Top Ten Tips for Successful Online Press Releases and Publicity

The following tips for writing online press releases will help generate buzz about your products and services across the web, driving traffic back to your website and creating a direct channel to journalists, media outlets and customers.

1. Use major keywords in your heading and first paragraph - these are often all that will be picked up by Google and other News Indexing services
2. Proactively share your news using the share and RSS buttons on press release websites
   
3. Don't use "you" and "your" or "I", "we" or "our", unless it's within a quote - your press release should be written in the third person so it doesn't sound like an advertisement
4. Make your headline meaningful to media and search engines - don't be too clever
5. Keep it short - Google will not index news item that are too long
   
6. Make your press release relevant to news or trends - get the message across succintly in headline and first par
   
7. Make sure you have good landing pages on your website relevant to your press release - otherwise you are missing an opportunity
   
8. Proofread your release and make sure it's of a press-ready standard; your release could end up anywhere and you don't want to spread an unprofessional image of your company (or yourself)
9. Use free online press release services tagged with relevant keywords to make it easy for people looking for your products/services to find them - this is the cheapest, easiest free publicity you will find
10. If you're new to online press releases, post older material first then work your way up to the present so you have a good history online, driving incremental (long tail) traffic back to your website

Have fun - email me editor at newsmaker.com.au if you want to discuss any ideas you think would make a good press story.

Connecting Up CEO named Innovator of the Year

Congratulations to Doug Jacquier of Connecting Up Australia who was named Non Profit Innovator of the Year by Equity Trustees. This is so well-deserved. Doug has worked fearlessly to champion the use of technology ro reduce costs and increase productivity in the non-profit sector for many years.

Two degrees of separation: a coincidental world

It’s open season for conferences in Australia, and I’m keeping my end up. In the past few weeks I’ve attended 3 conferences interstate, and I’m struck, even moved, by a definite trend. At all three I have been ‘reunited’ with people I have met through a web-based social network: just for example, at Connecting Up in Brisbane I met Brett Hooker of Roarz and Kim Sheree of CarpeDiem , whom I met through LinkedIn via the amazing Sonja Bernhardt (the networking guru and IT entrepreneur) .

Also at Connecting Up, I met Beth Kanter, international blogging legend, who has just encountered Australian blogging queen SilkCharm through Twitter – I met SilkCharm at the national Public Affairs Conference in Sydney after being introduced to her through Liz James of social networking business GaggleHouse (more to come soon on that subject).

Any claims that cyberspace makes people antisocial have been smashed by the social web.

I am sure all this synchronicity will have a deeper impact, let’s watch what happens next. PS: join me on Twitter

No I don't know how it works yet either.

Ash shows that Karma is a two-way street

Ashley Rosshandler of Karma Currency opened his presentation at Connecting Up 2008
with a joke about chooks but followed through with a peck at the gift wrapped prize he'd won as Top Innovator in the nonprofit IT sector at the Australian Community ICT Awards.
Ash quickly recycled his food and wrappings around the room (hmm... kept the wine). Point taken, Ash - we'll make sure it doesn't happen again :-)

Holly Owen and Sam White Make top 30 entrepreneurs list

South Australian innovators Holly Owen and Sam White have made it to SmartCompany's List of Top 30 Entrepreneurs under 30. Top freelancer Brad Howarth found "an extremely talented bunch emerging from a broad range of market sectors, from beauty products and fashion to high technology and marketing services".
Holly runs Champagne for the Ladies and is the creative genius behind the controversial Coolest Girl in School (GTA for girls). Sam is co-founder of the People's Republic of Animation.

Climate change? Call it climate chaos

In Brisbane at the Connecting Up conference. What an awesome job Doug Jacquier and his team have done. There is a huge buzz in the air and the first day wrapup was standing room only to hear Richard Neville talk about the future. The comment that sticks in my head is “don’t call it ‘climate change’ – it sounds like a holiday in the Bahamas”.

Conference time: Connecting Up and CeBIT

Next week I'll be attending Connecting Up in Brisbane and CeBIT in Sydney.
If you have any defunct barcode scanners take them along the South Australian Stand - N40, Hall 4, for recycling or refurbishment.
While you're there, complete a short survey using the Reply IQ wireless device with T-ResQ, from Adelaide company Response Education Services. T-ResQ lets you gather results from audiences at remote locations, simultaneously.

Coolest Girl the Naughtiest

Holly Owen and Karyn Lanthois have released their controversial mobile game for teenage girls internationally: here are some of the comments on Coolest Girl in School, which was developed in Adelaide:
The UK's largest mobile gaming website, www.pocketgamer.co.uk, reported "Mobile game in sex and drugs shame!" and asked "Is the Coolest Girl in School also the naughtiest?"
The Australian Family Association labelled the game 'toxic' but Canadian Professor of Psychology Sharon Lamb thinks Coolest Girl In School is "really tongue in cheek and, well, hysterical.... It's the over the top part that makes it funny-- one way girls can confront the real stuff is to satirize and laugh at it".

Random extracts from Social Media & PR Convention

Random items from the Social Media and PR Convention, Sydney:

• "Never blog in anger" - Mark Jones
• "Don't get it right, get it written" Dr Colin McLeod, AFL GM Marketing
  
• “Hard to hide if the MD is not the nicest person in the world; a risk the board has to take into account” " - Mark Pesce
• "Who needs referees? Just go to my linkedin site" - Sheryle Moon
• "Do not sue a site or blog that attacks you - if you close the site down you will end up having to put out spot fires in a dozen other places. At least the attack is contained" -- Laurel Papworth
• "I don't consider IAG to be an ethical company, on balance" -- Chris Hire
• A blog gives you permission to be as boring as you like -- Sam Roggeveen, The Interpreter, Lowy Institute
  

9th Annual Public Affairs Convention: Social Media and Public Affairs

Remind me not to have more than one glass of red at cocktail parties. At the launch of the 9^th Annual Public Affairs Convention in Sydney I bailed up Ross Dawson, famous for his ‘Trends in Living Networks’ blog -- hopefully Ross will have forgotten some of the conversation!

Ross is a panelist on Enterprise 2.0 at the convention, which has the theme ‘Social Media and Public Relations’. He’s also working on a story for BRW magazine, ‘Top 100 web-based apps in Australia’. Any ideas?

Also met Catherine Lumby, who is most famous for advising the Rugby League to clean up their attitudes towards women following several rape allegations. Catherine and Ross Greenwood, Nine Network’s Finance Editor, both spoke hilariously about this open web of ours where anyone can slag you off in their blog with virtually no right of reply. Both were harangued on the basis of their hair – one for its lack of style, the other for the lack of it!