23
July
2007
|
16:03 PM
America/Los_Angeles

From Press Release to News: Cutting out the independent media

Shannon Whitley is behind the very interesting PRX Builder, a way to produce company press releases that include many-media, links, etc.

PRX Builder now has a feature that allows companies to use Google AdWords to advertise the "news headlines."

Although news releases should not be advertisements themselves, there’s nothing wrong with hawking your headlines to get peoples’ attention.  That’s why I developed NewsAds™ for PRX Builder.

What’s a NewsAd? 

NewsAds are advertisements that are published to the Google AdWords network.  You know, the ads that appear besides the Google search results and on web pages across the internet.  PRX Builder now offers NewsAds as an additional feature for each news release.  Publish your release through PRX Builder and then create a NewsAd about your release on Google AdWords.

http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/?p=317

This is an interesting development because parts of the PR industry thinks it can do quite well by getting around the media and publish directly to potential customers. Yes, they can, but few people ask if this strategy makes much sense.

My PhotoMorgan McLintic, over at Lewis PR recently wrote about an event discussing the successful use of search engine optimization to get a high Google ranking for a press release.

I asked a few people after the session what they thought. Everyone said you want people to find your content online. Agreed. No-one said they'd ever bought anything based on finding a press release.

Everyone agreed a PR team should know which media might be interested in a press release, and that they should be approached directly. No-one felt that media would spend much time reading releases they'd stumbled across on the web.

SEO PR - missing the target?

A high Google rank should not be confused with a successful news release. Readers know when something is from the company. Readers respect independent media articles over those from a company. Much better to promote those independent media pieces than press releases, imho.

But with independent media rapidly disappearing, what are the PR firms going to do? Publish to Google it seems...