Does Your PR Read Like This?

Do you want to run a successful business? Communicate effectively with your communities. Employees, customers, partners, developers, investors, whatever the case may be. If both you and the other achieve a mutual goal through communication, then you will be successful in applying social media to business as well.

There are two dangers in communications:

1. you don't have a clearly defined goal, therefore you don't know where you're going
2. you're speaking a different language, therefore there is a disconnect in understanding 

In both cases, you won't be able to take the other with you. In essence, you'll be talking to yourself. No call to action for the first one. Nobody home on the the second - the audience has no idea what you're talking about. You don't believe me?

Let's take a peak at what happens when the press release is written by top consultants used to working with upper management:

Company XYZ Unveils Ground Breaking, Scalable, Value Added,

Solution Driven, Easy to Use Widget

Date -- Company XYZ today introduced an innovative, market-leading, mission critical, world class widget that aligns XYZ and ABC best of breed capabilities, providing customers with cutting edge, turnkey, holistic solutions for their flexible widget requirements across the technology infrastructure enabling peak performance.

See what I mean? It takes sophistication to read this masterpiece. Let's get practical instead, then. See what would happen if sales wrote the release:

Leading Company XYZ Pushes Totally Awesome,

Cheap, Fast, and Good Widget

Date -- Leading company XYZ today announced the best ever widget in the market. It will ensure you never have to worry again about a thing. It will do things you haven't thought about, yet. Want a custom version? No problem. This unparalleled jewel will take you to the next century easily. It uses the most advanced technologies with literally hundreds of millions spent to give you the very best. Now more than ever, you need the thousands of hours of experience we have. Buy now!

Much more down to earth. However, you may be the kind of audience that needs some technical information to evaluate a product. No worries, product engineering comes to the rescue:

Widget 5683372134N is a Right-Sized Product for the Enterprise

from Company XYZ

Date -- Widget 5683372134N by Company XYZ was launched today. Configured with side pockets and right-sized for the enterprise, it meets the specs and requirements of WWW technologies and the NZ784492 ARP systems. It solves complex algorithms when in full load and has a capacity of 7,096 18-bit words, memory cycle time of 3.0 microseconds. It works with DGST, RVO, MNO and M7Ms. It's robust, resilient, and can be expanded.

Better, isn't it? Now we have a lot more technical detail to sink our teeth into. Do we have an ending for this post? See if you can write the press release as if it were for the customer.

Widget will do the Job of Your Old One -- Better and Cheaper!
by Company XYZ

Date -- Widget announced by Company XYZ today. It will be on sale at your favorite online store, do the job you need done better, and be cheaper than the previous one. Need a new widget? Wonder what's out there? We'll make it easy as possible for you to see what everyone already said about it, and buy it with one click. And no, we won't track you for the rest of your browsing history.

That's the final lesson. It's not very sexy, but no matter what you feel your company or product's best features are, no matter how well you communicate between management, sales, and engineering, the language you must really write in is increasingly the one your customers speak.

With social media, you have the opportunity to go direct. You can expand your news to include more technical information for later browsing. You can test to see if stories and other kinds of descriptions work online, definitely include images and comments by others. 

Write your PR like this, or else you're just talking to yourself.

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