Online Press Releases

MediaConnect will look for the particular hook that your story offers and write a stylish, hyperbole-free, online press release around it. Our online press releases can also be bookmarked to social bookmarking sites such as ‘Delicious’ in order to enhance the impact of your release.

Optimised press releases are a very important piece of online marketing, and keyphrase research helps identify the terms which users interested in your services will search for. By positioning your online press releases for search engines, you are effectively creating a long-lasting, searchable database relating to your organisation.

An optimised press release can help you get a page one result for your relevant keywords in the News Engines like Yahoo News and Google News. As more and more people are turning to the Internet for their news rather than papers, and can search for topics of interest to them, this is an increasingly valuable option for companies.

Keyphrase research counts for nothing if the press release is not distributed effectively, however. MediaConnect works with leading companies that are highly rated by Google, Yahoo et al and have extensive distribution networks which include major media outlets, thereby providing maximum exposure for your online press release.

Online press releases cost a fraction of the expense involved in issuing traditional releases. They can also help you:

• Get information to top-tier news sites, which are far more popular than newspapers these days.
• Improve search engine performance.
• Reach journalists and media companies.
• Drive traffic to your site.

Good press releases contain short, punchy headlines followed by an introduction that should stand on its own, tell the whole story and explain its purpose. The foot of the release should feature a fairly standard paragraph about your company along with contact information.

Online press releases must be newsworthy and be capable of piquing the interest of the audience. It should be objectively written in a journalistic style rather than adopting a marketing approach which seeks only to sell to the reader instead of informing them. These are just some of the challenges that those who produce online press releases must overcome.

All press releases must deal with the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. If you answer these basic questions, your online press release will provide all the information the reader needs. MediaConnect can do all this for you.

Most criticisms lie with content rather than format, a problem that can be circumvented when online press releases are written by professionals with an understanding of the platform. In an effort to grab attention, many inexperienced writers actually make their releases far more unappealing and unprofessional.

One of the ways they do this is through the inclusion of “spare fat”. Online press releases should be direct, lean and stick to the facts rather than including fluff and exaggerations that will hurt your own credibility.

Jargon is the enemy of good style. Just because you understand the intricacies of a subject, it doesn’t mean that those who read your online press release will. Plain, clear and concise English is far more likely to get you the results you crave.

That is not to say you should settle for blandness, however. You have a matter of seconds to grab your readers' attention and a lot of competition out there. With this in mind, you must start strong with the headline and first paragraph telling the story and the rest of your press release providing the detail.

The format of the press release remained largely unchanged until recently, when modern technology and new challenges forced the PR industry’s hands. As commercial organisations came to realise the potential of the Internet, they rushed to get online and begin spreading their message to a whole new type of customer.

At first, this involved the creation of static, uninspiring websites that did little to engage the customer. The online press room was born when companies decided to take advantage of advances in technology to add press releases and other information to their sites.

The problem with this, and with press releases issued through web wire services, was that they were only useful if people were able to find them. This is where the practice of search engine optimisation came to be vital to the success of online press releases.