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The press release as a public relations tool is in transition. Before the World Wide Web, before everyone was online, press releases (or news releases) had a straightforward function: persuade a reporter, editor or producer to cover your story in some fashion. Sometimes that coverage was in the form of a fully reported story that the press release kicked off, sometimes the news release itself was printed more or less as is, and sometimes a highly edited and shortened form of the release made it into the paper.

These days, however, press releases are increasingly published as stand-alone content online. They show up on web sites and in online news feeds, thanks to services such as BusinessWire and PRNewswire. More and more journalists, under pressure to produce exclusive content that provides more value to their readers and audiences, will first ask “who else have you sent this to” or “where else has this news appeared” before doing anything with a release.

Most of the time, if you want to get news coverage a well-honed pitch to the right journalist at the right news outlet is your best bet. But a pitch is a different thing from a news release. It’s not intended for distribution beyond individual journalists and is designed to earn fully reported coverage, not to be published as is or revised.

Too many people still think PR means “press release,” so I think it’s time we rethought the press release, and other forms of content that public relations pros like me spend time trying to get out. It’s time to more clearly define the role of the press release in the public relations ecosystem.

A new role for press releases

A press release should:

• Enhance search engine optimization.
• Provide a full package of content – the whole story, not just part of it – in a form that’s easy to share through social media (hence the increasing use of the “social media release“).
• Be written with a broad, general audience in mind, not just journalists.
• Be considered a public document. (For public companies and some other organizations, in fact, issuing a news release is sometimes considered a form of disclosure under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules.)

There are still times when the news release is what you send to journalists to announce something. But increasingly, a news release should communicate directly to other audiences as well. We need to start thinking of the news release as just another form of content – like white papers, newsletters and blog posts – that are a part of the public relations toolbox. Sometimes that content goes to journalists in hopes that they will then publish a news story about it, but increasingly that content will go directly to end users.

This does create some new challenges, though. Companies need to do a better job of including noncompany voices in their news releases and making the content more compelling and authoritative. Companies also need to make sure they’re working just as hard to get their news releases out to other audiences as they do to get them to journalists.

Tools for earning media coverage

Does that mean I’m advocating giving up communicating with journalists? Absolutely not. But I think when it comes to journalists, PR pros should concentrate more on pitches – whether delivered over the phone, via email or in-person – when trying to earn coverage. What’s the difference between a pitch and a press release? A pitch:

• Is designed to elicit interest and follow-up from the news media.
• Should be personalized and customized, as much as possible, to each individual journalist’s needs and preferences.
• Gives just enough information to demonstrate the news value to the journalist.
• Is less formal than press releases and other forms of company content.

My overall point is simple: If you want to communicate to a broad audience, particularly one that’s online, a press release may be a great tool for that. But if you want coverage in the media, because of its greater reach and the added credibility that comes from making it through a news outlet’s filters, then don’t immediately turn to a news release. A pitch might be a better choice.

Twitter, the microblogging sensation that is all the rage – at least among marketers and social media aficionados – requires a considerable economy of phrasing. Fitting a useful thought into 140 characters, including a URL, can be tough sometimes. And if you want your tweet to be retweeted – spread by your followers – than you’re better off making it even shorter, like maybe 120 characters.

To that end, here are a few tips on how to tighten your tweets:

1. Cut unnecessary words – fillers, redundancies and words that don’t add anything, for example. If you put an opinion in Twitter, you don’t need to say “I think” – we assume that’s why you tweeted it unless you’re attributing it to someone else.
2. Choose shorter words over longer – “about” instead of “approximately,” for example.
3. Eliminate unnecessary punctuation. Do you really need those quote marks to emphasize something? Probably not. Do you need the extra “:” that Twitter adds in retweets? Again, probably not.
4. Use contractions (ex. “didn’t” for “did not”) and acronyms, though judiciously. Don’t sacrifice clarity for conciseness.
5. Make use of symbols – %, &, etc. – liberally.
6. Substitute punctuation for conjunctions. For example, a comma in place of an “and.”
7. Incorporate hashtags as part of the tweet, instead of putting it on the end. For example, “#PR pros will find this useful …”
8. Revise, revise, revise. It’s amazing how often, just as I think I’ve boiled a thought down to its essence, one more revision allows me to tighten it even more. Focus on your core thought or message.

That’s it. Follow these guidelines consistently and you’ll end up with shorter tweets that are more retweetable. If you have more ideas about how to shorten the length of your tweets, please add mention them in the comments.

I got an email last week from someone who administers a group I’m a member of on LinkedIn. He had a simple question: What could he do to get me to be more active in his group. It was a good question, and one that deserved an answer. So I told him the truth: I don’t have time. Most of my personal social media activity, I told him, was confined to Twitter and Facebook and I simply didn’t have enough time to also participate in LinkedIn groups.

Nonetheless, I still find a lot of value in LinkedIn. It helps keep me connected to hundreds of professional contacts and gives me an easy way to reach them even if I’ve lost a phone number or email. It also keeps me in touch with people who are probably not going to be on Facebook or Twitter or other social media sites for quite a while. Sometimes LinkedIn seems to be the social media site for those who feel uncomfortable with the whole idea of social media.

But the biggest thing about LinkedIn is that it’s an easy way for me to keep in front of people. I hear from people all the time “I see you on LinkedIn,” which means they see my status updates on LinkedIn. The one thing that I do pretty faithfully, usually at least five days a week, is update my LinkedIn status. That simple action keeps me popping up in front of others when they log into their LinkedIn account. One update a day – about two minutes – and it unobtrusively but effectively keeps my name in front of lots of contacts.

What’s my point? Sometimes even a minimal, but consistent, use of social media can be effective.

Here’s the situation: I was laying in a hospital bed, with an IV in my arm and a chest tube in my side attached to a gurgling machine that provided suction. I was on some pretty hefty drugs – morphine and then other narcotics for pain. At 38, I had been hospitalized for a totally unexpected reason.

For those of you who don’t know the story, I had woken up early on the morning of March 2 to chest pain, and after several hours of dithering around (because I was pretty sure it wasn’t a heart attack, so it couldn’t be serious, right?) I went to an urgent care where x-rays showed that my right lung had collapsed. Think of a balloon popping; that’s more or less what happened with my lung. As it turns out, you can function on one lung, especially if you’re relatively healthy, as I was (at least up to that point). The condition is called spontaneous pneumothorax, and no, the doctors don’t really know what caused it.

My wife was sending out emails to a select group of friends, co-workers, my boss and some relatives about my condition periodically, but there are many more people not on her email list – other colleagues, friends, etc. – who were interested in how I was doing. Fortunately, when I had driven myself to the ER (yes, I made several bad decisions that day), I brought along my BlackBerry. That not only allowed me to call my wife (”Honey, I have a collapsed lung and am going to be admitted to the hospital”), and send email to my boss (”Um, I’m not going to be coming in to work today”), but it also allowed me to update my Facebook status. And that is the whole point of this post.

I spent 12 days in the hospital, almost the entire first half of March. And without that BlackBerry and the ability to send email and update my Facebook status, it would have appeared to dozens and dozens of friends and acquaintances that I had disappeared. In addition, some friends who wanted to know – people who stopped by to visit me – would have never known that I was hospitalized with a serious medical condition. Even my sister, who called me almost every day, sometimes more than once, relied in part on my Facebook status updates to keep tabs on me.

I had lunch with a friend this week who said that my status updates on Facebook during my hospitalization really made him appreciate the power of social media. I have long been a social media enthusiast (and, professionally, an advocate), but this whole incident really brought home to me the power of these tools. I received wishes to get well, messages of concern and requests to visit through Facebook, which were instrumental in keeping my mood mostly positive during the experience. (In fact, I should say again to those people – thank you so much for your support. It made a huge difference to me.)

Most of what we post on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites is ephemeral – a fleeting thought, an interesting link, a comment or question you’re likely to forget in a few hours or a few days. But in some circumstances, these interactions can be incredibly powerful, engaging, and socially and emotionally meaningful. So the next time someone tells you that all this online stuff is just a waste of time, or it’s just for kids, or it’s not important, tell them my story.

Clive Thompson has an interesting article in the current issue of Wired that looks at why even though we live in a world awash with information, more than ever, people seem to be less knowledgeable about all sorts of important issues.

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?

You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven’t. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It’s 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the ’90s, according to Gallup.

It turns out that even though there’s more information, there’s also more misinformation. The ease with which anyone can publish information makes it easier for interest groups to sow doubt about things that might otherwise be taken factually. It’s what the tobacco industry did for years to try to cast doubt on the enormous weight of scientific evidence that smoking is dangerous.

Read the story here.

This morning I woke up to find that Gmail had enabled Tasks on my account. A task list has probably been one the biggest hole in the suite of Google apps and tools, and this new Gmail add-on looks like a pretty good start on remedying that

This is still a very lightweight app, and it doesn’t have half the features of some of the more mature task management apps out there, such as Remember the Milk and Todoist. While not specificallly designed for David Allen’s Getting Things Done time management methodology, with a few simple tricks it looks like it can be turned into a serviceable tool for GTD. Here are three tips to help.

1. Create a Next Actions list as well as Someday/Maybe lists and any other lists you might need.

Gmail allows you to create a series of lists. So I’ve created a series of lists to serve my purposes – Next Actions for actual task management, Someday/maybe for those things I might want to do someday, To read for books I’d like to read, etc. You can create and edit these lists using Tasks’ pop-up lists menu, in the lower right hand side of the Tasks box.

2. Use indentation to create GTD contexts within your Next Actions list.

Within my Next Actions, I’ve created a series of Tasks called @calls, @work, @home, @errands and so forth for the contexts that I typically use. When I want to add a next action within a particular context, I just put my cursor at the end of that @context line, hit return to get a new task and then tab to indent it. This creates sub-tasks for each context.

Since I’m using ‘@waiting for’ as a context, I can easily drag and drop next actions from one context to another by using the mouse to grab the ‘handle’ on the left side of the screen for each task. I can also re-order my contexts by dragging and dropping those context lists; the actions underneath each go with them.

3. Use the notes line to classify individual tasks by project.

Finally, I like to be able to see my tasks as part of the various projects they belong in. That’s easy. I just add a project title, in all caps, to the notes field for an individual Task. That shows up on the Tasks list, giving me a quick overview of what individual project a particular task belongs to.

I admit these ideas are, at best, work-arounds. It would be great if Google would add features such as tags and the ability to move tasks between lists. But until that happens, these ideas help.

Have some more thoughts about how to make better use of Gmail Tasks? Please share them in the comments.

Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers is a short e-book about how brands can use content to establish trust with customers. The e-book is free, but unlike many free information products I’ve seen, this one is worth reading and worth printing out and sticking on your bookshelf. The author, JoePulizzi, is founder and chief content officer of Junta42, president of Z Squared Media and co-author of Get Content. Get Customers. How to use content marketing to deliver relevant, valuable, and compelling information that turns prospects into buyers. After reading this e-book, I’ve put Pulizzi’s book on my Amazon wish list.

Though Seven Content Strategies is short, it manages to provide a lot of actionable information. It starts out by explaining why brands should use content. As brands seek to establish relationships online, Pulizzi argues, providing useful content can position those brands as trustworthy sources of information for customers. By doing that, brands create trust, and trust is required before customers will buy.

“If you want consumers to think of your brand as a trusted information provider, you must begin to think like an information provider, not just a provider of goods or services,”Pulizzi writes. He says the first step is to listen to customers, find out what their needs and wants are, and then tailor information to meet those needs. The information may be in the form of custom magazines, websites,webinars, blogging, social networking content efforts and more. Pulizzi warns against the traditional approach to marketing where brands only talk about themselves and don’t address the concerns of their customers. He also suggests establishing “listening outposts” online to hear what people are saying about, and suggests several free tools to do so.

Besides the mistake of producing content that’s not relevant customers’ needs, Pulizzi outlines several other landmines businesses should be aware of as they become information providers: being unclear or making it difficult for the audience to understand what the company does, providing poor quality content (either in design, the content itself, or by failing to keep content updated), inconsistency in providing content and failing to do anything at all.

Pulizzi argues, rightly in my mind, that with cutbacks in traditional media, companies have an opportunity to step into the void and provide some of the information that people used to get from more robust media outlets. I would add that bloggers and other new players in the media ecosystem are already moving to fill in the gap, so that if companies don’t act quickly they can risk losing an opportunity to become trusted information providers.

Pulizzi then goes into his seven strategies:

1. Assign a conversation champion.
2. Make sure you really know your customers.
3. Conduct a content audit.
4. Try new things.
5. Stick to a schedule.
6. Take care of your customers.
7. Get help to execute your content strategy.

Pulizzi goes into detail with each one of these. He provides a 10-point checklist to ask yourself before deciding whether your company should blog or not, and a 10-point questionnaire that can be used as part of a content audit.

Even if your company is not going to engage in a full-blown content strategy, Pulizzi’s e-book is still worth a read. Some of the suggestions, such as establishing listening outposts and conducting a content audit, are steps nearly all businesses should take. If you’re one of those people trying to make money via content online, say by blogging, the e-book offers some good ideas that can be applied to that process, as well.

Pulizzi wants an email address before you can download the e-book, but so far he has respected that and I haven’t been deluged with sales come-ons, so it seems a very small price to pay. Here’s the link: Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers.

I’ve been blogging in one form or another for more than eight years now, and one of the things I’ve learned is that you can classify most blog posts into one of a limited number of categories, or genres. Why is this a useful? If you’re running a blog and trying to generate ideas for fresh content, thinking about different kinds of blog posts is a good way to come up with ideas for new posts. With that in mind, here’s a list, with examples, of 11 blog post genres.

The ‘ask your Twitter followers’ post
This is a relatively new category that I’ve noticed more often recently. The blogger asks his or her Twitter followers a question and then takes several responses and makes them into a blog post. The individuals responding usually get links to their tweet streams, so they have the possibility of gaining more followers, and the blogger gets instant content. It’s an example of community-generated content.

Example: How do you define success?

The tweet recap post
This is another new post category that’s arisen due to the popularity of Twitter. If you’re active on Twitter, you may be sending out all sorts of links and other good stuff on Twitter. Rather than let it reside just there, some bloggers re-publish it as a post, usually something like “this week’s best tweets.” This allows you to get some good stuff in front of an audience (your blog readers) that may not have seen it, and it can also drive your blog readers to follow you on Twitter.

Example: Tweet recap: The Past Seven Days from @clickequations (2008-12-05)

The round-up post
If you’re posting at fairly regular intervals, this is a good way to make your site a little more sticky. Look over your blog posts from the last week, month or year, and then pick a handful of posts that you think are your best, or that have been the most popular. Then write short descriptions and create links to each one. Of course, you’ve got to have enough posts to choose from to make this meaningful, because if you simply list every post you’ve written, you’re not providing any extra value to your readers. Pointing them to the handful of posts that are the best or most popular, on the other hand, can be a useful exercise. You should never assume that your readers, even your most loyal subscribers, have actually read every post that you’ve published.

Example: This week’s most popular posts

The list post
This is probably one of the most common types of posts, especially among bloggers looking to increase their traffic. I know I tend to use it a lot here, and it’s a classic way of producing linkbait (i.e., posts that people will want to link to and list on social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon). This usually takes the form of “Top X ways to do such-and-such” or “Top X books/blogs/movies about such-and-such.” These posts are popular because people like lists, and because as long as you come up with some kind of list, you can probably write one without spending too much time thinking about writerly matters such as transitions and structure.

Example: 30 ways businesses can use Twitter to boost their bottom line

The list of more-or-less random links post
This is also a list post, but unlike the classic list post above, this is just a way of producing a bit of content out of the scraps you pick up surfing the Internet. It’s kind of a lazy blog post, in that it requires remarkably little effort, assuming you’re collecting links to interesting stuff anyway. There was a time when I would do one of these posts every week. Now I do them occasionally. These posts are not very sticky — they don’t keep people on your site — but they can provide some value to readers by pointing them to other web pages that may be useful or interesting. These posts may or may not be organized around some kind of loose theme.

Example: Six links on social media, content marketing and online public relations

The picture of the week post
This is a great way to add a little more visual interest to your blog. Some people take their own pictures and use it for a picture of the week (or picture of the day, or whatever) feature. Others search photo sites such as Flickr and use interesting Creative Commons licensed images. Though I haven’t seen it recently, you could also do a video of the week, either with your own video or by searching YouTube or one of the other video sharing sites. Also note, as in the example below, you don’t have to call it “picture of the week.” Lots of people come up with more creative titles.

Example: Foto Finish Friday

The open-thread post
This one only works if you have a sizable, active community of commenters on your blog. But if you do, this is a great way to give people a chance to talk amongst themselves without having to come up with a blog post to spur conversation. Even for people who regularly use this type of post, I would caution that you probably can’t do it too often. It’s an adjunct to regular posting, but if you have a large community of readers andcommenters , then presumably people are coming to your site for the content and ideas that you provide. Bloggers often kick these off with something short to start the conversation, but the whole value of the post is intended to be in the comments, not the post itself.

Example: Open Thread

The tutorial/how-to post
These types of posts, which show readers how to do something, are also great for linkbait. They are harder to write, though, usually requiring more time, thought and expertise, than the link posts I mentioned above. To make a truly useful, engaging tutorial or how-to post, you have to provide enough information and enough detail that your readers can actually duplicate whatever task or project you’re writing about. Leaving out key details or making the tutorial too advanced for most of your readers (ex. assuming nontechnical readers know how to write code) is a recipe for failure.

Example: How to Drastically Increase Subscriber Numbers to Your Email Newsletter

The link to some news
Linking to a news article, often with a short summary, a quote or a comment, used to be one of the most common types of blog posts. As quality standards have gone up in the blogosphere and it has become more professionalized (yes, I know some people may think that’s a ridiculous statement), these types of posts are becoming less common. Still, if you have a well-established readership and a knack for finding interesting content, these can still work. I wouldn’t try this for a new blog, though.

Example: Running of the bulls

The single-link post
In some ways, this kind of post takes us back to the very beginnings of blogging, when it was often just as much about sharing links as it was about creating content. But a lot oflinksharing has migrated to social bookmarking sites, such as StumbleUpon , and microblogging services, like Twitter. Still, you still see it occasionally on blogs. As with the ‘link to some news’ blog posts, if you have an established readership and a knack for finding interesting stuff, this can still work.

Example: Mickey Kaus: You have to wonder, can the good Bill Gates is doing with his Foundation ever match the suffering caused by Vista?

The review post
Last, but not least, the review post gives you a chance to say what you think about a particular movie, album, book, product, game or whatever. This is a classic way to make money for bloggers who run affiliate ads — review a product and then put up an affiliate link so readers can buy it. But if you have a community of readers that you know are interested in some set of products, whether it’s zydeco music orscrapbooking products, then reviews are a good way to offer substantive, useful content. The downside, at least from the standpoint of a busy blogger, is that these require substantial time, because you’ve got to take the time to actually evaluate the product. But, if you’re using a product anyway, you might as well write a review.

Example: Review: Gears of War 2

So, what have I missed? What other categories of blog posts might provide inspiration for people looking for content ideas for their blog? Please leave your ideas in the comments.

I’ve found several interesting blog posts, articles and other links in the last few days and thought I’d clear them out with a blog post.

• Guy Kawasaki has a good, but somewhat controversial post, about “How to use Twitter as a twool.”
• If you have a blog or other content site, and you’re using an email newsletter as part of your outreach, Problogger Darren Rowse has some great ideas about how to use your email newsletter and an autoresponder to drive even more traffic to your web site.
• Think social media is just for big brands with big budgets or dot-come type companies? Think again. A pest control company has adopted social media strategies as a significant, long-term component to its marketing.
• The New York Times asks if new data mining technologies will track us across the Internet and through our mobile communications and ultimately erode our privacy. Might notions about privacy be redefined for the next generation?
• Amazon tries “user-generated public relations.” Is this really new, or just old-school PR techniques applied online?
• ReadWriteWeb says we should stop using TinyURL on microblogging services such as Twitter. I agree – I’m using snipr.com.