The other day I received an email, the subject heading “Thought you might be interested” and with the salutation “Dear PR Pro”.
“Thought you might be interested” Now that’s compelling, isn’t it? Someone not as inclined as I am to check email could be excused for hitting delete for that one.
Uninviting as the subject heading was, the salutation, “Dear PR Pro”, took the prize for underwhelming salutation of the week. I have added it to the list of title-variable salutation this company gives me in its promo emails, including so far “Dear Corporate Communicator”, “Dear Communicator”, “Dear internal communicator”, “Dear organizational communicator”.
Thankfully, not “Dear Leader” – or not yet, but who knows what their keyword generator will pop out next?!
But what was fascinating, in a bizarre kind of way, was that the email was inviting me to participate in a webinar where I could learn how to do a social media release!
The person listed to deliver the seminar is someone with an admirable track record and I am sure I could learn from him. But the pitch was so last century.
It’s a worry.
One of the many reasons I love representing and promoting PitchEngine is that Founder and CEO Jason Kintzler actually gets social media and how it has changed PR forever.
For Jason it is not about tacking some social platform buttons – Facebook, Twitter, Digg icons – onto a Word document. It is about a new kind of pitch, which in its construction and delivery is appropriate for the new social web.
Jason posted some of his thoughts on this recently, on his new media cowboy Posterous site. In his post Evolving the SMR and Ending Word Doc PR he explains why what we are about to release is different.
I desperately want to avoid nit-picking our way through the PR landscape about what the SMR or SMPR is defined as and what it provides. So, we’re going a different direction. The PitchEngine Social Media Release will be reinvented and reintroduced as the Pitch™. Yes, Tom Forenski. Yes, Peter Shankman. The traditional press release is dead! At least, to us it is. I call it “word doc PR” and it’s as played out as Christmas carols in June. Boss require it still? Just include it as an attachment if you have to. Or send it through a traditional service and embed a link to something much better.
Whether you’re pitching a 3-billion dollar product to the world, or telling your neighbors there’s a garage sale on Tuesday, a pitch is a pitch. There will be good ones, and there will be bad ones – we’re all about enabling you to pitch whatever it is you want to pitch in a concise, cool and more conversational way.
I’m delighted that Jason has agreed to host a webinar this month, focusing on the new Pitch™ platform and how to use it to best effect. The webinar will be at a time to suit our Australian and New Zealand clients. More on that soon!
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Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a colleague about finding people to create content for social media releases.
Actually, on reflection that’s not quite accurate as to what was said, more a post factum interpretation and glossing by me.
What we actually talked about was finding someone to write press releases or media releases.
Which is quite a different thing from what we would more usefully have been talking about, i.e. creating content for a social media release.
Sure there are people producing what are really traditional press releases and then hanging a few social bookmarking buttons on and calling it a social media release. I have on occasion, in a hurry, probably been guilty of that myself.
But with PitchEngine at your disposal it’s a shame not to use the resources to produce a fully social media optimised release.
There is an example of a social media release at this link (it’s the site shown in the screenshot above).
So are writing skills no longer needed? Far from it.
If anything, high quality writing skills will still be needed to get messages through.
The difference is that writing skills alone will no longer cut it.
Welcome to the world of PR evolved.
From now on, people offering to provide media release services will have to compete with others who are not only capable writers but are also social media savvy and know how to marshall their skills to create effective social media releases.
I don’t know what opportunities may come up, but I am interested in knowing about freelancers with that kind of skill set. For Australian and New Zealand PitchEngine subscribers we could assume a natural preference for local, in-country people, but I’m open to hearing from people from elsewhere. Just get in touch – details on the Contact page here.
]]>In the past week or so, especially when I was in Sydney for CeBit, I have been mentioning a few people about the new PitchEngine platform soon to be launched.
Today I was asked to provide a list of the features of what is currently the top level package for PitchEngine, so I’m taking the opportunity to do a quick roundup of what is now available, with prices, features and a couple of examples. Anyone who takes out a full twelve month subscription to one of the currently available packages will of course be able to access for that whole year all the features and benefits of the relevant package.
But First, Why PitchEngine?
From a couple of recent conversations, I believe it could be useful to provide a short summary to show how PitchEngine is different from what might at first glance appear similar offerings.
PitchEngine is essentially a social media release software platform “in the cloud”. It is not a distribution or wire service.
What does PitchEngine do for you and your social media powered PR?
- Lets you easily include images, video, links and more at no additional cost
- Enables readers to interact with you and your Pitch™ long after it’s been published
- Helps you broaden your audience beyond the journalist to reach bloggers, investors, consumers and other influencers on the social web
- We don’t brand your content with our giant header and links like wire services do. It’s your press release!
- Create social content that is more engaging (readers view Pitchengine Pitches longer than traditional press releases by PR Newswire, BusinessWire and PR Web (source: alexa.com)
- Display your news, Twitter stream, YouTube channel and Flickr gallery automatically in one place with a PitchEngine newsroom
- Helps you eliminate the press kit and move your entire PR platform to one place
The current options
There are currently three options, as listed on the main PitchEngine site:
- Build and Share Social Media Releases
- Archive Your Brand’s Releases
- Customised Newsroom
The Build and Share Social Media Releases has the following features:
- You can create your own Social Media Releases on our platform and we’ll host and share them FREE for 30 days!
- Include PR content like videos, audio, images, social links and more
- Share your release with your media contacts via link or email or with thousands of consumers via social sites like Facebook, Twitter and others
Investment: FREE
Archive Your Brand’s Releases option:
- Archive every release your brand puts out – no matter how many!
- Grab the RSS Feed (provided) for your brand’s releases and share it with your contacts, clients and social sites or put it on your site’s press page
- Each time a release is published it will remain live and available for media and consumer to find, and for you to edit
- We’ll even share your release on our PitchFeed which is typically indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines.
Investment: US$35 per month or US$400 per year
The Customised Newsroom option offers:
- Host all of your releases in a custom newsroom
- Choose from the headline font color that matches your brand identity
- Give visitors a way to find and follow you on twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and more
- Each time you add a release using PitchEngine, it will be automatically posted to your newsroom. No uploading necessary
- Link to the newsroom from your client’s website, or yours for easy access to your press content, contact links and more
Investment: US$50 per month or US$550 per year
Example of a social media release
Here is an example of a social media release which utilises the features of the PitchEngine platform
Golden State Warriors “new look” release (see how they use still images, video, Twitter ect)
Example of a customised newsroom
First to clarify what we mean by a customised newsroom (and we don’t mean just a page on your website with links to press release files)
The PitchEngine Customised Social Media Newsroom is a place to host all of your social media releases and share them from a central place. It enables brands to integrate their social feeds from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and PitchEngine into one place making it easy for consumers, journalists and bloggers to find them through the social web.
See for example this group’s use of the newsroom, linking from their main site (click the News tab to see the customised newsroom)
See also the Carl’s Jr. customised newsroom.
Example of using agency feed to promote clients
The Backbone Media company has re-organised its home page to give prominence to its agency PitchEngine RSS feed. If you look at the right column – “Recent Releases” – you will see that it is a feed which incorporates releases from various companies, which are in fact Backbone Media’s clients.
For PitchEngine clients in Australia and New Zealand
Australian and New Zealand PitchEngine subscribers can contact me, Des Walsh, directly (I’m on the Gold Coast so Australian eastern time is best) and if I am not immediately available I will get back to you as soon as possible, normally on the same day. When PitchEngine becomes as successful as I know it’s going to be I might not be able to take all the calls personally, but I am personally committed to seeing that all PitchEngine subscribers in our part of the globe get quality service in a timely fashion.
If you have any questions about PitchEngine products and services, please get in touch – see the Contact page for details.
]]>There is a neat, practical explanation of the connection between SEO and PitchEngine, with an example, in a post this week by Thomas Fischer, a.k.a. Tech Javayogi: see Instant SEO Tip: PitchEngine.com.
The author offers a clue for people wanting an “easy way” to tackle the SEO challenge.
Make a social news release with pitchengine.com. Pitchengine.com is highly regarded by Google. You have noticed that Wikipedia tops most search terms. Google likes Wikipedia, as it does pitchengine. Google constantly (near real time) scans pitchengine. I did a social news release for my dad’s business. The social news release on pitch engine showed up on Google within a minute. It ranks really high. It always ranks above our site.
The whole post – not long – is well worth reading.
And note the comment at the end by PitchEngine Founder and CEO, Jason Kintzler: there is a whole seminar’s worth of insight about organic search and backlinks. Short story, the SEO experts will tell you (my paraphrase) that the real key to successful SEO is not what you do on your own site (although that is crucially important) but what you do offsite to create (quality) backlinks.
Thanks Thomas for the stimulating post. There’s gold in them thar words of yours!
]]>How-to Video Showing Process of Creating Blog Post from Social Media Release
I’m sure there are bloggers who just zip their posts off in a flash.
I’m not one of them. Putting together a blog post usually takes me more time than I want it to.
Enter the social media release in its role as The Blogger’s Friend. Specifically – let’s not be too unbiased here – PitchEngine.
Yesterday I set myself the task of making a video in under ten minutes, showing the process of composing a blog post from a PitchEngine release. It came in at just over 7 minutes. There was a bit of extra tweaking before I posted, but the heavy lifting was done. Here is the finished product.
If you want to watch the video in a larger player, you can do so here on Viddler.
This is the first of what is intended to be a series of “how to” videos on using PitchEngine. One will be the “other side of the coin” for this one, i.e. how to put your social media release together so that it is “blogger friendly”.
Comments, questions and requests for videos on specific aspects of using PitchEngine very welcome!
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My local Gold Coast, Australia chapter of Social Media Club (SMCGC), has launched a brief survey to gain local input for planning its program of gatherings for the rest of 2010 and into 2011.
The survey can be completed in about 3 minutes and seeks answers to basic questions, including:
Go here for the 3 minute survey
Associate Professor Michael Rees (Bond University), who chairs the chapter’s executive committee, said the committee is particularly keen to hear from people in the business community who want to know more about how social media can work for their businesses.
“More and more business people are trying to figure out how Facebook and Twitter and blogs and YouTube can help their businesses”, Michael said.”It’s a key part of the Social Media Club philosophy for those who have this sort of knowledge to share it with others who are interested. In fact, the motto of Social Media Club is ‘If you get it, share it’.”
Background on Social Media Club
Social Media Club was launched in San Francisco in 2006. There are now over 150 active chapters on 6 continents. The primary mission of Social Media Club is to promote media literacy and standard technologies, encourage ethical behavior and share best practices.
Other Social Media Club chapters in Australia are Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Wollongong.
]]>PitchEngine CEO Jason Kintzler interviews Ania Kubicki, President of Angles PR in Tempe, AZ.
Ania describes how PitchEngine benefits local PR pros and takes media relations back to a more conversational age of relevant content.
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Some big news last week from PitchEngine head office with the announcement of a new PR platform, established by PitchEngine in collaboration with Technorati and My MediaInfo.
Jason Kintzler, PitchEngine founder and CEO, explained: “We built Pitch for journalists and bloggers instead of the other way around. It used to be acceptable to just blindly send press releases to media, but these days there’s just too much junk out there.”
Summarizing the PitchEngine media release:
- The Pitch Platform offers a new kind of “social media relations”. Instead of sending press releases to email adresses, we’ll be creating conversations and sharing content with real people, network style
- Technorati List, the blogger outreach component, is designed to help organizations (and bloggers) simplify and expand blogger outreach
- MyMediaInfo represents 400,000 media jobs and a huge distribution network for PitchEngine users
PitchEngine will begin rolling out invites for beta access to the new Pitch™ platform, via the website pitchengine.com. Naturally, I’m hoping we get a big response worldwide, and from a more self-interested viewpoint I’m hoping a sizable bunch of Aussies and Kiwis their hands up to be part of the beta test.
Full social media release is on the PitchEngine main site.
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The interviewer is an unabashed fan of the social media release and asks Jason some very pertinent questions.
Some snippets
“The brands that are discovering PitchEngine are all sizes and shapes …”
“If you take a traditional press release and try to cram it into a social media channel, it doesn’t work …”
“…why not wrap some content around it…”
“We use the fax machine because it’s there. Pretty lame.”
“Press releases suck!”
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