Writing Online Press Releases

Online press releases can be an effective way of reaching journalists, bloggers and industry-related media sites. With online distribution your press release
may also end up on popular news aggregator sites like Google News and Yahoo News.

Still unclear about why you want to write an online press release?

1. To Drive Traffic to Your Site
A well-optimized press release can show up in organic search results as well as news results. And some services also distribute press releases as RSS feeds, which can get pulled as headlines into other subject-related websites. This means that someone searching for your type of products or services might discover you through organic listings, news listings or by RSS.

2. To Write the Stories You Want Told
As traditional print media struggles with cutbacks to funding, which means the loss of reporters and original, local news coverage, companies writing good press releases, with interesting and compelling stories, have an opportunity to attract online coverage as well as interest from journalists using online resources for story ideas and research.

Here are a couple of Online Distribution Services

PR Newswire: Big name, good reputation. Costs is $500+.

Business Wire: 8-10 percent less than PR Newswire. Also a big name with a good rep.

PRWeb.com: My favourite so far. This is an email-based service. Journalists and bloggers get a daily email with industry-specific or interest-specific headlines. Approx. $100+ depending on what type of features you want.

OpenPR.com: A free service. Ads are displayed beside your press release, which is okay unless your competitors advertise online.

Have a press release service to recommend? Post it here.

3 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid

In our new Boxcar Marketing website it was important for James and me to implement as many best practices as possible. We wanted to start with a solid design based on usability. Here are 3 mistakes we often point out to clients and how we avoided them in our design.

Design Mistake #1: The About Us page is an About Me page.
Why is About Me a mistake for a business About page? Although we are pretty pleased with ourselves, the primary purpose of our About page is to establish what we can do for YOU. Too often About pages are nice corporate histories but are not valuable in terms of closing a sale, building trust and establishing credentials that are relevant to potential clients.
Look at our About page for ideas on how you can move beyond About Me and towards About You.

Design Mistake #2: No Author Photo or Company Photo
For companies like ours, where the primary contact is James Sherrett or Monique Trottier, the photo is important. In general, photos of staff or key employees are important for two reasons: photos offer a more personable impression of the company and photos connect the virtual and physical world. For example, people who meet me at a QuickLearn session or see me on a Lab with Leo episode will immediately recognize that they have come to the right website. And in reverse, people who read the Boxcar Marketing blog are more likely to recognize me when we meet in person at a conference or for a meeting.

Design Mistake #3: More-on Links
I posted in September a marketing tip on link text: “Don’t Be a More-On”. In short, more-on refers to hyperlinks that say things like, “Read more” or “Click here.” James and I think these types of links are pretty useless and we aim to write hyperlink text that is persuasive or at minimum tells the visitor where they are going. We are not 100 percent perfect in our link text, but you can see 2 examples in this post. The link directing you to our About page is an example of a persuasive link. It identifies the benefit: Look at our site and borrow ideas for improving your own. If our site was sales focussed, I would enhance that text further by saying something like, See how Boxcar Marketing doubled sales by improving their About copy. Much more persuasive than “Click Here”, right?

The above hyperlink text, a marketing tip on link text: “Don’t Be a More-On”, is the second example. The text gives you an indication of where you will go if you click on that link. On the web, life is too short to click on uncertain links.

What do you think? Do you use your About page differently? Do you have photos? What text do you use for the majority of your links? Share your thoughts.

Community Planning and Housing Resources

In preparation for a presentation Monique gave at the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association’s Breaking New Ground Conference here in Vancouver, I did a bit of research on resources. Public housing isn’t an area either of us possess much knowledge about, so we were curious to see what could be found kicking around the internets.

Possibly the best resource for information on urban planning, design, and the development community is Planetizen.com. The site is based out of LA, has been around for six years and is chock full of great content, media, and even professional resources related to urban planning and housing. They have been compiling an annual list of top 10 planning and development website since 2002, and this in itself is an excellent resource.

Listed below are some of the local blogs I came across with a focus on specific neighbourhoods around Vancouver. They aren’t so much focused on planning as day to day life in these neighbourhoods.

* Mount Pleasant community blog
http://livinginmountpleasant.com/mount_pleasant_blog

* Kitsilano community blog
http://www.kitsilano.ca/

* Southlands Community Planning site blog
http://www.southlandsintransition.ca/blog

* Strathcona community blog
http://liveinstrathcona.blogspot.com/

* Commercial Drive community blog
http://thedriveisalive.blogspot.com/

And because Monique’s presentation was very much about citizen media and tools the average person can use to produce content for the web, I took a look through some of my favorite sites to see what I could find related to community planning.

Flickr groups and tag search yielded the following results
* Community planning and design group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/planning/

* UCLA community planning journal group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/critplan/

* Green Buildings + Sustainable Communities
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sustainablebuilding/

* Tag search: “official community plan”
http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=int&ss=2&w=all&q=%22official+community+plan%22&m=text

Facebook groups
* City of Vancouver Planning Commission (a group for those interested in the happenings of the City of Vancouver’s Planning Commission)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19531853336

* Canadian Tire Money: Helping The Homeless (a facebook campaign to collect Canadian Tire money for purchasing items, such as sleeping bags, to donate to the homeless people of Vancouver)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2361803750

* Vancouver25 (Vancouver25 is a group of young people committed to progressive policy for the City of Vancouver . Our goal is to create meaningful dialogue on important issues and to present common-sense, evidence-based policy recommendations on how Vancouver can be improved for all of its citizens.)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14902570116

Del.icio.us
* Tag search “community planning”
http://del.icio.us/search/?fr=del_icio_us&p=community+planning&type=all

* Tag search “Vancouver community planning”
http://del.icio.us/search/?fr=del_icio_us&p=vancouver+community+planning&type=all

UPDATE:

From Monique: Please note that this is not a comprehensive list by any means.
If you have a suitable site to add to the list, please post it in the comments so we can share it with other interested community planners.

Dan of Cyburbia | urban planning community pointed out this site to us.

Cyburbia (http://www.cyburbia.org), founded in 1994, is the Internet’s oldest continuously operating planning-related Web site. Cyburbia has served the planning community for nearly 14 years with very little funding or financial remuneration. The Cyburbia Forums (http://www.cyburbia.org/forums) went online in 1996, and today remains a vibrant virtual third place for planners, students and others interested in the built environment ; 5,800 members, 400,000 posts, and still growing.

Thanks Dan, and anyone else, please add your thoughts.

Marketing Tip: Don’t Be a More-on

GrokDotCom is lobbying for website copywriters to stop being More-ons.

“More-on” refers to hyperlinks that we write for our site, things like “Read more ...” or “Click here”.

Grok’s Example:

Which is more persuasive?

A. Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. Read More

B. Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. See how Steve doubled his income in one year.

I admit that B sounds more persuasive, but I also wonder about space constraints and how to provide short links that include an imperative + benefit as suggested by Grok. Regardless, I think considering these links more carefully is a good thing.

20+ usability tips for your blog

Tech writer Tom Johnson does a nice job of outlining some good practices for creating a usable blog in his article Twenty usability tips for your blog.

Much of the advice Tom mentions now comes ready-baked into many blogging platforms, either by default or as a configuration option. I really like the article because it reinforces how important the details of implementation are to the success of a web project. Having a blog is great but doesn’t mean you have a great blog. Sweating the small details and making the technology work for your visitors means payoffs immediately and in the long run.

In the spirit of web collaboration, here are a few additional points to add to Tom’s list:

• Try to have a short, easy-to-remember URL. (Umm, yes: www.iworkindustries.com. Right.)
• Have clean URL paths that use words, not numbers, and preferably words related to the content of the page, like the title.
• Take risks with your content and writing.
• Move beyond just writing. Experiment with audio, photos and video, if appropriate.
• Be opinionated. Consider all the other websites out there that would gladly have the attention of your visitor. Now make sure you’re keeping their attention.
• Be personal. You don’t have to reveal your deep fears but you have to create your own voice and style and identity. People love to connect with other people. Give them someone to connect with.
• Use good verbs. In fact, use only good verbs. Deploy them like pace cars to lead readers through your posts. Rock your verbs and you’ll rock your readers.

Anything else?

Corporate Blog Mistakes and Tips for Promoting Your Blog

I read two great posts today that I’d like to share.

The first is from Build a Better Blog and the post is “Blog Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make”.

3 Mistakes and 1 Conclusion. I recommend anyone with a business blog read this post on how you can make the mistake of not setting goals, of not having control over your site and of not having metrics or understanding the metrics.

If you need help with metrics, the Underwire Newsletter from March has a post Tech 101: Reading Webstats The post is based on an earlier post by James about what is important and what is not, i.e., don’t measure “hits”.

Subscribe to Underwire News: Join here

The second great post is from Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to Change the World.  His post “The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog” offers 10 tips on the mindset of blogging, the use of email addresses and links, and how to better evangelize your blog.

Both posts are about lessons learned the hard way. And both offer solid advice.

1) Blog Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
2) How to Evangelize a Blog

Experimenting with the hCard Microformat

Over the past few months I’ve been paying a bit of attention to the growing momentum behind microformats on the web. What are Microformats?

Designed for humans first and machines second, Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Learn more about Microformats.

Basically they’re a more advanced way of marking up some common content on the web. Things like people, reviews and calendar events. See them all here.

The one thing I thought they were missing were recipes, an almost perfectly standardized type of content that would benefit hugely from being standardized. Imagine no longer wondering how many millilitres are in a cup. Instead, choose your measurement standard and the recipe is translated into that system. Imagine not having to wander through recipes matching what you have to what’s called for. Just search for the recipes with your ingredients. I digress.

To try my hand at getting started I chose the easiest and most useful Microformat - contact information - and used the hCard creator to make myself an hCard. Simple, I thought. I liked it.

Then I tried to add my personal contact information to the Work Industries contact page. Oh. Not so simple.

I’ve got my James Sherrett vCard working to show my information and image. But what I want to do is create a keen way to download my contact information like they have on the Habaneros contact page (click on the contact details link then try the card link: presto!).

Anyone have any pointers? I feel like I’m one simple step away from getting it yet I’m at the end of my technical tether.

Beyond my technical flailings though, I want to point out that my experience with Microformats illustrates the problem on the web: it’s too hard. There’s too much friction to doing it. For Microformats (or any website or web application) to catch on and provide the benefit they promise, which would be a great thing, they have to offer lower friction. It’s simply too hard to do many things today. See the diagram at the top of this post. Do you understand it?

I’m even kind of a nerd about this kind of thing, I use an FTP program, and I’m stumped.