A white paper just published by Business Wire titled “State of the Press Release” reinforces what I have posted in my previous blogs about the enduring power and growing flexibility of the news release.  The white paper aptly asserts the news release “has evolved into a Swiss army knife of communications tools that can address myriad of marketing and communications challenges.”

Some of the more interesting factoids presented in this white paper are:

1. Business Wire issued more than 288,000 press releases in 2009, and it estimates that a million more were sent out by other news services. One study suggests that a whopping 1.7 billion are sent out via email annually.

2. The news release has morphed into a multi-purpose marketing tool. When treated as an interactive web page with links, multimedia and tags, can perform and deliver results from multiple platforms and devices: the computer, the television or your mobile phone.

3. A decade ago, a news release would sit at the altar of journalists, hoping to be “picked up,” rewritten and published. Today, it’s likely to skip gatekeepers altogether and jump straight to the screens of target audiences.

4. As more and more journalistic gatekeepers have been downsized or laid off, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have assumed a role as community plaza where information is shared and exchanged. Skim any social networking site – or simply search the word “news release” on any of these sites, and you’ll find that releases account for a hefty percentage of content.

5. Treating your release like an interactive webpage can further amplify your message/content and its usefulness. Links to a chart, map or URLs that direct readers to deep content on your website can enhance the understanding of your product, service, company or point of view.

6. Business Wire asserts that one of the most important things you can do to get your press release to stand out is add a logo, graphic, photo, video or other multimedia element. Its internal research shows that press releases with any kind of graphic or multimedia generate 2.5 times as many clicks as text-only releases.

I recommend this white paper to anyone still wondering about the currency and power of the news release, which has come a long, long way since the first one was issued 104 years ago by Ivy Lee for the Pennsylvania Railroad (see my first blog entry  ”News Release Evolution: In The Beginning” for details on this historic event.)  This white paper can be downloaded at no charge at http://glomosome.businesswire.com/

Business Wire’s Joseph Miller (product mgr in San Antonio office) just completed an insightful study on what makes news releases effective, summarizing them into seven traits. His methodology was simple and straightforward. He defined hit releases as those getting the most release reads (or page views) and took the top 10 releases on Business Wire’s EON (Enhanced Online News) for each full month so far in 2010. He looked at 40 releases in total.

For each release, he counted the words in the body, the date and time of release, whether the release included a photo, and so on for a total of seven main traits.

The “Average” Hit Release: Across the board, these releases were an average of 642 words, with the longest being nearly 1500 words and the shortest being just over 250 words. The word counts were quite evenly distributed as well, and there didn’t seem to be any word count exceptionally more likely to hit than another. In total, 58% of releases were over 500 words.

The most common day of the week to release was Thursday, which was the date of choice for 22.5% of releases. Tuesday and Wednesday were close behind with 20% of releases each and Monday and Friday were slightly less likely at 17.5%. Just one lonely hit was released on a Saturday and no hit releases premiered on Sundays.

Moving on to the best time of day (rounding to the nearest hour), 10am and 12pm ET were tied for the most frequent, each with 12.5% of releases. Additionally, 40% of all the hits were released before noon, 35% between noon and 3pm, and 25% from 4pm onward. It looks like news consumers tend to be early risers, so get your release out during the workday if you can.

The Seven Traits from Top to Bottom:

1) 87% of releases included at least one link in one form or another in the body of the release, with many of the top releases containing quite a few very descriptive links. If your company happens to be a holdout in the release linking game, I hope this may persuade you to start adding descriptive links to your press releases.
2) 73% of releases incorporated some special formatting within the body of the release, whether it be bold, italics, underlining or an embedded image. In today’s xhtml world, special formatting can be an excellent way to emphasize key points of your releases, break your content into distinct sections and provide cues for ‘skimmers’ to gather meaning as they quickly scan content for relevant information.
3) 68% of releases had a subheadline. This stat was the most surprising to me. The subhead seems to have an unclear role in press release SEO, since it’s not really the headline and not really the body either. While the robots digesting releases may not pay it much mind, it’s clear that the subhead offers valuable supplementary guidance to readers as they consider whether to continue on reading a release and possibly even share that release.
4) 58% of releases included the company name in the release headline (Ex. Company X releases XYZ app). Of course, this also means that 42% didn’t include the company name and still performed quite well with readers. There is very little real estate available within your headline and if it is more than 22 words you might not make it into Google News. With this in mind, consider the goal of the release and campaign when making your choice. If company branding is a chief concern, including the name is probably a good idea. However, if the focus is more product or service focused, for instance, maybe the company name should take a back seat.
5) 35% of releases included a photo or video, with the vast majority of those including a photo only. It’s safe to say that much fewer than 35% of all releases include multimedia, so it’s clearly a good idea to include multimedia in order to help your releases stand out. Product photos, charts, infographics, company executives, high-resolution logos . . . the list of possibilities is nearly endless.
6) 23% of releases encouraged social sharing or engagement within the body of the release, typically Facebook or Twitter. All EON releases already offer social sharing chicklets covering all major social networks, so it’s not absolutely critical to give them additional emphasis within your release. However, if social engagement is a priority or your release is geared towards “sharability”, why not give readers a bit more of a push?

7) 5% of releases, just two, had any special characters in the headline. So perhaps adding special characters in headlines is not a good idea.

Judging from Miller’s study, the news release is not only alive and well — where basics still apply — but it is thriving on the Internet as it offers opportunities to hyperlink to expanded useful information.

Over the past three blogs, I have mused over the expanding role of the news release since the very first one was issued about a century ago by the Pennsylvania RR at the urging of one of the very first PR practitioners, Ivy Lee. While the news release continues to fulfill its original role as a factual, succinct summary of a newsworthy development, it has proved over the years to be a more powerful marketing tool than meets the eye.

Because the process of writing a news release is deadline driven, its sense of urgency naturally commands the attention of all key stakeholders (often the CEO) in the messages that the release is to impart. As I have noted in a previous blog, the process of drafting the release often unmasks a lack of consensus among the stakeholders about key messages — and in some instances, an embarrassing lack of strategic marketing and/or weak product/corporate positioning.  Thus we find the news release performing an unintended but very critical role of driving consensus around marketing issues and key messages. In the best of circumstances, this consensus is reached before the deadline, otherwise the news release is postponed until such consensus is reached.

In the Internet Age where virtually anyone can become their own publisher, the news release takes on heightened importance as a communications and marketing tool.  Not only can it be distributed worldwide instantaneously and picked up by major portals just as quickly (thanks to electronic distribution by providers such as Business Wire), but it also becomes a searchable document that will be accessible on the Internet virtually forever.  Therefore, news release craftsmanship today needs to carefully consider the key words that its target audience is likely to search as well as what is said today may read in the future, perhaps years from now.  Indeed, the news release serves as a factual milestone that could be drawn upon in the preparation of future articles many years hence.

The real beauty of of distributing news releases in the Internet Age is the third dimension afforded by using hyperlinks within the release.  In the old days of printing and snail mailing, best practices and media preference suggested the length of the release be no longer than 3 pages double space.  But not so on the Internet where releases need be no more than 1 page single spaced with embedded hyperlinks that will zoom you to a “landing page” or photos, charts, graphs and even a video to get more information about the newsworthy topic.

In closing this final chapter on news release evolution, I would be remiss if I did not cite how effective the news release can be in directly communicating with current and prospective customers.  By emailing customers advance copies of the news release about a week before its released to the media, you’re telling your customers that you want them to be the first to know.  This not only flatters customers in that you consider them important enough to tell them the news before its news, it also compels them to read the release immediately owing to its deadline nature.  I have effectively used advance copies of a product news release to invite customer prospects to an event at which the new product would be formally unveiled.

Thus Ivy Lee’s “press release” of yore, which I prefer to call a news release, has evolved into a more powerful communications and marketing tool than meets the eye. Those who do not treat it as such are sadly shortchanging themselves.

The News Release has evolved into a powerful electronic publishing tool in the Internet Age, however, many companies fail to exploit it as such. Before going into detail, let’s add some historical perspective to see how the News Release ascended to this point about a century after Ivy Lee, one of the first PR practitioners, issued the very first “press release” about a tragic accident on the Pennsylvania RR.

Up until the Internet soared to worldwide popularity in the 1990s, there was a lot of competition among technology companies to get their news published in business and trade publications. Editorial space was limited because it had to be paid for by advertising.  Publishers of print media typically aimed for a 60:40 ratio of advertising to editorial…that is 60 pages of advertising to pay for 40 pages of editorial. As the number of high-tech companies mushroomed beginning in the early 1970s, so also did the number of trade magazines grow to serve an expanding world market.  During this halcyon period of print publishing, trade magazines would receive thousands of news releases from high-tech firms either directly or via PR practitioners, whose number also grew significantly during this period.

Even with more print trade/business magazines, the competition for editorial space was still intense.  Of the thousands of news releases a magazine received each month, only a small fraction found their way beyond the trash can and into the editorial pages. Not surprisingly, those companies that were regular advertisers found that their news releases picked up more often than those companies not advertising.

Fast forward to the present where we now see print media unable to maintain the 60:40 ratio, and challenged to find ways to monetize their content on the Internet.  Effectiveness of pop-up ads remains debatable, while paid subscriptions to newsletters and sponsored webcasts/white papers are among some of the ways being pursued. Google has emerged as the great white hope with powerful search and analytic tools that enable traditional print media publishers to demonstrate how well their content attracts targeted audiences. Nonetheless, publishers of business/trade magazines are still trying to build Internet revenue models that can provide the profits they were used to getting in the old 60:40 days of print.

As print media continue to scramble for ways to monetize their content on the Internet, more and more companies are realizing that they can be their own publishers by instantaneously distributing their own news releases worldwide by using the services of a Business Wire or PR Newswire. While PR practitioners still strive to capture editorial space for their clients in trade/business media — be it print or on the Internet –they no longer rely solely on doing so. In fact, distribution and exposure via Business Wire is considered adequate for many of the releases issued by a company. Moreover, the use of a Business Wire gives the release the imprimatur of officially being published.  This along with the simultaneous posting of the release on the issuers web site serves to attract the targeted audience on a 24/7 basis.  Not to be overlooked, once published on the worldwide web in this way, the release via its key words will be “searchable” virtually forever…which should make companies consider how well their key messages in the news release will play over time.

The real beauty of the electronically published news release is that it can be immediately accessed by Internet visitors worldwide on a 24/7 basis.  Those who search on key words in the release will most likely fit within the target audience profile.  Moreover, the news release can contain a hyperlink that will take the reader to a “landing page” that provides more in-depth information than the news release imparted. In moving the release over the wire, it can also be accompanied by photographs, charts, graphs and even videos

Without question, the news release today is relied upon to communicate (and control) virtually every aspect of news, both positive and negative, and to do so in a manner that builds both credibility and brand equity for the issuing entity. Over my 30-plus years of providing strategic communications counsel to high-tech clients, and writing more news releases than I can remember, I have come to regard the news release as an unsung hero in driving succinct, timely and disciplined communications both internally and externally. And unfortunately, I have often seen the news release development process expose a surprising lack of strategic and product marketing that should have taken place before the sourcing of the news release began.

Indeed, the news release has come a long way since Ivy Lee issued the very first “press release” in 1906 for his PR client, the Pennsylvania RR, which fell victim to a tragic railway accident at the time. Because news releases must be brief (ideally no longer than 3 pages, 11 point type, double spaced), they demand that the “who, what, why, when and where”of the news be factually and creatively woven into key messages that have been strategically fashioned to burnish the issuer’s corporate and/or product brand.

The brevity of a news release, even more critical in the Internet Age, forces the issuer to re-think carefully all key messages supporting corporate/product positioning vis-a-vis the changing competitive environment. More often than not, I have begun gathering inputs to write news releases to launch high-tech products only to find out that there was a lack of consensus among key execs about product positioning against competitive options.  As a result, the iterative revisions of a news release draft perform an unintended role of driving consensus.  This in turn surfaces the need to do additional market research, which can lead to  postponing the announcement until adequate strategic marketing has been performed to validate product positioning.

Thus the news release becomes the unsung hero in driving consensus among execs on important issues such as product positioning — and in the iterative editing process, it further drives the execution of strategic/product marketing that should have taken place before the sourcing for the news release began.

By some accounts, it was Ivy Lee (1877-1934) who was the first real public relations practitioner, and it was he who issued the very first “press release” in 1906, the same year of the great San Francisco earthquake. At that time, Lee was on the East Coast dealing with another disaster as the Pennsylvania Railroad, his PR client, had a serious railway accident. It was Lee who persuaded railroad execs to issue a statement to journalists to preempt any inaccurate speculation from spreading and to also control the news in a manner that would minimize damage to his client’s reputation.

In addition to issuing a press release, Lee wisely invited news reporters get a first-hand look at the accident scene, taking special measures to transport the journalists to the scene and nurture open communications with them.

Now a century later, the press release — or as I prefer to call it, the “news release” — continues to do the same yeoman job that Lee intended. However, this brief 2-to-3 page document has taken on a much broader and critical role over the years…and it is this evolution I plan to discuss beginning with this blog and others to follow.