There are two important things to take away from this post:
- Wire Services – Large newswire services provide excellent ways to distribute your news to tens-of-thousands of people. However, “the wire” is a text-based distribution system. Your news release will usually be distributed in plain text.
- Social Media News Releases – A Social Media News Release (SMNR) allows you to combine all of your multimedia elements into a single web document and share those elements with others, but in most cases that version of your release cannot be sent directly over “the wire.”
A best practice is to create a full-blown SMNR and reference it from your wire release. PRX Builder does this for you automatically when you combine your release with a PR Newswire distribution.
Know The Strengths of Each Distribution Method
There are many ways to distribute your news. Each distribution method comes with its own set of advantages and limitations. The Internet is a fantastic place to share your multimedia content and engage other people. The web has its limits, however, and it can often be difficult to get your content in front of the right people. On-the-other-hand, the traditional wire services have powerful networks of newsrooms and individual journalists. It is easy for a newswire to target the individuals who will be interested in your news. Unfortunately, due to the text-based nature of the wire, HTML and your additional multimedia content cannot be distributed to all of the wire’s distribution points.
Combining these methods, using the web and the wire, can provide you with a more complete approach to news distribution.
Social Media News Releases
Social Media is about sharing, sharing your words, your images, your audio, your video, and all of the other types of content that are available to you. Your Social Media Release can start a new conversation, or add to an existing one. It’s important to share everything that you have, to help people understand and continue that conversation across the web.
It often takes time to craft a good Social Media News Release. There are a lot of multimedia elements that you’ll want to gather together. It’s an investment that can pay off when people view your release and are able to easily share your content with others.
“The Wire”
“The Wire” is one of the best ways to announce your news to targeted groups. Using a large wire service, like PR Newswire, allows you to reach thousands of web sites, including the newswire’s own website, which is a news destination in itself. You can also get your news into selective news aggregators such as Yahoo News and Google News. Additionally, tens-of-thousands of journalists (including bloggers) can be reached through the newswire’s subscriber services.
Your news content – the words – will be distributed to thousands of “downstream†services like Comtex, the AP Wire, etc., but generally, these services cannot accept your fully-loaded Social Media News Release. Don’t be discouraged by the fact that the wire services cannot distribute all of your content. Include a link to your SMNR in your wire release. Again, PRX Builder does this automatically when you distribute your release through PR Newswire.
A New Approach
We now have a new approach to PR and Marketing. You are no longer blasting messages to a receiving audience. You must generate content that can be used to build conversations and reach out to people. You’ll have to know which tools to use to enable this conversation, and you’ll need to know how the web and the wire can complement each other to generate that conversation. Experiment with tools like PRX Builder. Create a release, send it over the wire. Begin your conversations today.