[Part Two in a Series.]

As I wrote yesterday:

From its not-so-humble origins 100 years ago (let’s face it, few people in the PR profession can really be called humble), the way we do PR has certainly changed, but until recently, one of the most visible tools of the trade hadn’t changed at all.

Trying to find any kind of history of the press release itself beyond its origins in 1906 has proven difficult. The fact is we don’t even know why we do some things we do in press releases (ending releases with -30- or ### for instance).

Nevertheless, there are some things we do know. Let’s talk about how things have changed in those 100 years…

The Press Room, Take One
Our first stop is the press room. Probably taking his cue in part from the success that railroads and other institutions were enjoying from the press release, U.S. President William McKinley established the first White House Press Room in 1902.

Getting everybody in the same room is great if you can do it, but it’s not always feasible. So PR folks continued to print and mail press releases to their key contacts for years. This practice, and the overall practice of PR, grew relatively unchecked for several years.

While Edward Bernays led the call for a code of ethics for PR–despite the fact that he tended to push the limits–there was little oversight of what could be said, beyond our traditional libel and slander laws. That changed with the creation of the SEC in 1933 and 1934, where increasing scrutiny was put on corporations after the stock market crash, and perhaps again in 1950 with the creation of the PRSA Code of Ethics.

While the practice of PR advanced, there’s little evidence that the press release has changed much since the 1950s, or for that matter, the early 1900s.

Wires and Faxes
in 1954, PR Newswire “transmitted the first electronic commercial news release to 12 media outlets in New York, changing the way the media gathers and retrieves information.”

I would argue that this wasn’t quite such a dramatic change as PR Newswire would make it out to be–the Associated Press had been sharing stories with media using the (telegraph) wires since its founding in 1848. But it did change how press received company information.

The advent of the fax machine meant another change in how information was disseminated from companies to the media and other information consumers–I’m still amazed at how many media outlets still use faxes.

Web 1.0 and the New Press Room
Despite going at least partially digital, press releases still looked the same in 1996 as they did in 1906.

Now let’s jump to the early “brochureware” days of the web. Once the Internet was opened up to commercial use and the World Wide Web matured enough as a marketing medium to support it, companies began to put up static, boring websites. As the technology advanced, companies added press releases and other information to their sites. Soon, the online press room was born.

Online press rooms were great, right? Well, yes, maybe, but only if people found them. Finding stuff on the Internet is easy. Finding the right stuff can be challenging. Thus was born the practice of search engine optimization.

Feeding the Search Engine Beast
As Harry Hoover wrote on MarketingProfs:

In the not-so-distant pre-Internet past, press releases were aimed solely at trade and consumer media outlets. The media acted as the gatekeepers, taking your information and making decisions about how, or whether, to use it. Organizations today are able to bypass the media filter in a number of ways, thanks to the Net.

[Y]ou need to think differently about writing your releases in this new age. You can extend the power of your press releases beyond the media by positioning them for search engines. In effect, your press releases become a long-lasting, online, searchable database about your organization.

To position a press release for search engines, you have to think in terms of both keywords and distribution.

The keywords part is easy, in a sense–it’s something PR people have been doing intuitively since the founding of the field. After all, it’s all about staying on message. But it can also be tricky. Even though your client is trying to promote the creation of a new market segment (i.e., “we’re not a widget company, we’re the leading gadget company”), to get in the search engine game, you’d better butter both sides of your toast. But, as we’ll see in my next post, there are problems with keywords.

But you can have the most keyword-optimized press release in the world; if you don’t have a good distribution mechanism for the release, no one will ever see the keywords. Companies like BusinessWire, PR Newswire and PR Web solve this problem. They’ve built relationships with all the major media outlets, and there is a system in place that allows consumers to have relatively easy access to information provided by companies–just enter the ticker symbol.

And Along Came the Blog
At the tail end of the 20th century, the blog evolved out of a combination of what has been described as “escribitionist” behaviors and new web technologies. Really nothing more than an easy-to-use website, the blog evolved into a new form of journalism–the citizen journalist or consumer-generated media.

Not too much later (around 2003 or so), corporate and even CEO blogs started popping up. Soon, these more “authentic voices” were popping up all over the place in the corporate world, and all of a sudden the press release started looked a little stuffy in comparison. The end of the press release as we knew it was near.

On our next stop, we’ll take a look at the shortfallings of the traditional press release.

[Read the next installment.]

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