[New Post] Fixing Common Content Mistakes: Dotting the Is and Crossing the Ts in Your Press Release

 

Blogs

Fixing Common Content Mistakes: Dotting the Is and Crossing the Ts in Your Press Release Catherine Spicer There are a lot of things to consider when getting your news release or content ready for promotion. However, even after you and your colleagues run through the checklist and double-check distribution details, you're not done. "Communicators must figure out how to tell the larger story of their brands or products in a way that connects emotionally with their audience and inspires them to act," writes the author of our white paper Driving Credibility & Success for Your Brand: How to Earn More Media. That emotional connection can be put at risk when your audience's reading experience is disrupted by a typo. When a company sends their press release to PR Newswire, the Customer Content Services team prepares it for distribution. In addition to reviewing the text's essential elements such as headline, dateline city, and media contact information, we look for any last minute mistakes we can correct prior to sending it out. Here are the three most common press release mistakes we fix. 1. Dateline dates Would it surprise you to learn that our editors still routinely see the year 2015 in press releases' dateline dates? I've personally seen three in the past week. After you spend so much time on the most important parts of your content, it's easy to let your dateline date fall by the wayside. Perhaps you planned to send your press release last week, but needed one more thing to come through before you could issue it. Or you thought it was going to be distributed today, but something changed and now you need to hold it until sometime next week. When going through your press release checklist, don't overlook the dateline city and date. Including the correct month, day and year of distribution helps readers determine how recent the information is. 2. Website errors You have to be strategic about how many links you include and where you place them, but once you've made those choices, do you go back and double-check that those links are working correctly? We often see links to website pages that haven't been published yet or files bookmarked on the writer’s desktop. Have a colleague or friend test your links and confirm the URLs are not just working, but also directing readers to the landing page you intended. 3. Common word misspellings It's been a long-standing PR Newswire tradition to train our content specialists to look out for words like "manger" where it should say "manager" and other, um, more colorful misspellings that aren't caught by spell-check (like the word "public" minus a critical letter). But we also see others that are a little harder to catch. One example I saw recently referred to people purchasing a particular product as "costumers" rather than "customers." Because spellcheck doesn't catch this type of mistake, you need to re-read content for context. Throwing a really tight deadline into the mix makes it that much trickier to spot. If you can take a few extra minutes, comb through your content for these common types of mistakes. It's always better to catch them before they are distributed versus having to correct them after the fact. Fortunately, before issuing your press release, the Customer Content Services team will double-check dateline dates, embedded URLs, and other easy-to-miss mistakes. As you write press releases and other brand content, make sure you're doing everything you can to secure the maximum value from your efforts. Download Driving Credibility & Success for Your Brand: How to Earn More Media for more tips on what to look for with your content distribution. Author Catherine Spicer is a manager of customer content services with more than 20 years' experience counseling brands on their content. Each year, the Customer Content Services team catches around 45,000 mistakes. Follow Cathy on Twitter @cathyspicer.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, click on the following link: Unsubscribe

[New Post] Hashtag Campaigns and Other Advocacy-Building Tips for Nonprofits

 

Blogs

Hashtag Campaigns and Other Advocacy-Building Tips for Nonprofits Daniel Watson Today, I'm rocking one sock at work. And not just because of my long-running trials finding the matching one. It's because I support the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and they found a way to get me involved. In honor of today’s National Missing Children's Day, NCMEC is currently working on their #RockOneSock campaign, which found its way to me organically in my social network. After following the threads of content stitched across NCMEC's marketing channels, I ended up on their campaign hub, where I realized I had no other choice: #RockOneSock is too important (and too much fun). I have to be a part of their day. Working with some of the best causes and most-known foundations and organizations has helped me see there are core patterns that every successful PR and marketing campaign follows to connect with nonprofit supporters. #BrandYourInitiative – Even if your organization is well known Living in a fragmented, multichannel world can make it incredibly difficult for communicators and marketers to get a cohesive story in front of potential advocates and donors. For better or worse, the hashtag has become a thread across social and even traditional channels that can guide people through the maze of the internet – from Twitter, YouTube, press releases, and email to the ultimate goal – your own network. The #icebucketchallenge, for instance, has actually become more ubiquitous than the ALS Society that created it, and now it represents a huge brand asset to the nonprofit. In talking to a number of clients in the space, they offered a few simple tips for hashtagging your initiatives: keep it unbranded, keep it short, and make it more than a little mysterious. Visual Stories Are Even More Impactful for Causes than Brands While this may seem obvious and a club in the bag already for communicators and marketers in the nonprofit space, we know multimedia of any kind can help boost interactions with content distribution. Powerful multimedia, videos, personal stories, and other key assets are all more likely to resonate in search and social. According to research published by Google, online video tops the charts as the most influential source in driving a donation – and more than half of people who watch an online video make a donation afterwards. Make It About Them When St. Baldrick's Foundation, whose long-term mission has been to fund research to end all childhood cancers, went back to the drawing board with their communications strategy, they faced a challenge. "We really wanted to change the conversation around kids diagnosed with cancer, educate people on the special treatment protocols for kids, and let them know that – through the St. Baldrick's Foundation – we do have the power to give children long, healthy lives," says Traci Shirk, Media & PR Manager at the St. Baldrick's Foundation, in PR Newswire's new case study. The #KidsAreSpecial campaign was born when the foundation realized the answer to getting more people involved rested with the very people they were trying to reach. St. Baldrick's Foundation called on their audience to contribute and share photos of their own children. Doing so helped parents and potential donors recognize they can give other children the same happy moments through advocacy and support of St. Baldrick's. At the end of the day, it's important to remember that giving is contagious – and that there is a large increase in giving if potential donors see other donations being made. Narratives that reinforce your organization's success will inspire people to join and be a part of your community. Show your audience that it's sometimes a good idea to wear only one sock… or drop a bucket of ice water on themselves… or post a lot of extra pictures of their kids on social media… As long as it's for a good cause. Get more nonprofit marketing tactics by downloading St. Baldrick's Changes Narrative Surrounding Childhood Cancers. Our latest case study uncovers how the foundation used multichannel, multimedia content distribution to increase web traffic and drive nearly 13,000 image views and downloads. Author Daniel Watson is the Director of Channel, Advocacy and Partnership Marketing at PR Newswire. He leads a team in charge of developing and executing buyer-centric, demand generation and advocacy strategies to drive transformational business value and revenue for PR Newswire via technology. Daniel's focus has been bridging the gap between marketing and sales at enterprise-class organizations – leveraging customer insight, sales enablement, marketing automation and analytics to drive customer acquisition and champion customer advocacy. You can follow him at @danielchwatson.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, click on the following link: Unsubscribe