of digital media. Almost all of the new developments in content sharing, digital media consumption and social media are centered on visuals. Entire social networks like Pinterest, Instagram and Vine are built on visual content. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Facebook and Twitter have put digital content front and center for their users. The algorithms that search engines and social networks used to determine what we see all give visuals more weight.

These are just a few of the reasons why it is difficult to overstate the importance of visuals in today’s information environment and communications arenas. Humans are visual animals, and if you want to attract a human audience, you need visual content, period.

“Visual means just that,” notes Ken Dowell, executive vice president of audience development and social media for PR Newswire. “You want content that is interesting, unique and catches the eye. It should attractive and of good quality in terms of clarity and focus.”

Most news organizations are actively trying to build digital audiences and keep those audiences on their sites for longer periods of time in order to expose them to more advertising. In many cases, they are also attempting to increase the number of paying digital subscriptions. In order to achieve these objectives, the media outlets need to produce more rich media and compelling content. Observing how successful media outlets are using visuals can give your communications a competitive edge, whether you’re pitching a story our publishing content on branded channels.

Related reading:

Effective & Unexpected Content: Experimenting with Multiple Content Formats

Tips for using photos for PR

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.” Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

Have you ever stopped to think about how much media monitoring costs your company?

Your PR department has been collecting clips for your company for a while, and you’ve even managed to come up with some metrics to trend for tone, but how do you know you’re capturing all the coverage that’s meaningful to your business? How many sources do you examine?

Have you ever really considered the cost of doing this kind of thing manually?

Well, we did.

We made a few assumptions, adjusted for inflation, and voila! We figured out what a North American company spends on average per year on monitoring its media coverage. When trying to justify a monitoring service, consider these figures.

How much time would it take to compile a clipbook manually?

This depends on the size of the company but, on a regular day (no issue to be managed or crisis to quell), let’s assume (if you’ve had your morning coffee) it takes:

• ~ 2 hours every morning to scan the news sites, broadcast sites, video sites, RSS feeds, and collect news clips;
• ~ 1 hour to manually generate a clipbook;
• ~ 1 hour to convert the information into manipulatable data -- if you’re an Excel wiz;
• A few hours for tone analysis and reporting brings you to your full 8-hour work day

Some days will be worse than others. You might be sluggish because it’s a Monday or maybe your company recently released its earnings and there are a higher volume of mentions.

Now let’s talk money. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2012, the mean hourly wage for a public relations specialist is about $33.50.

Let’s say that he/she spends about 95% of their time working on media monitoring-related things. So, based on the 40-hour work week, your company pays about $1,200 per week towards manual media monitoring -- which rings you in at about $65,000 per year.

Now, if yours is a larger company, you could be paying two or three staff members to share that work. Or consider if your PR pro is at the higher end of the pay scale and makes closer to $40 per hour -- now it’s costing your company about $80,000 yearly.

Either way, media monitoring may already represent a large resource drain and hidden spend for your group. If that’s the case, it might be time to consider a full-service media monitoring service, like our very own MediaVantage.