The New and Improved Press Release

I recently read a very interesting and informative blog post by Sally Falkow titled “What Journalists Need from PR People.” She recently attended Palm Springs for the PRSA Western District conference where a particular keynote panel caught her attention. The panel focused on the media and their needs in today’s Web 2.0 world. For years, people have claimed that the press release was dead; there was no need for the press release within this new media landscape. This panel however had some refreshing news: the press release is most certainly not dead – in fact reporters need information from PR people more than ever.One of the main ideas focused on by the panel was that now more than ever in this interactive digital media age, journalists need to provide much more than just a print story. They need content that will satisfy their readers’ appetites. Audiences crave content at the push of a button and through any medium they have access to, whether that medium is through a publication’s website, blog or social media pages.So how does this affect PR people?Sally points out that the traditional press release was developed over 100 years ago to provide content for print journalists, yet PR professionals have still been providing journalists with the same format even though the media landscape has changed so drastically. PR professionals need to adjust how we provide journalists content the same way journalists have adjusted how they provide content for their readers.Here at LMGPR we provide the media not only traditional press releases but what we call social media releases, also known as multimedia releases. These releases include all the content that journalists need today to write a story their readers will actually want to read. We provide the facts supported by research and background information. We provide links to social media pages and video. We also provide quotes from the executives of the company. We provide links to everything a journalist will need in order to write a story; they don’t even need to be briefed by the company because we have provided them with everything they need beforehand. This has proven to be a huge success with increased coverage of our clients because of our social media releases.We believe that the press release isn’t dead; we just needed to give it a makeover.