Putting Links Into Press Releases... Still A Controversial Issue(!)

By Tom Foremski - April 10, 2008

I was speaking at the excellent Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit earlier this week and the issue of the new/social media release came up again. It has been over two years now since my rant Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! was published and I'm constantly surprised that it remains a controversial issue.

Die-Press-Release.jpgMy main point was to use the new media technologies and include them in the news release. At least put some links in it!

Several people have told me that news wires such as Businesswire charge extra for links, but, a gentleman from Busineswire that was sitting in the front row during my presentation said it was not true and that Businesswire encourages its clients to put lots of links in their releases - but they don't.

I spoke with many PR people at the event. Some said that their clients are very conservative and that's what is holding back the new/social media press release.

Since companies hire PR people for their expertise it would seem that the client should not be the one making such decisions, such as putting links into a press release.

markglasser.jpgMark Glasser, over at PBS MediaShift this week published a long piece on this subject, it is worth reading. Here is an excerpt:

The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public


Foremski is especially worried that press releases now rank highly on search engine results or in aggregators such as Google News, and hopes that readers don’t confuse company releases with real news stories.

One of the sparks for this story was a recent email I received from a publicist for Business Wire, a wire service for press releases, who noted the newfound power of company press releases:

Business Wire has morphed into what can be called a high-speed ‘search engine news delivery service’ with newfound capabilities to aggressively shoot to the top of search engines, news sites and social media with clientele’s materials. When press releases can be coded and stuffed with multimedia to the point that they receive more traffic and linkage than the same news stories which add the nuance and interpretation, who is doing an end run around whom?

The example Business Wire gives was the recent story of AOL buying Bebo, with the Business Wire story taking top billing on the Techmeme aggregation of stories on the subject. Laura Sturaitis, senior vice president of media services & product strategy for Business Wire, told me she was spending a lot of time educating clients on new ways of optimizing press releases for search engines.

The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public


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By Tom Foremski - April 10, 2008 | Permalink | Category: New/Social Media Release
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Comments (8)

Honestly, I'm not sure why everyone's trying so hard to reinvent press releases.

I'm a PR consultant now and for the past 10 years, but I put in more than a decade as a journalist at CNN and other outlets. And honestly, I never had time to read half the releases that were sent to me.

It seems to me that the "less is more" strategy should rule here. I personally think that if I can't explain a client's compelling advantage in 2-3 paragraphs, I don't have my pitch refined to the point where it's ready for prime time.


Tom, I just finished reading Glaser's post. His post mentioned that you had received a few SMNR/SMPRs. In your experience, were they a significant improvement over the traditional press release?


I'm not so sure you should blame the companies for not putting links in their releases. In my experience advising investor relations departments (who's more conservative than them?) they love the idea once they understand the benefits in terms of lower costs, improved usability, and a better ability to measure interest.

There's a strong incentive for PR advisers *not* to add links or social media resources in releases. It is too easy for their clients to see how ineffective most news releases are. You can easily measure the effectiveness of a news release that includes links to relevant resources by looking at the traffic to them. You can check how many bookmarked the thing on del.icio.us or how many Diggs it got.

If a company is paying your firm lots of money to write a release, and a PR wire service is doing likewise to distribute it, why would they want you to see that press releases mostly are a waste of money?


I've worked in PR since graduating from Journalism School 16 years ago. Since day one, I've followed a simple three step process in dealing with the media:

1. Use news judgment
2. Make it as easy as possible for reporters to do their jobs
3. Don't waste journos' time

That worked before plain paper faxes, e-mail and Web 2.0. It still works now.

You can tart up your crappy story with adjectives, experts, BS quotes, graphs, pics, videos, RSS feeds, del.icio.us links, blogs, podcasts and SMPRs all you like. If you put lipstick on a pig, you're still not gonna want to date it.


richard koman:

I'm getting a lot of mail from PR these days from people who are tracking my stories and want to offer me an expert if I'm ever writing about that story again. Seems like a reasonable strategy but it doesn't work. The story they're pitching me on is the one I just finished. I need to know what tomorrow's story is, not yesterday's. PR needs to work as quickly as journos. Look at this morning's news and give me an angle/expert i can use in today's news cycle.


Tom Foremski:

David: Yes a pig in lipstick is like a social media release with bad content. Lipstick and beer won't improve it.

Dominic: Yes, the answer is to get around both, you might not need either one...

Andrew: Yes, they are a bit better.


What dogs a good new technology is 'designing around' or 'designing with'.

Why worry about whether google or the memes pick the social release or not. A company's objective is to get the word out and for me as a consumer, I want the source and not someone else's blog with a blockquote from the release.

Tinker, if it breaks, tinker again.


Tom Foremski:

Indus: Yes it does matter if Google News picks up a press release and it isn't clearly labeled. People trust information from an independent source more than they do from a 100 per cent biased source: the company putting out the press release. If they confuse the two and that there is some confusion deliberately applied, or implied, then that is unethical. A company has a lot to lose if it is caught doing something like that, imho.


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