In this era of online media, PR and social marketing pros are providing value in new ways.

The gold standard for a brilliant press release today extends beyond mainstream press coverage and includes well-thought out SEO that generates direct traffic to an organization’s website and provides self-published news directly to the customer. The reporter or editor is no longer the middleman.

Third party endorsements from news media and bloggers are still valuable but a well written, keyword rich press release can generate thousands links and help “bury” bad news, poor product reviews and customer comments that show up in Google.

Unless a company is publicly traded and the news release is accompanied by a strategic plan that includes events, press tours, meetings, webinars, speaking engagements and so forth, it won’t generate any mainstream news coverage.

In a web-savvy world, these things matter:

• Does the press release generate an increase in web traffic?
• Does it help more people discover your blog and subscribe?
• Does it attract fans to your Facebook page and followers to Twitter?
• Does it generate links to your website in Google?
• Does it help improve search rank and page rank?
• Does it go into RSS feeds and get picked up by bloggers and news feeds and redistributed by wire services?
• Does it show up in Yahoo News and Google News?
• Oh…and did it help you get any press coverage?

What’s more, a single press release can be repurposed in a variety of ways. For example, the text or story can be used in a blog, sales presentation, company newsletter and posted as digital content to social media channels such Twitter and Facebook. (More on this in a future post!)

Here’s a graphic that nicely illustrates how optimized press releases impact visibility:

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