Something that really bothers me is the press release and I really wonder if it has a future in marketing circles or if there is a better alternative? I mean we all know how it works…

1

Company or PR firm spend 2 days drawing up beautifully drafted press release containing words like innovative, ground breaking or revolutionary.

2

Company or PR firm find a nice target media list that will hopefully cover their product and email or physically send it to them (possibly wrapped in pretty ribbon with some sort of gift).

3

Journalists pick the best stories and spend rest of their time fielding calls from the company or PR firm checking if journalist has “received press release and will be covering?”

4

Journalist publishes story often using large chunks of the beautiful press release.

5

Process repeats itself daily with 1000s of companies.

Now does this sound like an efficient system to you? Or does this feel like one of those antiquated practices that social media is starting to help abolish like reading newspapers printed on paper or watching TV shows at a pre-defined time every week?

Well if you want to do away with anything you need to have a viable alternative and although the press release might be dated it does have the huge advantage of presenting a journalist with a story containing pictures, quotes and quite often the bulk of the text itself. To be honest it is more the process of contacting journalists rather than the press release itself that I have a problem with. Luckily social media changes the game here and here are a couple of tips that might help you get coverage for your product rather than the old cold calling method…

Some Social Media Press Coverage Tips

1

Find a relevant journalist to your area on Twitter and send them an @reply and see if they would be interested in receiving some info from you. Keep it short and light.

2

Make a short video about your product or interview with a key member of your team and upload to YouTube. Send a link to anybody who might be interested. This will give people interesting in covering your story a face to put to the story instantly.

3.

Make a really slick presentation of your product in 10 slides and upload it to Slideshare and send that as a link to journalists and people of interest. It’s quick and easy to digest.

These are only a couple of examples on how you could get the attention of journalists and spread a bit of buzz about your product or service. As with all things in social media the amount of innovative things you can do are only limited by your imagination

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