The Next Revolution in PR

From Democratized Distribution to Democratized Discovery

How the Stakes Have Changed, and What Organizations Need to do to Effectively Reach the Marketplace in the Digital Age.

Change has been creeping up on the public relations business for years, but over the past 24 months a full-blown revolution in the role of PR, news releases, and media relations has broken out. The widespread adoption of search engines, blogs, news aggregators, and user-generated aggregation (think My Yahoo!), has raised the bar for being an effective and successful public relations pro. RSS, podcasting and vlogging (video blogging) will raise it even higher. It’s no longer good enough to take on the media—public relations is now about taking on the world.

This sea-change in the expectations of what a media relations professional must do to be successful—and the role and use of press releases—mirrors a comparable change in the industry two decades ago. This paper will focus specifically on press release distribution: how today’s changes in PR, which to a surprising extent are driven by press-release distribution technology, mirror those of the 1980s; the implications of the changes and lessons to be learned from the last such change; and some suggestions for how to respond and prosper in this new environment.

Democratized Distribution and the Collapse of the News Cycle

Electronic press release distribution began in the post-war years, when third-party services like PRNewswire and BusinessWire set up independent wire services to transmit news information—generally on behalf of corporations—to major newspaper newsrooms. These “pr wires” were a huge improvement in speed and reliability over conventional distribution, which to that point had been done by messenger or mail. These wires transmitted news releases directly into the newsrooms of an ever-growing network of news organizations.

Despite the efficiencies of electronic distribution, it was not cheap, nor was there a broad expectation that press releases must be sent by wire. Even after the Associated Press moved to a fully computerized message handling and distribution system in the late 1970s, electronic news release distribution remained confined to “elite” organizations.

This same dynamic applied to press release consumption. Electronic distribution had made it easier for professionals outside the media—sophisticated investors and brokers, high-level federal officials, and law firms—to access and incorporate “raw” press release content into their decision making and analysis. Access to this content was expensive, generally packaged as part of high-end legal and financial databases, and so this valuable information was restricted to a relative handful of users.

The introduction of the mass-market PC in the early 1980s was the opening salvo of a long-running assault on the primacy of the traditional PR wires. Cheap, readily available computer power combined with a deregulated telecommunications market allowed smaller operators to set up competitive local and regional wire distribution that could match the transmission speed of the incumbent PR wires at a lower cost. The Iowa Newspaper Association and readMedia (in New York) were able to use inexpensive PCs, off-the-shelf modems, and database software to begin servicing local and regional clients.

Serendipitously, the ability of more organizations—PR firms, state governments, regional businesses, politicians at all levels—to communicate rapidly and relatively inexpensively coincided with an explosion of demand for news in the form of local TV news, niche publications (also driven by inexpensive desktop publishing) and, especially, cable TV.

Critically for PR professionals and the humble press release, this meeting of readily available news distribution capability and growing demand for news fundamentally changed the media’s expectations of both. The news cycle collapsed: the media could now find “enough” news (including press releases) on the wire, or delivered by one of the regionally focused upstarts, to move to a news cycle measured in hours, if not minutes. As a result, the large mass of organizations that had continued to distribute releases by post—due to the belief that mail was “just as good,” or was cheaper to do in-house, or simply inertia—were shut out of the compressed news cycle because their press releases arrived days after they were relevant to a news media operating in overdrive.

This change in expectations on press release distribution can’t be understated: for all but the most high-profile newsmakers, being a part of the news cycle required electronic distribution for every type of news. Failing to deliver the news the way the media wanted it—electronically, via wire, fax, or eventually e-mail—when they wanted it—now—meant that you were not speaking to them. More fundamentally, you would not be doing your job. It wasn’t just the media who now demanded this type of distribution: the professional class of financiers, lawyers, and government communication pros now expected to see all information immediately and electronically. This critical need to use electronic distribution resulted in BusinessWire’s revenue quadrupling between the mid-1980s and the end of the 90s.

Subsequent years saw the availability of distribution and database technology get even cheaper with the introduction of programmable faxes, spreadsheets, and especially e-mail. These tools allowed many more people to issue press releases from their own desktops, which many smaller issuers began to do by the late 1990s. This tendency followed from the original PC revolution, and as happened broadly with access to communications and information technology, distribution was democratized up through the early years of the 21st century.

The Next Wave: News Commentary, Consumption, and Democratized Discovery

The ability of PR professionals, directors of communication, and in-house staff to use inexpensive, powerful distribution technology to communicate directly with the media—to be their own PR wire—peaked near 2001 or 2002. At that point, a corporate focus at media firms on protecting their internal systems from external threats (viruses, worms, and general hacking), the overwhelming flood of e-mail into newsrooms, especially “spam”, and the responses to spam (filters, whitelists, et al.) implied that “democratic distribution” meant everyone was blocked from newsrooms. Savvy PR professionals were already returning to newswire distribution, if only to guarantee access to reporters’ and editors’ desks by a trusted third party.

The real revolution in current PR practices isn’t a result of the failure of widely available distribution to effectively reach the media, but from the rapid and dramatic shift in the role of the media itself as the authoritative arbiter of what is “news.” While this change has cultural elements, it has been accelerated by technology that has reached critical mass in only the past two years: blogging, RSS, search engine adoption, and online news aggregation.

The common element in these technologies is that they allow readers, rather than the media, to find, sort, and react to news—often raw news, like press releases. This “democratized discovery” of news has major implications for the role of public relations and press releases. Essentially, when press releases are discoverable and usable on-line, they allow the issuing organization to control its message to its audience in ways unheard-of in the “old media” model.

Press releases are now the organizational voice of the issuer, rather than a one-way “pitch” to a reporter or editor. When distributed properly online, press releases are on a much more equal footing than any time previously with the media when users are looking for news about the issuer; that presents unprecedented opportunities to “tell your side of the story.” Furthermore, this channel to the reader complements conventional media relations, since it represents additional distribution, rather than a replacement of the conventional way.

In this new world of press release distribution, press releases can even augment advertising and sales. In a widely reported case study, Southwest Airlines issued four press releases optimized for search engines and posted via a wire service, which directly generated $2.3 million of ticket sales. These press releases received no conventional advertising or sales support, and direct costs for all four were likely less than $5,000.

Four Revolutionary Technologies

Each of the major technology trends identified above requires a separate process to ensure that organizations can use their press releases effectively for them.

Blogs: Blogs are essentially online diaries that reflect the personal, political, or corporate views of the writer. There are at least 30 million blogs worldwide representing a vast spectrum of opinions and interests. Many of these blogs are highly influential in business, politics, media criticism, and cultural trend-spotting.

When it comes to a press release distribution strategy for blogs, it’s important to respect the specific conventions of the “blogosphere” and not simply treat bloggers as another set of reporters to cultivate. An important convention in blogging is linking to source documents, so press releases should have a “permalink” that facilitates a long-term reference link to the release. Bloggers’ preference for original documents also means that issuers should link to supporting documents, studies, multimedia, or other content that supports the point of the press release. Blogs are also generally poor candidates for direct distribution of releases, but are voracious consumers of RSS.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is technology that allows a web page to be converted to a newsfeed, or for savvy users to distribute content directly over the RSS feed. By subscribing to an RSS feed, users can instantly see updates to websites or other content (e.g. press releases) issued on that feed. Bloggers and reporters both are early adopters of RSS, so it is critical that issuers’ press releases go out this way.

Search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and the like are some of the most important sites on the Internet because they tell users where to find the information they are looking for. Although every search engine automatically “crawls,” or finds and indexes, most public websites, having one’s website and press releases crawled does not necessarily mean that someone searching for information in that press release will find it.

Press releases can—and should—be written to optimize them for correct and relevant discovery by a searcher. Additionally, there are ways to distribute press releases that increase the likelihood that the search algorithm will find the release and rank it highly in search results. These ways include proactively ensuring that the page(s) where the issuer posts the release are submitted to, and optimized for, spidering; seeking out high-quality linking relationships that point to and reference the press release; and finding distribution opportunities on similarly themed websites.

Online news aggregation: Google News, Yahoo! News, Newstex, Topix.net and a host of other news- and topic-specific websites allow readers to specify what news they’re interested in, whether by general subject, keyword, geography, or other parameters. Readers who get their news this way are highly engaged in the results, much more so than a “passive” viewer of undifferentiated content. Reaching such readers is critical, as they are a self-identified audience for relevant press releases, so issuers should ensure that their press releases are indexed to news aggregators as broadly as possible.

Strategies for success

The latest revolution in PR and press release distribution has only just begun, and will likely evolve rapidly in coming years. Beyond press releases, there are new techniques in corporate blogging, search advertising, rapid-response and “netroots” methods that bear examination. For the time being, though, PR professionals and organizations should focus on at least ensuring that they meet the minimum requirements for press release distribution. Some strategies to think about:

Write for your audience, not just the press: Press releases should speak to the intended audience in a way that is immediate, compelling, and readable. While press releases should follow accepted conventions of who, what, why, when, and where, writers should behave as if a customer or constituent will read the release—because they likely will. Sending customized versions of releases to different media and non-media audiences is now both feasible and advisable.

Optimize: Search engine optimization (SEO) includes writing a press release in a way that facilitates the proper ranking on a given search. Educate yourself about how to do this, or find a marketing firm that specializes in SEO.

Consider a wire service: Press release distribution services automate on-line distribution: search engine submission, news aggregator indexing, blog facilitation, and RSS distribution, while also providing conventional media targeting services. Choose a wire that matches your needs: for international exposure and public-company disclosure regulations, PRNewswire and BusinessWire are the leading—though premium-priced—players, while organizations who target regional, specialty or hyper-local audiences should turn to focused, lower-cost services like readMedia or Ascribe.

Clearly, the world of PR has changed dramatically over the past 24 months, and will continue to. The value of PR distribution in this new world has already been recognized in the corporate mergers and acquisitions market: in only six months, three major press release distribution companies have been acquired: BusinessWire by Berkshire Hathaway, MarketWire by CCN/Matthews, and PrimeZone by NASDAQ. When Warren Buffet believes the most savvy PR professionals in the world need a wire service more than ever, it’s worth considering what it really takes to go it alone.