by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success
In today’s online PR and marketing world, your opportunities for promotion go far beyond newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. Some people believe that online media is somehow inferior to “traditional” media. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, online media is gradually supplanting many traditional forms of media, such as printed newspapers, due to cost constraints and changes in consumer taste and consumption patterns. Ignore online media at your peril—it’s definitely the wave of the future.
Most newspapers and magazines now have some form of online presence. Some permit the general public to read all or most of their contents, while others offer expanded and premium content for subscribers only. Realize that free content reaches a much broader audience than the publication’s subscription base. That’s really good for you, and for your press release, because you gain two important advantages: a larger readership and an online mention that boosts your search engine presence.
As publications move online (or new online-only publications are created), they are no longer limited by the costs of traditional printing. Adding one or one hundred new pages online has a negligible cost. The 24/7 nature of the Internet news cycle also puts editors under pressure to constantly update their sites or lose “eyeballs” to sites with fresher news. That means that newspapers and magazines must add additional online content beyond what fit in the physical publication in order to compete.
Editors need more news content, more articles, more lifestyle features, more events, and more content—helpfully supplied in large part by press releases and article pitches from companies like yours. The additional benefit of online content is the ability to include a video or audio snippet, or to share color photos of an event or product. Consumers like multi-media, and so do editors. If you can supply video, audio and digital photos, make sure to mention this at the bottom of the release (either embed links or add a line that says “photos, video and audio available upon request”).
Online newsletters are also fertile ground for press releases and article suggestions. All kinds of business newsletters are posted online, uploaded to Facebook, and linked to Twitter in addition to being sent out to permission-based lists of thousands of readers. The editors of these newsletters are constantly looking for news, interviews, products or books to review, opinion pieces and industry information, as well as quips and quotes.
Where do you find these newsletters? Everywhere. Your clients, vendors and suppliers create some of these newsletters, and they also can recommend good produced by other businesses. Trade and professional associations have online newsletters, as do Chambers of Commerce, membership organizations and industry thought-leaders. Few of these newsletter producers can create as much content as they need by themselves. Today’s online newsletters can also feature Web audio and video as well as digital photos. Newsletter editors are open to good sources, but wary of being deluged by press releases that don’t hit the mark.
