A comprehensive and effectively written social media release can do phenomenal wonders for any online business. They bring exposure, traffic, and heightened awareness, as well as encourage calls to action and energize various sectors of the online community in many different ways.
A social media press release needs several pieces to make the whole, in order to work properly and achieve the end result that will meet the goal of the business issuing the release. These components will include, but aren’t limited to, bookmarking networks, the software tools to host conversations, social chats, contextual tags and even video-based interfaces for immediate social networking.
Since the goal of a “standard press release” is to gain attention and awareness, a social media press release is no different- except that it engages a greater sector of the online (and offline) community through its social networking implementations. Social media works off technological premises, therefore content existing in various forms (video, audio, written, etc.) can be shared immediately through software and widgets available on the business’s website. Webmasters develop “codes” so that the social media community can quickly and seamlessly share information at the click of a link.
Independency
Each subsection of the press release needs to be respectively independent of the other sections and standalone if only portions of it are downloaded. The sections should be substantially enhanced and contain multimedia and social media elements.
Linkage
One of the most important elements in a social media press release is having links that are optimized for high visibility in the search engines. The links should include connections to relevant information pages on your website as many as possible without there being overkill. Linking is also highly encouraged to other social media sites including Del.ici.ous, Digg, Reddit, and Technorati.
Diversity
Submit your social media releases to all other relevant sites that promote the release. This includes areas like videos to YouTube and Facebook and photos to sites like Flickr or Photobucket. Also, use visuals as much as possible, including the company’s logo, advertising slogan and any marketing videos within the release, where applicable.
Keywords
Use appropriate keywords to maximize your search engine rankings for your site. These same keywords should be optimized for use in all headlines and in the text of the release. Be careful though- you don’t want to over-optimize and throw keywords into every sentence. The press release needs to look natural and organic.
Encourage Community
Enlist and engage the social networking community by providing a platform and a method for them to interact with others. This can be in the form of a link that goes directly to a forum or a direction to leave comments in the appropriate sections on the webpage.
Social media press releases can be an amazing thing, if utilized correctly. Because the social media world allows for the sharing of media in all different ways, your press release will be a powerhouse of information for your client, or your own company.
