To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Reports of the death of press releases are greatly exaggerated.”

Within the public relations and marketing field, there is a segment of practitioners (usually self-proclaimed social media experts) who believe that traditional press releases are outdated and ineffective. They believe you can get the same results by publicizing your news through blogs, podcasts, tweets, social media posts, etc.

Not to burst their bubble, but a recent survey of journalists worldwide says differently.

In May and June of 2010, the Oriella PR Network, an alliance of 15 public relations agencies around the world, conducted a survey of 750 journalists in 15 countries. Of the respondents, 75 percent said a traditional e-mailed press release from a PR professional is useful to them if it is “high quality and well targeted.”

Hard-copy press releases are less well-received, with only 7.62 percent of respondents indicating they were useful.

If you want to increase your chances of getting coverage, include visuals, videos or links to more information. About 52 percent of journalists surveyed indicated visuals such as photographs were helpful; 30.75 percent said a link to a microsite with more information about a story was useful; and 27.56 percent indicated they found audiovisual content like links to short videos helpful.

That’s not to say that social media tools don’t have their proponents as well. Social media newsrooms were deemed helpful by 17.45 percent of respondents; 15.65 percent said social media news releases (formatted for online publications) were helpful; and 10.36 percent said Twitter channels were useful (down from 16.07 percent in 2009).

To optimize public relations efforts, S&A Cherokee staff work to compile the right messages, format, supplementary materials and media lists. That helps ensure that our targeted releases convey useful information to the appropriate editors/reporters and not waste their time or our clients’ money.

To discover how S&A Cherokee can help with your marketing and public relations needs, contact us for a free consultation at (919) 674-6020.