11
May
2010
|
06:17 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Using Pearltrees To Create Multi-Media Press Kits

My regular readers know about my rants on the subject of press releases. My rants are not about the content of press releases but that they do not use the media technologies that we have today.
{Please see: Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! - SVW and 4 Years Since 'Die! Press Release Die!...' And STILL No Hyperlinks - SVW]

Few press releases have more than one link, or have links pointing to useful information such as:

- a link to photographs
- embeddable videos
- background information
- customer quotes
- analyst quotes
- related news stories
- related news releases

Such links make my job easier -- instead of Googling around for that information I can find it more quickly. I might also copy those links into my article as a service to my readers looking for additional information.

Yet despite having many people agree with me, the PR industry still has trouble understanding these very simple things. Some have told me that people don't know how to create links. (I will be hosting a $1,000-a-head workshop on this very topic, send me an email if you'd like to sign up foremski at gmail.com.)

Another way to produce an interactive press release is to use Pearltrees. I've been working with Pearltrees the past few months and developing some new use cases.

Pearltrees is a visual way of creating a collection of web sites. Let me show you an example below. It represents Intel's recent launch of a new Atom processor family. To the main news release, I've attached pearls that represent web pages where you can download photos, video, find background information, etc.

(This is a live window in that you can move around within it and browse the content of each pearl. You can also grab it and add it to your Pearltree collection.)


After the event you can use Pearltrees to look at the media coverage, here is an example.


The wonderful thing about Pearltrees is that others can grab your specific Pearltree and attach it to their own Pearltree collection. This also means that if I make any change in my Pearltree, the changes are reflected in every version of my Pearltree that others have chosen.

Corporate communications departments could quickly share resources and reuse Pearltrees in a modular way. For example, if there are any changes in a "background" Pearltree, those changes are replicated across every version, in everyone's Pearltree collection. This is especially valuable when dealing with changes in legal wording, or legal approval for company information -- once approved, a Pearl or a Pearltree, can be reused time and again, and future changes are automatically propagated across all Pearltrees.

Try it out, I'd love to hear your feedback.