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Yesterday I attended the PRSA Chicago luncheon discussion of social media. It was loaded with interesting and thoughtful insights: Erick Benderoff skillfully conveyed the new challenges and opportunities journalists are facing as they juggle traditional stories and blogs, Stephanie Moritz shared some courageous forays of ConAgra brands into the social media space, and Dick Costolo of Google offered an exciting view of things to come. But in the midst of these thought provoking ideas one simple comment stuck with me. Honestly, I cannot recall which panelist stated parenthetically that “time is moving faster” but it is the topic of time that has been on my mind since yesterday’s event.

Our concept of time is borrowed from the ancient Mesopotamians who, over 4000 years ago, created the sexigesmal sytem (of 60 seconds/minutes, 12 months, 24 hours, etc) and the Egyptians and who gave the world the 365 day calendar, adapted and improved by Caesar in 45 BCE. Even through the Middle Ages, sundials, tides and the sky were used to tell time until, in the early 15th century CE, mechanical clocks emerged in the towers of major Italian cities. Suddenly, people enjoyed the ability to regulate time by the second, minute and hour. So instead of meeting your friend at sundown you might hook up at 7pm. This Newtonian notion of time as part of the fundamental structure of the world that moves in sequence is now familiar to those of us in the modern world addicted to clocks and solid schedules. But another notion of time, more Kantian, is also operative. This time is an intellectual structure that ebbs and flows, giving rise to ideas like “time flies” or, to the panelist’s comment, “time is moving faster.”

In our day to day lives many of us feel this shift in the way we experience time. The 40 hour work week, for example, is a thing of the past; now, most of us send emails from our Blackberries as we watch our kids play soccer or return calls from colleagues as we negotiate the lanes of the grocery store on a Saturday morning.

But this changing notion of time has also had a major impact on how news is created and consumed. The beast we call the 24 hour news cycle requires constant feeding and its tendency to devote hours to non-stories has been widely chronicled by the traditional media itself (with results ranging from profound to naval gazing).  But the increased opportunities to make news has also led to valuable coverage that would previously have gone unnoticed.  And, the desire of the public for the very latest news drives a transition to on-line news consumption; thus, for example, this political season has seen sites like Huffington Post and the political blogs of major papers (Chicago Tribune’s Swamp, WaPo’s Fix and others) skyrocket as consumers want to find out what happened after the morning papers were published.

I often talk to clients about how technology has changed the press release business. The additional requirements facing journalists as they struggle, usually with smaller staffs, to create traditional and on-line content creates new opportunities for savvy PR people. But the role and import of immediacy, this sped up time, seems to have become more prevalent also. It seems to me like bloggers (including journalists who write blogs) are driven by this new notion of time with an increased need to publish quickly, a drive to break the story first.

So this raises a few questions in my mind. What is the role of embargoed releases in this new climate? Does this increase their value or annoy journalists with news they can’t yet share?  What do PR professionals need to be giving journalists and bloggers to make the process of creating news easier and faster?  How can social media contribute to an immediate and interactive relationship between PR people and journalists?  Would incorporating a blog component into press releases be advantageous?

I don’t have answers to these question but am interested in how a changing notion of time, the increased role of immediacy, changes how we do our job and shape our product.  Any thoughts?

UPDATE: Eric Benderoff posted on his site, Eric 2.0, about the event and gave a more informative overview  Check it out.  And Annie Waite of Melcrum does a terrific overview here.

“I get a lot of junk that has no relevance to my magazine. I think people should refine their lists.”  Or, “Our use of press releases is governed by their local relevance.”  These are the kinds of comments we often hear from journalists who are overwhelmed with information but also rely on press releases to do their jobs. 

Good target lists are, and always will be, essential to any successful press release strategy.  (The subject of target lists has gotten much more complicated with the entry of bloggers into the mix but that is a subject I will address another day!) Proven email tactics can help PR professionals target more effectively.  If you’ll indulge me and read on, here are just 3 of the many reasons why i think a little email expertise can improve press release performance and how segmentation fits in… 

1. People’s lives are organized around their inboxes (thus email is the prefered method of recieving releases) but getting there isn’t as easy as it may seem.  (Most traditional wires either don’t go to individual emails, bundle releases in large groups or just go to assignment desks or some similar destination.) Knowing the proper text to image ratio, whitelisting proceedures and design tricks to facilitate good rendering means improving the chances of getting to the inbox and looking good.  (Okay can I brag a bit?  What the heck, its my blog so I’m just gunna… on average, about 75% of email makes it to the inbox.  At PWR, that average is around 95%.)

2. Email is conducive to multi-media components.  I have never understood the tradition of counting words and pricing per image.  With email, there is no reason to debate for hours about which image is most important or argue with the budget master over whether or not you can include video.  Email allows PR professionals to honestly consider which elements are most important and add them all.  It also lets journalists click to download graphics, contact an expert, view a video or read the whole darn thing in French.

3. Back-end reporting capabilities let PR professionals know who opened their release, which links they clicked most frequently, how much time they spent on each page, etc, helping them tweak future efforts for maximum success.  But equally important, analytics let us know where problems lie–who didn’t get the release, what servers blocked your message, and sometimes even what words/phrases/images triggered the problem.   We can then strategize with our clients, or, at a minimum, inform them, in order to make improvements and overcome obstacles.

But proven email tactics, like personalization and triggered delivery, can also be employed and are appropriate depending on the message and audience as well. Segmentation can help you deliver a sophisticated multi-media release that is customized to region/beat at a fraction of the normal cost.  Segmentation allows you to tweak key elements of your release and make it more relevant to each recipient. 

Say, for example, you represent a toy company that conducted a national competition and wants to promote a dozen kids who won across the nation. You could write a release and send it to a national list.  If you’re sending an NMR, you might have a map recipients can click to see the local angle, or, a series of regionally relevant links and images journalists can peruse to find their local winner.  But journalists will still see the national subject line, headline and release text.  These same journalists are busier than ever, coping with staffroom cuts and increased web responsibilities; they rely on good releases to do their job but don’t want to be bombarded with irrelevant information.  They often make quick decisions on what is topical, what can be covered well and quickly. With segmentation, you can simultaneously send regionally specific versions of the release with subject line, headline, first paragraph and perhaps image or other supporting information personalized for region. Although this example suggests a regional segmentation strategy, we have also seen very successful campaigns segmented by beat. 

It is efficient and effective.  In concept, it is nothing new.  PR professionals have been making their releases more beat, region (and in some cases even journalist) specific for years.  What is new is the ability to send highly specific releases that are media rich to a number of targeted journalists with such little additional cost and effort. 

From our little corner of the big press release world we see many things that work, some that fail and some that work very well.  Segmentation has delivered some great results.  Is this something that you would try?  Can you imagine other ways to use this technology on a release?  We love hearing ideas from our friends and clients so please share!

I subscribe to an awful lot of e-newsletters and e-marketing pieces.  I am an email geek after all.  What continues to amaze me is how bad most of them render through my preview pane. 

As most of our clients have heard me say many times: HTML emails should be designed so that anyone who sees it through a preview pane with images blocked can still read the text, browse available links and know if images/video/audio are included. 

This focus on content is particularly true when you’re distributing a New Media Release.  Although branding can enhance the performance of any email (according to ICONIX, emails marked with a visual icon have a 67% higher open rate!), your average journalist or blogger does not want to recieve a press release that looks like a marketing piece or, worse, seems like some kind of “spam,” showing up with blank boxes and invisible images.  They want a well written press release (preferably sans fluff) that is relevant to their beat (and sometimes even region) and gives them easy access to links, images, video, quotes, facts and other background information.  Function over form, always!

We all know that journalists and bloggers are overwhelmed with information.  But a proper use of the preview pane can help your NMR stand out from inbox clutter.  (Every little bit helps!)

We have long advised clients to write simple, factual, honest and concise subject lines that highlight the unique information contained in the release.  But with the growing use of preview panes, the subject line may be getting less important.  I haven’t seen a study yet, but I expect to see one soon suggesting that people open emails based on 1. from line, 2. preview pane and 3. subject line in that order.  (I’ll buy you coffee if I’m wrong).

Preview panes are even more important in the B-B world, where the adoption rates for preview panes and disabled images are much higher, mostly due to the primacy of Outlook which is used by about 80% of the American workforce.  And, as noted, content is king.  So, make sure the journalists and bloggers on your target list actually see your content by using the upper left quadrant–the prime real estate of any email–wisely.  And please, don’t use cute web buttons for your links.  Most of the journalists you target won’t ever see those so they won’t realize your release has all that fabulous content that makes their lives easier.  (Don’t even get me started on flash and animation… that is for another day.)

Now I’m not suggesting you start ignoring the importance of a subject line–please, don’t start using words like “naked” or “free”–but I am reiterating that one way to improve the performance of a press release is to make sure that journalists, who are often making split seconds decisions about what to cover, can glance quickly at your release through their preview pane with images blocked and know its loaded with goodies.

For what my two cents is worth… Please share yours (and if you want a little more info play our deliverability and rendering game here). 

Every day I talk to clients about the same thing: how to make their digital press release more effective.  That part is easy—we are absolutely married to the idea that if you give highly targeted journalists and bloggers a good release and add the info (images, video, links, quotes, facts, etc) that makes covering a story easier and more interesting, you’ll get better pick-up.  It is the golden rule of PR: treat journalists as they want to be treated.  I love that part (especially all the great success stories I hear from our clients!) 

What is complicated about these ongoing conversations with clients is remembering how their organization or PR firm refers to digital releases.  The semantics vary from IPK (internet press kit) to MNR (multi-media news release) to EPK (electronic press kis) to NMR (new media release) to SMNR (social media news release) to simply ekit.  Honestly, it’s exhausting (and frankly, the cognitive dissonance makes me need another cup of coffee)!

Are all those things exactly the same?  No, not really.  But there is an awful lot of overlap.  As has been noted by many digital release advocate savvier than little old me, EPKs/IPKs/MNRs/SMNRs/NMRs can sometimes replace, and more often compliment, traditional releases, reaching new audiences or simply enhancing efforts with more traditional audiences.  Here’s a run down of the differences, incredibly over simplified in part because they are used a bit differently by different people:

EPK (electronic press kit), IPK (internet press kit) and ekit refer to multi-media, HTML release delivered to journalists via email.  They range from barely to highly branded.  The terms EPK and IPK are also used to refer to the type of press kit (loaded with images, backgrounders, press clippings, etc.) often found in an on-line newsroom.  EPK also refer to on-line kits used by music execs to get their audio to stations and other interested parties.  EPK/IPK/ekit vendors are often web designers and charge hourly or on a project basis. 

MNR (multi-media news release) refers to digital releases that have multi-media components: embedded video, audio, images, etc.  Although generally HTML, they are not necessarily delivered via email and are rarely highly branded. MNR vendors tend to price by word and multi-media element.

SMNR (social media news release), SMR (social media release) NMR (new media release) and the recently profered DMR (Digital Media Resource) refer to releases that have multi-media components and are social media enabled with bookmarks, keyword clouds, RSS feeds, trackback links, etc.  They are often written in a transparent, often bullet point, format with a section of facts, quotes and other useful info—basically the raw data, minus spin, journalists and bloggers need to write a story.  They are designed to be very blogger friendly, move across the web rapidly and reach past traditional audiences.  (If you haven’t already read it, you should check out Tom Foremski’s article, Die! Press release!  Die! that really started this whole movement.  And, for the comprehensive run down on SMNRs try here.)

So here’s what we do: HTML releases designed to be very email friendly, delivered directly to targeted journalists (and bloggers with permission), loaded with multi-media content–unlimited video, images, audio–and often made more web friendly using bookmarks, SEO, and (hopefully) associated blogs (if I can talk some clients into that one soon!).    You can see our work here and here and here (this could go on all day!).  Since we are basically email experts, we sometimes use proven email tactics, such as segmentation or personalization, to deliver better results to our clients and believe a little email expertise offers a new angle for PR professionals.  In other words, we have elements of all the above but also offer a bit of a twist.

So what do we call our own product?  Honestly, up until this point we have used language that reflects the client in front of us at that moment.  I have been juggling many of these acronyms for nearly five years now and PWR just turned two; we are getting more clients every day and can no longer keep track of so many damn letters.  Yes folks, it’s time we committed, tied the knot.  So who we going to marry?  Drumroll please…

We hereby declare that from this day forth, for better or for worse (unless we change our minds), our fabulous products shall be referred to (by us at least) as New Media Releases.  It isn’t a perfect fit (what marriage is?) but we think it captures the general idea of what we believe: traditional release delivery methods are out of date with the new media world and New Media Releases (there, I did it) deliver better results precisely because they let PR professionals focus on the elements that would improve the story they’re working on; a little video here, a little spanish translation there and a whole lot of images everywhere.  Although not yet as robust in the social media components as some SMR experts are advising, we agree that a more social media savvy approach can enhance the product and are working with clients on adding those elements for appropriate projects.

So call us the New Media Release folks because New Media Releases are us.  And that seems like as good an idea as any to write my first blog about.  (I mean after all, how often does one get married?)

Any marital advice?