1. Building Social Releases
A Practical Guide to Creating
Press Releases that Rise to
the Top
Kevin McFall, Vice President, Global Product Management
@JournoPR3point0
Heidi Sullivan, Vice President, Media Research North America
@hksully
July 29, 2010, 1pm CST

2. What we’ll cover
► What is a Social Media Release?
► What is SEO for PR?
► Benefits
► Key Elements to Optimization
► Keywords Step-by-Step
► Keyword Tool Review
► Incorporating Keywords
► Copywriting Best Practices
► Multimedia Content
► The Interactive Online Newsroom
► Resources

3. What is a Social
Media Release?
► A Social Media Release
(SMR) is “a new format of
writing press releases that
incorporates web-based
tools for people to share
and discuss the information
of the release with one
another.”
-WebPRPro.com

4. Who am I reaching?
► Traditional Journalists
► New Media Influencers
► Bloggers
► Industry Leaders
► Active & Influential Social Networkers
► End-Users and Consumers

5. What Do
We Mean
by SEO
for PR?

6. …We mean Search Engine Seduction
►Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask &
other search engines use a set
of criteria to determine which
sites appear at the top of your
results, and which sites appear
at the bottom.
►It's basically a way of
formatting your release or
website to ensure it’s alluring
enough to search engines that
it gets a higher ranking in
search engine result sets.
(SEO stands for search engine optimization)

7. Enabling your release to be easily
discovered with wonderment is the goal.

8. Benefits of SEO for
your Press Release
► It will give you the best opportunity
of having your release discovered
by your target audience
► It is one of the quickest and
easiest ways to start generating
more backlinks
► It will help you gain higher
rankings for keywords
► Increase visibility and traffic for
your website

9. How to Optimize Your Release
►Optimizing a Press Release is about writing copy that
is going to compel and inform your audience. Don’t
just stuff your Press Release full of words that are
popular. That will result in your Press Release not
making any sense to both your audience and to the
search engines.
►Instead, use Keyword Tools to identify the right words
to use.
►Use those words in your headline and at least two or
three times in the body copy and again in your About
section.

10. The 5Anatomically
Correct Elements of an
Ideal Press Release
► Title
► Summary
► Body
► Boilerplate
► Press Contact

11. Each of the 5 Elements Must
Include Strategically Selected
KEYWORDS
Keywords

12. Key Word Kowabunga!
► The focus is on how to use keyword and keyphrase
selection
► Your release needs to use pre-selected keyword(s)
and keyphrase(s) throughout the text to reassure the
audience that your press release is about what they
typed to get there.
► It's still up to you to bring creative writing genius to the
table.
► First, you want to focus on writing copy that is
conversational. Remember, content is king.
► Aim to inform, engage, and enlighten the readers with
each element of the release.
► The ultimate goal is to write something that speaks
directly to your audience and meets their needs. Don't
stress about SEO tactics while you're in the creative
writing phase. Write for your audience first, and then
optimize it for SEO using keywords and key phrases to
make it the best press release it can be.

13. 5 Keyword Tool Reviews
1. Adwords External Keyword Tool
► This tool can be called the “big brother” of keyword drilling based on generic
ideas.
► It’s both a great tool for figuring out potential keyword combinations based
both on ideas presented and semantic terms.
► It also doubles up by showing search traffic for these terms according to
Google. (Even though most of the data is skewed to an extent).

14. 5 Keyword Tool Reviews
2. Keyword Discovery
► Keyword Discovery is yet another service which tries to replicate the function of
Wordtracker.
► The strength of Keyword Discovery is it’s usability as well as finding regional search
data.
► If you’re trying to figure out seasonal search trends, the search data for regional
terms, or optimizing for google.co.uk or .com.au, this is one awesome tool.

15. 5 Keyword Tool Reviews
3. Wordtracker
► Is more of an old keyword search tool.
► Wordtracker hasn’t evolved much over the years and still sticks to
its basic function of suggesting keywords based on a thesaurus
type model and displaying the search data based on meta-crawlers
like Dogpile.
► The major strength of Wordtracker is its keyword ‘basketing’
system (almost like an e-commerce site checkout) and its massive
Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) functions.

16. 5 Keyword Tool Reviews
4. Google Suggest
► Google Suggest is NOT EXACTLY a
typical keyword research tool, its more
of an attempt by Google to tweak their
search quality.
► But, this tool is awesome for finding out
long keywords phrases!
► This had to be included in the list for
the amazing arrays of search phrases
you can optimize your website with,
with the help of this tool.
► After all, keyword search phrases are
gold!

17. 5 Keyword Tool Reviews
5. Yahoo Search Assist
► This feature is similar to Google Suggest. After all, Yahoo! is the
second largest search engine on the net.
► It strengths are in it’s utility and finding new keywords.

18. 4 Steps to
Successfully
Using Keywords

19. Step 1: Determine the main topic of your
press release
► Take a moment to think about your release, and identify one or two
keywords that explain what the release is about. Next, you'll need to
perform keyphrase research to find the best fit for your article.
► Keywords and keyphrases are simply words and phrases that users
may use to search on a topic in a search engine. What is important to
note is that this is your audience telling you, in their own words, what
they are looking for.
► Did you know?: Multi-keyword phrases tend to be easier to rank than
popular keywords (ex. 'handbags and wallets' is a less competitive
keyphrase and most likely will rank higher than 'handbags'). Why, you
may ask? The more general the keyword, then there's a strong
likelihood that others are trying to rank their content for that term, too.

20. Step 2: Identify keywords & phrases to
describe your release
► The question is, how do you find out just how people like us are searching for
information? Are they really searching for “Mobile Devices" or is another
phrase searched for more often? Using your intuition and thinking, "What
search phrase would I enter to lead me to this article?" is a great place to
start, but there are many tools that actually track and compare the rate at
which certain words are searched for.
► Verify popularity of selected keyphrase with Google Adwords Keyword Tool
This tool identifies the popularity of your keyword, as well as other terms
people search for related to your keyword. Scan list to see if there are more
effective search terms than the one you've chosen.
► Also Check out Google Insights for Search

21. Step 3: Insert your selected keyphrase
into your title
► Phrase the press release title so the target keyphrase is as close to
the front as possible. The reason for this is that search engines
read, or crawl your title from left to right. So, you want to place the
higher-weighted (or higher-searched) words as far left as possible.
Bad title: Everyone Will Remember
Your Wedding Reception
Good title: Wedding Reception
to Remember

22. Step 4: Incorporate target keyphrase
into text
► At the very least, use the term one time per paragraph AND in
one of your headings. This helps search engine visitors
establish what your page is about.
► Take a journalist approach no matter if editing existing content
or starting from scratch. Readability is king!
► Afraid of repetition? Use a thesaurus. Semantically related
keywords are encouraged.
► There are many theories about keyword density and
saturation. The best rule to follow is to write for your user first.
If you re-read the article and it sounds like a repetition ad
nausea, then it probably will sound like that for your visitors as
well. Follow the simple guidelines outlined today and you will
be certain to improve your results.

23. Copywriting for SMRs

24. Tell the Story:
Headlines, Subheads, Callouts and
Captions
Think Mobile
Think 140-Characters
Think Soundbites
Avoid Jargon

25. The 1st Element of an Ideal SMR: Title
► Include keyword phrases in the title.
► The title should not exceed 100 characters.

26. The 2nd Element of an Ideal SMR: Summary
►Give a synopsis of
the press release in
1-2 sentences using
1-2 secondary
keywords.
►The length of the
summary should not
exceed 240
characters.

27. The 3rd Element of an Ideal SMR: Body
► Writing subjectively and in the third person,
give the details of your news. Length should
be at least 300 words and include 1-2 quotes
and 3-4 keyword phrases.

28. The 4th Element of an Ideal Press Release:
Boilerplate
►About the Company- In 2-3
sentences, give your
company’s ‘elevator pitch’
writing in third person. Include
a link to your homepage in the
summary (preferably in anchor
text.)

29. The 5th Element of an Ideal SMR:
Press Contact
► Designate one person who will consistently be the media
contact for the company. Gather the name, address,
phone, email, social media handles and website of the
press contact – many release publishers will not accept
your submission without contact details. If you are
optimizing for your name, you may want to include your
name as the press contact.

30. The Power of Links
► Search Engines Love Links
► to other interesting sites
► with hotlinks on your keywords
► Anchor Links
► Increases your chance of driving viewers back to
your website
► NOTE: Make sure at least one of your keywords
links to a page on your site other than the
homepage.
► Like inserting keywords, links should be a natural fit
and not forced in to every opportunity.

31. SMR Multimedia Content
► Post content in your newsroom or on your blog and on the social
web.
► Add videos to a YouTube Channel
► Add photos to a Flickr page or Facebook page
► Add podcasts to iTunes
► Accessing multimedia tools is easier
(and cheaper!) than ever.
► See something on the fly?
Try a Flip Cam, your smart phone
camera or a webcam and use an app
like TwitPic to post immediately.
► Multimedia content is social: If you share it, people will click on it.
► Provide content that is helpful like how-to’s, FAQs, interviews.

32. Creating an Interactive Online Newsroom
► Add content for the consumer or end-user
► Include multimedia features
► Make your content shareable!
► Be prepared, honest & open in a time of crisis

34. Resources
► Keyword sites:
► Free
► https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
► http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
► http://www.softnik.com/download/kwprimer.pdf
► Premium
► http://www.seolab.com/products/seolabpro/
► http://www.keywordcountry.net/seo/
► How to Find a Story That Journalists Will Bite Your Hand Off For
Amber McNaught, a former journalist, explains how to write a press release
that stands out from the crowd.
► Six Proven Secrets to Writing a Trash-Proof Press Release
Andrew Seidel gives some examples of how to keep your press release out
of the trash can.
► http://www.seomoz.org/tools
► http://www.seopressreleases.com/

35. Other Tools and Resources
navigator.cision.com
blog.cision.com
Visit us.cision.com to register for and learn more about
Cision’s upcoming free webinars.
journalisttweets.com

36. Questions?
Kevin McFall, Vice President, Global Product Management
@JournoPR3point0
Heidi Sullivan, Vice President, Media Research North America
@hksully