Social Bookmark-Friendly: There's an entire subculture of info and news junkies on the Web who regularly categorize and bookmark items of interest
for themselves on free bookmarking services. Adding quick links to these bookmarking services, which members use to store
and share their links with others, offers your press release another opportunity to reach a wider audience. Free tools like
"AddThis" enable you to offer quick links to more than three dozen social bookmarking services.
Link to this Page Button: This tool makes it effortless for a journalist, blogger or other reader to link to your press release from another Web site,
article on blog. I regularly link to press releases, company .PDFs and similar company info on the Web in the articles I write.
Email This Page to a Friend: Most pharma companies understand the power of word-of-mouth referrals on the Web, and have been using this tool on other
pages of their Web site. Including this tool on every Web-based press release also helps.
Permalink:
This is a fancy term for a link that will never be changed or moved. It's the perfect solution for companies that like
to feature new press releases on their home pages (a temporary location), while simultaneously storing the same press release
in their archives (a permalink location). Journalists, bloggers, and other opinion-shapers like to include permalinks in
their work on the Web, since they can be reasonably confident that those links will last indefinitely.
You can include a permalink to your press release by simply establishing a press release archive for long-term storage of
your press releases.
Trackbacks: A product of the blogosphere, trackbacks are little snippets of code that let you know people are talking about your press
release on another blog. In practice, the commenter—usually a blogger—cuts and pastes your trackback code into his blogging
program, and the comment alert is sent back to your company press center. You can find a detailed description about trackbacks
at "How Trackbacks Work."
Supporting Images/Video Link:
There's never been a better time to feature links to the supporting digital images and video for a press release. The
mainstream media is always hungry for news images; bloggers are even hungrier. Besides offering the standard links to images
of corporate executives, you can also offer links to Web video associated with the press release, and to related Web videos
you've posted on YouTube.
Other Company Press Releases Link:
A quick link to your company's press release domain makes it easier for journalists and bloggers to easily dig deeper
into your company's story.
Company Press Center Link:
Offering an easy way for readers to get to the heart of your company's publicity apparatus is another no-brainer.
Press Release RSS:
A significant percentage of news hounds and info junkies now gather much of their news off the Web with RSS—or Really
Simple Syndication—readers. An RSS reader is a lot like an e-mail reader, only it's generally tougher to spam, which is why
many info junkies prefer the technology. Your Web designer will know how to quickly code your press release for RSS. Or, you
can auto-code a press release yourself in about five minutes with Ice Rocket's free RSS Builder tool (http://rss.icerocket.com/).
Joe Dysart is a New York-based media consultant. He can be reached at
joe@joedysart.com
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