Online Visibility and Press Releases, Part VII

Trevor Eisenman's Press Release SeriesNote: This is Part VII in an seven-part series I’m writing about Press Releases. Press releases are possibly an overlooked item in the enterprise social media toolbox, so I’m going to cover a few points and talk about how I’ve used them successfully for client campaigns.

Tracking Results: Where Performance is Measured, Performance Improves. A company considering a press release campaign, whether it’s 1 release or 10 releases, should have some way of measuring the results. Typically these results will be expressed in terms of visibility for certain keywords. When it comes to visibility online, one must pick one’s battles. Online that battle means showing up when people are typing in certain keywords.

Make sure whoever writes your press releases can give you a follow up report on what happened. How many keywords got your press release to the 1st page of Google, Yahoo or Bing? How many search engines featured the press release on the first page? How many other sites picked the release up? Your press release professional should be able to provide you with a formal report showing similiar numbers.

Pretty much anyone can write a press release and figure out how to get it distributed with today’s online tools. I’m not saying it’s hard to do. But pretty much anyone can paint an abstract oil painting too. The quality may be horrible…and typically you get what you pay for, so keep those two points in mind. Especially when it comes to investing in the long tail keyword research.

Ideally the best measure of success would be the sales results. But sometimes just better visibility or reputation management is the goal, so knowing those results are important. If your corporate social media campaign budget doesn’t allow for anything fancy, at the very least set up your own schedule to check keywords and record the results yourself. You might be surprised at what you find out!

Good luck and see you on the 1st page!

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