Are Press Releases Relevant in the 21st Century?

Press releases have been around since 1906, when Ivy Lee, the father of modern PR, invented it for Pennsylvania Railroad, a client of his at the time.

Lee would have been astounded at the change in communication methods over the last 100 years. First came the mass use of the telephone, then came telex and fax machines.

From the 1990s onwards there has been the widespread use of emails. This now is leading to an 8% year-on-year decrease in postal mail.

But still the press release as a means of reaching journalists is just as widespread today as when that grand old man Ivy Lee was working.

The big difference, of course, is that they are more likely to be sent as electronic mail rather stuffed into an envelope and then put into a post box.

This, in itself, presents new opportunities for the savvied publicist.

It is still the case that it is essential to cultivate relationships with journalists. By all means send  press releases and other publicity items to newspaper and publishing houses, but without a contact name they are likely to end up in the bin.

But with the birth of on-line press release distribution services the scope of the audience has dramatically increased.

Some of these sites have up to 500k unique visitors per month and if you have a good position on their frontpage then the chances of finding new customers increases ten fold.

One fundamental aspect of the World Wide Web is how easy it is for everybody to publish blogs. There are over 100m blogs in the Technorati index. There bloggers don't just reflect events, but also help shape it - they are opinion makers in their own right.

Releasing press releases through these distribution sites offers an opportunity to reach out beyond traditional PR circles and into the "blogosphere".

It may be the case that your item finds itself being linked to from Twitter, or from the myriad of social network and bookmark sites in existence.

Items of interest do and are passed between users in the form of links. So while your press release remains on a static page, the link may well be plastered up in a host of different places by numerous individuals.

To be able to take advantage of the network structure that is inherent in the WWW will reap dividends for any business.

There are some differences though in the format for an online press release and a traditional item.

The most important part of it is the title - this has to be optimised for maximum potential when it is released into cyberspace.

Keep it factual and to the point - don't use flowery sales talk.

"Google likes this boring headline" - the great traditional of catchy newspaper headlines are redundant on the net.

And keep the main body of content as compact as possible. An amazing 80% of our on-line time is devoted to scanning pages rather than reading their content. Users hate to read large blocks of text on a page.

So read up on the best writing practices for on-line press release writing and take full advantage of what the new media has to offer your business.