Press releases are NOT a PR strategy

Great graphic from the original post by Tom Foremski

When I published the first edition of my book in 2005, I wrote that there seems to be a powerful misconception in the business world that public relations is composed simply of press releases — that a so-called “PR Strategy” is sending out announcements as often as possible.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of businessmen and women, from neophyte to seasoned executive, equate PR with press releases. The terms are interchangeable in their minds. No wonder the media want to barricade their virtual doors from press releases, which are as fast and misguided as attacking zombies.

Here it is four years later, and I was glad to see Adam Singer of The Future Buzz comment on the same topic in his August 17th post, “If you want press, don’t send a press release.”  Here is an excerpt from it:

• Press releases are not dead and still serve a function, but that function is for wire service distribution, not email or one-to-one.
• I’m happy to write on companies and do so frequently – I fully embrace the PR-blogger relationship, (go ask Shutterstock, one of the few companies to approach me intelligently) but a press release as an introduction probably won’t make it very far.

With that said, I invite businesses, PR pros and marketers to send press releases directly.  I do read all of them.  But if you actually want me to spend time writing about your product, service or company don’t send me a press release.  Not once have I written a story based off an unsolicited press release that was emailed.

So if press releases aren’t a PR strategy, what is?   I’ll cover that in a future post.