[New Post] Tiny House-Inspired Strategies for Press Release Writing

 

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Tiny House-Inspired Strategies for Press Release Writing Stephanie Marsh Tiny houses have become quite the craze lately. While downsizing to a few hundred square feet may not work for everyone (my dog and cat would not get along in such close quarters), there are many benefits to miniature dwellings. When writing a press release, you can learn a lot from these efficient homeowners. If you're wondering what press releases and tiny houses have to do with one another, the answer is "simple." Cut the Clutter The most obvious benefit tiny homes offer is the motivation to get rid of excess. A house with a loft bed over the kitchen doesn't leave room for extra throw pillows, grandma's old tuba, or even last week's junk mail. Keeping only the necessities in your house – or press release – frees you up to focus on what really matters. It may be tempting to jam as much as possible into your release, but cluttered writing leads to jumbled ideas, run-on sentences, and lack of clarity. Eliminate unnecessary information so that readers can connect quickly and easily with your message. Simple ≠ Low Quality Although a tiny home is as simple as it gets, it's important to note that simple does not mean low quality. Owners of tiny homes often look at them as investments in their future. In the same way, you have to be willing to dedicate time and resources to your content. This means reassessing your goals every time you prepare a press release for distribution and investing in the right tools to achieve them. An embedded video or infographic may require more effort, but showing your story with multimedia can be much more straight-forward and effective than text-only content. It's only when you drill down to your content's core purpose that you can understand what investments in content creation and distribution will return the best results. Customized Content Always Wins When building a house, there are general layouts that have proven time and time again to serve owners well. However, it's the small touch here and bit of flair there that make each tiny house the perfect tiny home. While a press release template can be a very useful starting point, you must customize your content to achieve its individual goal. What works best for a personnel announcement may not be the same as what will grab attention when announcing a new product. Each release is different and should be treated as such. As you plan out a new press release, consider how your headline and formatting need to be adjusted and what kind of multimedia or distribution is best suited for your topic. Then take it a step further: Is what you're doing better than other press releases about your topic? What can you do to make yours stand out? Travel Farther with Earned Media Many tiny house owners choose to downsize because it opens up doors to other things, like traveling the world. Similarly, your message will gain more ground when you focus on aligning your press release with your audience’s needs. Journalists, influencers and customers alike don't have a lot of time to walk through every press release they encounter. Boost your earned media potential by making your content easy to find, consume and share. Download our white paper Driving Credibility & Success for Your Brand: How to Earn More Media for more press release writing and distribution tips. Amplifying your message across multiple media channels will increase your reach and revenue. Author Stephanie Marsh is a customer content specialist based in Cleveland. PR Newswire’s Customer Content Services team is available 24/7 to counsel brands on content distribution. Stephanie enjoys traveling, going to concerts, and sampling the great food scene Cleveland offers. She also spends a significant amount of time breaking up fights between her cat and dog in her normal-sized house.

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[New Post] 4 Tips for Tomorrow’s Marketing Champions from Marketo’s 2016 #MKTGnation Summit

 

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4 Tips for Tomorrow's Marketing Champions from Marketo's 2016 #MKTGnation Summit Geoffrey Krajeski What does it take to be a champion? After having a chance to reflect on this year's #MKTGnation Summit, I can confidently say that being a marketing champion isn't just about being the best (though that does help), it's about striving to be better. This means keeping on top of industry advancements and understanding how to use today's and tomorrow's marketing tools to ask better questions, articulate needs and expectations more effectively, and efficiently leverage the skills of your marketing team. For my second Marketo Summit, I was joined by PR Newswire's Asmita Singh, Vice President, Digital Experience & Marketing Optimization; Tanuj Gupta, Marketing Optimization Analytics; Scott Abbate, Program Manager, Channel Marketing; and Ken Wincko, our Senior Vice President of Marketing who also delivered one of the #MKTGnation keynotes. Here are a few of the lessons my colleagues and I took home from Marketo's University Day, the Champion sessions and networking with other passionate marketers. Analytics > Data. During his session, Jason Kodish, Global Chief Data Scientist for Digitas LBi, asserted the importance of data, analytics, and geeks. Businesses have long made decisions based on data. Not so much on analytics. The difference is data tells you that you sold five units, whereas analytics help you drive better-informed sales efforts by understanding the whats, whys, and hows of the five units you sold. As analytics geeks, it was refreshing to witness this powerful sentiment associated with the craft of data science.  Don't get bogged down in the day to day. One of the best pieces of advice I heard was to block off two days per week to focus solely on project workload. In marketing operations, it's easy to get caught in the routine of troubleshooting requests and issues. To grow as marketers (and contribute more to the bottom line), we need to learn how to give ourselves the time to dig into longer term projects versus continuously fixing bugs. Marketing is no longer just about inbound. "Trust is the new currency," said Ken during his keynote on the future of customer experience. One of his top tips for fostering strong and loyal customer relationships: Integrate and iterate every marketing effort into the complete loop of the buyer's journey — from exploration, engagement and acquisition to adoption, devotion and advocacy. This can be achieved through targeted segmentation, multichannel programs, account based marketing (ABM), paid media and customer advocacy, all executed in tandem. A winning marketing team is built on diverse perspectives. Because marketing touches all aspects of the customer experience, leaders need not be afraid to broaden the scope of their recruitment efforts. The next time you look for a new marketing team member, Marketo CMO Sanjay Dholakia predicts the best person for the job may not be the person you expect. PR Newswire's marketing team is a prime example of how "accidental marketers" can come together to form a great team. My career began as a web developer, but led to project management, then marketing automation and demand generation. Other team members started in roles varying from chemical engineering to customer service. We even have a former sommelier! Collaboration between people with varied viewpoints and expertise leads to innovation. The one thing everyone should have in common is a passion for success. Hands down, this was the best Summit I've experienced. The camaraderie among our Marketo brethren is astounding. And after learning so much from this year's #MKTGnation Champions, it was an honor to find out PR Newswire was named a Revvie champion as Marketing Team of the Year, Enterprise. I'm grateful for the friendships I've made within the Marketo community and look forward to the experiences that future summits hold. Get more tips for transforming your team into marketing champions. Download Meeting Demand: A Guide to Becoming a Data-Driven CMO right now. Author Geoff Krajeski is a marketing automation specialist on PR Newswire's marketing operations team.  Follow him on Twitter @GeoffKrajeski for tweets about marketing, demand generation, process improvement, and Star Wars jedi mastery.

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