There were two interesting news announcements involving Business Wire the last several months that were probably missed or given little attention by marketing and public relations professionals. But they were some of the most significant announcements in the field of marketing and PR this year. The first of these announcements was in August when Business Wire announced a strategic partnership with an SEO (search engine optimization) consulting and technology firm to provide a suite of Press Release SEO tools and services (e.g., like keyword research applications). The second was Business Wire's recent announcement about a partnership they formed with a leading "online" press release distribution firm.
The announcements were significant because it validates the importance of what we coined "Marketing PR" (also called PR-SEO) and what we've been pushing to our HRmarketer members for nearly three years. With these recent partnerships, Business Wire essentially admits their traditional wire service falls short in terms of generating "online" visibility of press releases - something our HRmarketer members who use our Direct2Net PR-SEO (Marketing PR) services know quite well. It's a very smart move by Business Wire and we welcome them to the age of Marketing PR. Perhaps this announcement will help convince old-school public relations firms and internal corporate marketing and communication professionals that sending a basic press release over a major wire service like PR Newswire and Business Wire does NOT give you the online visibility you need in today's business environment.
Why is online press release optimization so important?
Like consumers, buyers of B2B services (e.g., human resource and employee benefit professionals) increasingly turn to the Internet when researching new products and services. And their first stop is typically a major search engine. How high up a company ranks in the search results can be the difference between making an RFP list or not. And it is not just about your own web site's SEO. When B2B buyers search the Internet, they should also find recent and relevant press releases. According to a recent report from Outsell, press releases have surpassed trade publications as the top news source for knowledge workers. High search ranking results is equally important for journalists as online research is also the number one source for journalists to obtain story information. In fact, MarketingSherpa has called press release optimization one of the top trends to watch in 2006.
For information on Marketing PR, you may want to download one of our white papers on the subject at http://www.hrmarketer.com/home/whitepaper_main2.htm