If you’re constantly in search of more coverage for your clients, perhaps you should consider working on writing your press releases; they’re vital.

The news release, (or press release, as it is often called) is a tightly-crafted written statement distributed to targeted channels to deliver news information about an organization or event. Usually sent to members of the media, releases get the “press” ball rolling, and lead to follow-up between journalists and PR people that often lead to news stories and interviews.

If your releases are worded well and formatted according to AP style-standards, it is not uncommon for them to be published verbatim by editors of news publications. Most organizations also post their news releases on their company websites, and increasingly, via social media.

As you can see, press releases are an extremely important piece of the PR professional’s tool set. Today, I just wanted to offer a few tips that will enhance your writing for news releases.

Here are 7 tips to improve your news releases:

1) Before you even start writing, ask yourself: “Now why do we care again?” Anyone can write a press release. To write an effective press release, you need to understand basic newsworthiness. If it’s not crystal clear to a journalist why the reader should care after skimming a few lines, you can pretty much say goodbye to your chances of getting a story in the paper. Before pen goes to paper (or fingertips go to keys), give serious consideration to conveying your story’s newsworthiness.

2) Address the 5 Ws in the first sentence. Most people, especially journalists, don’t have the time these days to read novels. You need to explain the “who, what, where, when and why” in the very first paragraph, if you want your press release to be taken seriously. Get right to the point.

3) The “how” can wait until the next paragraph. While it’s important to tell us the five Ws upfront, equally important is holding off on the “how” until slightly later in the release. There is such a thing as information overload. Cramming the “who, what, where, when, why and how” will cause just that. Careful placement of separate thoughts and details will increase readability drastically, and journalists will thank you for making their job (read: sifting through a thousand poorly-worded press releases daily) easier.

4) Thou shalt provide hyperlinks. In this 21^st century society, seeing is believing. You can say whatever you want, but on the Internet, oftentimes people won’t believe you unless they can follow a link to verify the information for themselves. Call it skepticism if you want, but it’s true, especially for members of the press. In a job environment where they are constantly bombarded with both news and “news” information, journalists can become jaded quickly, and cynical of all but the most obvious facts. How to avoid this affecting whether your story gets press? Easy: provide your readers with a link to back up your facts, and set your press release apart from the pack (According to experts, only 13% of PR professionals use links in releases).

Hyperlinks can add credibility to your press releases and further optimize SEO rankings. Experts suggest adding one link per 100 words of copy.

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5) Longer does not equal better. If you think that a longer copy increases your chances of getting press coverage, think again. You may think that those four extra paragraphs adds more “meat and potatoes” to your press release, but in actuality it’s just more lines for a tired journalist to skip. In 2010, a ten-paragraph press release is really just a paragraph or two that people will read, and the rest will be either skimmed or skipped, depending on your luck that day. Plainly put: when it comes to press releases, concision is your best friend. Just give us the necessary details.

6) Formatting matters. Just because you’re got all the key info into your press release doesn’t mean it’s necessarily ready to go out yet. Before you send that bad boy out, make sure your release follows standard formatting conventions. If you don’t, journalists are is likely to ignore your precious work. Spacing, margins, and all other formatting conventions do matter, so use them wisely.

7) Read your copy aloud. No really, do it. You might think you’re invincible when it comes to typos, but I promise that one good read-through aloud of your next press release will convince you otherwise. There’s only so much that Microsoft Word will catch. Eventually a “to,” where you actually meant to type “too,” for example, will slip through the cracks. If you want to avoid such a careless mistake, make sure to leave time before your deadline to read through your copy out loud.

So these are my seven tips for improving your press releases in 2011. If you’re able to work some of these tips into your writing, your writing will have a more polished, professional feel, and you’ll have a better chance of getting coverage for your stories.

And now it’s your turn…

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Share a tip for writing better press releases below.

A few weeks ago, I went to a trade show hosted by the American Bus Association (ABA), called the Marketplace & Product Pavilion. An annual four-day event, this year’s Marketplace took place at the Philadelphia Convention Center. It was my first true trade show, and so I learned a lot in a short amount of time. But not only was this event a great deal of fun; it also demonstrated an ingenious use of new media technology, and in this post I’ll explain a few smart things that the ABA did to use the power of social media.

ABA Marketplace 2011 @ The Philadelphia Convention Center

What is Marketplace?

An annual convention that serves as a venue for hundreds of pre-scheduled business appointments, limitless networking opportunities, an educational seminars led by experienced professionals, the “Marketplace & Product Pavilion” has established itself as the motorcoach and group travel industry’s premiere event.

Hundreds of companies head to Marketplace each year to meet new people, find new business, and learn more about their industry. This year, more than 3,400 people, representing more than 800 motorcoach and tour companies, were in attendance, and more than 100,000 scheduled appointments were conducted. And if those figures don’t give you an idea of the massiveness of this event, perhaps this picture will:

It was like that everywhere that I went, 24/7.

Throughout the week, I spent a good amount of time on the Product Pavilion floor, meeting motorcoach operators, learning about their companies, and teaching them about Terrapin Blue.

Presenting at Terrapin Blue's booth.

Back in Class for a Few Days

I also spent a good amount of time in several educational seminars throughout the week. I wanted to share just a few highlights from the ones regarding social media. Although these courses explored the usage of social media primarily from a marketing perspective, I was still able to get a great deal of information from these seminars:

“How to Use Social Media Marketing to Grow Business in a Low-Cost, No-Cost Manner”

Speaker: Kelly McDonald

This course stressed that we need to start thinking about social media less as “mass media,” and more of a method of communication with people. Kelly provided details on Facebook and Twitter, using her own company, McDonald Marketing, for examples, in addition to other businesses. She showed that all companies can be successful with social media to grow business, including banks and car washes, which might at first appear rather unseemly successes for the social media realm.

One great suggestion that Kelly provided was asking open-ended questions on your Facebook page, to get people talking. In this way, you can ask questions such as “What is your favorite brand of ice cream and why?” to draw candid responses. You can then use responses to these questions as further information in your marketing and advertising strategy; in effect, free and easy surveys accomplished via social media.

From a public relations angle, this kind of consistent interaction with your company’s fans and followers demonstrates to them that you truly care about them as customers, and are willing to take the time to get to know their preferences.

“Strategic Social Networking on the Humanized Web”

Speaker: Jeff Korhan

Jeff’s seminar provided information on trends that are affecting social media, and thus the contemporary marketing world. He emphasized that without taking a human approach to sites such as Facebook, your efforts to connect with people will fail. His exact words? “Put a face on your brand.”

This makes perfect sense, from a PR standpoint, as traditional mass media advertising strategies are working less and less on consumers, at least in the digital world. The companies that are having the most success are the ones that aren’t afraid to change with the times.

Jeff spent a lot of time teaching effective ways to blog and promote your posts. He explained that blogging every day is the best and easiest way to enhance your site’s SEO. His message was to focus less on broadcasting aimlessly, and more of a targeted, direct approach.

As he said, “We don’t know where social media is going, but we know that it’s going somewhere cool, so let’s just go with it and have a good time.”

New Media Woven into the Event

The ABA did a great job of integrating new media into Marketplace. Between its iPhone App and its SMS-led fundraising, Marketplace wove social and mobile media platforms directly into its event, taking advantage of its large crowd to offer generous donations.

iPhone App

Marketplace had an easy-to-use iPhone application with a sleek design, and that allowed for quick access to key info. Laying out a shortened schedule and floor plan for a near-week full of events, it served as a perfect guidebook for Marketplace newbies. In addition, the ABA also included information about Philadelphia, for those who wanted to see the city outside of the scheduled group tours. This iPhone app was quite well done, I’d say.

SMS Fundraising for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

Marketplace raised more than $45,000 for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer, a great deal from audience donations during the live entertainment portion of the event, which a large audience captive as representatives of the organization encouraged the audience, captivated by Cirque du Soleil, Best of Broadway and several other live performances, to donate via text-message. This method definitely worked, and demonstrated the true power of using smart phone technology to effectively raise funds for a cause people are passionate about.

All in All

Overall, this experience was a great opportunity to experience my first trade show, represent my company, and go back home to Philadelphia (I loved every minute of it!). I’d recommend that all public relations professionals make it out to at least one trade show per year, because the experiences and connections that you’ll make in a few short days at one will be invaluable. Not only do you present on the show floor, but you often take quality educational seminars, and see firsthand masterful use of new media technology. *Thumbs up* to that.

And now, it’s your turn…..

What is your experience with trade shows? Would you recommend them to PR pros? Share your thoughts below.

Never heard of Kickstarter? That's OK, I'll fill you in.

This site’s only been around for a year and some change, but it seems to be taking the social fundraising scene by storm lately, and I’ve had positive experiences as well. I’m anxious to see what the future holds for this platform, especially in terms of usage for PR and fundraising campaigns. So today, I share with you the quick-and-dirty down-low on this new tool.

What is Kickstarter?

One of the newest “crowdfunding” platforms on the social media scene, founded in April 2009, Kickstarter has gained a ton of popularity very quickly. In just a short time span, this site has helped hundreds of diverse projects to raise millions of dollars through a rather unique approach to social fundraising.

The site allows users to create a profile for a project, filling in the details through a standard “About” section. Users can then leave comments on projects, share via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, email, or even embed project videos and widgets on outside websites. By allowing users to share links to projects freely, Kickstarter integrates social elements seamlessly. The site’s real strength is in allowing users to share real causes with the world, connecting their stories with audiences that care about them, and are willing to support the cause through donation.

Users take action to donate for a few main reasons. First, the social-proof nature of the Kickstarter’s site inspires a sort of “group-think” mentality, where people are willing to donate to causes that have a good amount of support, and the sense of urgency that Kickstarter’s unique “all-or-nothing” deadline attitude creates.

Kickstarter uses an approach that allows users to set a fundraising goal, but only receive the money if they are able to fully reach that goal in pledges by other users. (For example: if you were to set a goal of $100, and find enough donors to back your project that you raised $150, you would keep $150. If you were to set a goal of $100 but only managed to raise $70, however, you would receive nothing.) In other words, if the entirety of the cause’s fundraising goal is not met by the deadline date, the cause receives nothing.

Here’s how Kickstarter explains it (taken straight from its FAQs):

“All-or-nothing funding?”?

Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands. Why?

1. It’s less risk for everyone. If you need $5,000, it’s tough having $2,000 and a bunch of people expecting you to complete a $5,000 project.

2. It allows people to test concepts (or conditionally sell stuff) without risk. If you don’t receive the support you want, you’re not compelled to follow through. This is huge!

3. It motivates. If people want to see a project come to life, they’re going to spread the word

So far this approach seems to be working for Kickstarter.

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It worked for my college a cappella group…

Last year, The UGA Accidentals, for example, used Kickstarter to help fund our trip to New York to compete in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. Though our group was cash-strapped at the time, we decided to crowd-source to raise the funds for the multi-day trip.

My a cappella group used Kickstarter to connect with our fan base, and ended up raising close to $4,000 for our competition in just two weeks.

Hearing of the success of other Kickstarter projects, we filmed a video expressing our passion for singing and created our own campaign, which we then linked back to our website and promoted via Facebook and Twitter. What worked for us? …Setting up progressively cooler rewards for those who pledged more also helped. Within days, we’d raised the money.

The result: in 15 days, more than 50 backers, dedicated Accidentals fans, pledged to donate to our project. In all, we raised nearly $4,000 dollars for our trip to New York through fan donations, in just over two weeks.

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Another Example?

Look no further than “Blue Like Jazz,” an indie film project by Steve Jazz, slated to release later this fall. Two devoted fans created a Kickstarter project called “Save Blue Like Jazz” after hearing that the movie might be canceled due to lack of funding. Within weeks, thousands of online supporters rallied to funnel nearly $350,000 dollars to the film’s budget, in effect saving the film from being canned. Not only did Kickstarter help raise thousands of dollars to produce the film, but served as a method of free online advertising, and a great PR story.

Here’s what the “Save Blue Like Jazz” Kickstarter page looked like:

Blue Like Jazz supporters were eager to help the movie project when they heard it might be canceled.

What this means for you, PR people

The above are just a few quick examples that illustrate Kickstarter’s usefulness for crowd fundraising and PR efforts.

Kickstarter works, but why?

It seems that the site’s power, and future success, lies in its ability to allow groups with real causes to share their stories with stakeholders and help fund dreams. Most people love a good story, or doing their part to rally behind a compelling cause. I predict that a great number of campaigns will begin to integrate crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter in their public relations campaigns.

Mashable already says that this site is one to look out for in 2011, and I co-sign this sentiment.

So what more are you waiting for? If you’ve got a cause and could use some cash for it, use this platform to connect with your stakeholders and reach your goals. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Don’t just watch out for this rising star; use it in your PR campaigns. Find a cause that people can rally behind.

And now it’s time to share your experiences…

Have you used Kickstarter in the past? How do you see crowdfunding platforms influencing the field of PR going forward? Share your thoughts below.

* Special thanks go out to my friend @Kiley0 for introducing me to Kickstarter way back when it first came out. He is always “on the ball,” so to speak, when it comes to knowing about the latest new media platforms.