The amount of information and misinformation on the web is remarkable.  With respect to publicity, especially product publicity, quite frankly, the misinformation is astonishing.  Because most of the blog posts and articles appear to be written by web-centric people, most of the information describes getting publicity on the web.  Even David Meerman Scott, in his excellent book, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” mostly talks about reaching buyers directly.

Getting directly to buyers on the web who conduct searches is critically important in marketing today.  However, getting coverage on the web in leading industrial and technical publications being read by those buyers is the best way to assure your products will rank high in searches.  Besides, their print editions are still circulated widely.  And being featured in quality publications still carries a powerful third party endorsement.  Let’s face it, “Motor Trend’s Car of the Year” still means something!

The wise publicist today shouldn’t forget the most important lessons of yesterday.  First, if an editor doesn’t like your message and rejects your press release, then his/her reader will never get a chance to read about it.  Secondly, relationships matter because most industrial and technical editors don’t have the time to go searching around newsrooms on the web for their information.  Like other good journalists, they have reliable sources with whom they have built relationships.

So, today’s challenge is to prepare compelling news releases that human editors will judge newsworthy and credible while at the same time optimizing them for the web with embedded links, the proper key words, and related techniques that satisfy the bots and machines who select the news.

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