DWPub Sporadic

Free whitepaper to help PR professionals implement online PR campaigns

We’ve just published our latest whitepaper for PR professionals, which seeks to give a grounding for all PR people in how to plan, execute and measure an online PR programme.
It was written by digital PR veteran Andrew Bruce Smith, founder of online PR specialist consultancy escherman. In the whitepaper, entitled “Online PR in action – an introduction to implementing and measuring a digital PR programme”, Andrew pulls together many of the basic skills and processes required for a successful online PR campaign.
The whitepaper was born out of an apparent lack of guidance for PRs about the online PR process. Many digital media experts have been urging PRs to focus on digital media, bt actual advice tends to centre on individual components of an online PR campaign such as press release distribution.
Check out the press release. The whitepaper can be downloaded at www.dwpub.com/whitepapers.

Finding forward features and editorial contacts more quickly

We’ve been doing a great deal of work to boost the speed of the FeaturesExec Media Database and make it more useful, thanks to feedback from customers.
Having just implemented a new search technology, complex searches on the FeaturesExec Plus forward features table generator are now taking less than a couple of seconds. This is a great improvement as this sophisticated system was beginning to slow down a bit now there are over 60,000 forward features listed.
Other developments on FeaturesExec include:

• Improved FeaturesExec Plus results layout, including specific writer details where available
• A more flexible advanced search
• A new RSS feed listing the outlets that have recently updated forward features
• Tweaks to the Press List Express system for ease of use

If you're a subscriber you may want a bit of free training, contact us on 0845 370 7777 or email training@dwpub.com.
If you don't already subscribe to the FeaturesExec Media Database then try our our 24 hour trial or call 0845 370 7777 for more info.

Get your releases online - or miss out on coverage and traffic

There is increasing evidence of a shift in journalist behaviour towards finding information through searching online, rather than relying on material being sent to them direct.
When you think about it, it isn’t that surprising that journalists, most of whom suffer information overload, will be tempted to ignore the swathes of potentially irrelevant information sent to them and resort to a simple Google search to seek out specifically what they need.
This means it is even more essential that PR content is available online and it is easy to find.
One way to do this is to ensure your releases are on the Response Source/SourceWire Press Release Wire. We've made releases even more visible by adding the ability to attach keywords to each release. This improves the 'searchability' of each release, see our full explanation on using keywords to improve press release visibility. This comes hot on the heels of other recent enhancements, such as links to PDF versions on every release and the ability to embed 'soundbites'. The latter helps highlight a particular message in your release and can also improve search engine optimisation.
Check out our online press release distribution service.

Twitter for journalists - a starting point

I've just been answering some questions from a journalist about how to use Twitter. It prompted me to jot down a few basics that could help to any reporter, feature writer or broadcaster who is new to Twitter.

1. Don't worry if you don't understand Twitter, just create your Twitter account and follow the steps below
   
2. Make sure your Twitter biography includes your media outlet name and keywords relating to the subjects you cover
3. One of your first Tweets should be 'I'm a journalist for [name if outlet] magazine/newspaper/website and I'm looking for info from PR people on [keywords relating to your specialist areas or 'patch']
4. Consider following PR people in your sector. A good place to find out PR people on Twitter is the ukmediatweeple wiki

Then sit back and wait for relevant public relations professionals to start following you (smart PRs should be tracking Twitter using alert services like TweetBeep and Twilert). You can then Tweet things like "who does the PR for XYZ" of "I need quotes about the XYZ story" and get responses from PRs.

If you have a more sophisticated request or one you don't want to plaster on a very public website like Twitter, then you can use my Response Source journalist enquiries service, which many thousands of PRs follow.

Oh, and you could also follow me!