Rabu, 20 Juni 2012

Twitter - News at the Speed of Light

News is driven by speed. The media outlet that breaks the story first leads their competitors, and consumers reward those media outlets that get the timeliest news to them first.

It's true.  When you see the scrolling banner at the bottom of the TV that says "Breaking News", what do you do?  You stop and watch and listen.  When listening to the radio and you hear the announcer interrupt the song with a "news flash" - you immediately pay attention.  The most recent news is the most relevant, and media outlets have worked for decades to be the "first" to get the news to you before their competition.

Guess what?  Web 2.0 and the Internet have turned this news model upside down.  Now, instead of the news teams racing to the scene of an airliner accident to be the first with live video, and the first to interview the eyewitnesses, the first to break the news is no longer the media outlet.  The first person to break the news is the eyewitness, or even the person who was in the accident.  How? With Twitter. Twitter now breaks news at the speed of light.  Did you know that when the Continental airliner crashed into the Hudson River this year, that one of the passengers that survived the crash landing Twittered his friends, and even sent photos?  Instead of the news media outlet interviewing the survivor and breaking the news - the survivor was breaking the news himself via Twitter, with a real time update that he sent to his followers that they could then forward on.

The Internet and social media have transitioned power to the actual newsmakers, and away from the media outlets.  Does this mean that modern day media outlets will soon become outdated?  No - but it does mean that the speed of breaking news has just accelerated rapidly to almost near time information.  Twitter not only allows an individual to share news rapidly, it also is a simple way to share that information rapidly amongst a large amount of followers.   Now, rather than relying on a reporter in the field racing to the scene, the news media outlet has an army of millions of "news reporters" who can share breaking news with them instantly via Twitter as it happens.

Twitter also provides the immediate relevancy of news that the search engines have been looking for. When you search up the terms for "Hudson river airliner crash" on your favorite search engine after hearing about the accident, you don't want to find search results that share articles that are several years old.  The older search algorithms would often do this, as the "old news" had been indexed in the search engines and was deemed most relevant to your search.  The search engines have recognized the lightning speed of news via Twitter, and are already rewarding Twitter posts with immediate relevancy on the search engines.

News at the speed of light, online, and with your traditional media outlets.   Twitter has provided another breakthrough in providing breaking news as fast as possible.

Minggu, 03 Juni 2012

Airlines Press Release Ideas While Buying New Airplanes

Buying a new airplane is a big deal for any airlines. It makes news, period. So, PR managers have got a lot of works to do when their companies are going to make such deals. They can start the publication of the news from the time when the deal is made between the airline and the manufacturer. It, of course, depends on the policies of the companies, but possibilities are there no matter what the boards of directors may decide.

Some Airline Press Releases Ideas at the Beginning

Like I have mentioned at the very start of the process, this can make great news. You can mention the following facts in each news copy you publish after the contract is made between your company and the manufacturer. Here are some suggested ideas for PR managers:

The deal is made between A and B companies

This number of airplanes are bought by A company

The delivery schedule of airplanes are announced

The new technology applied at these airplanes are so and so

At these new airplanes X number of new services will be added, etc

Then, as soon as the delivery of the airplanes commences, you can publish more airline press releases for your company and explain:

How many you have received and how many more are there to be delivered

How your company has scheduled the first flights with them

How travelers could book flying with them

When the flight schedule for these new planes are

What new services you have included in these flights, etc

And also you can use particular news distribution services that allow you to publish a few photos as well as videos with your press releases to illustrate what you are talking about.

Finally, when all the planes are delivered to your company, you can publish a series of more PRs announcing:

The entire fleet of your airplanes at your airline and each type of plane

The new destinations you have added consequently

The benefits of flying on these airplane for the far destinations

The benefits of flying on these airplane for business travelers

The benefits of flying on these airplane for frequent travelers to certain destinations, etc

Again this list can be quite long and this indicates the creativity you can implement with airline press release topics. Of course, the ideas introduced at this post are just exemplary in order to provoke some ideas in your minds. I am sure PR managers can come up with more appropriate and effective titles and topics themselves.

Use Generous Press Release Distribution Services

What I call generosity is the possibility to post links to the inner pages of your site, publish images with your content, embed videos and slides within your news copy, etc. There are a lot of them that are not so open to these new ideas or have not yet incorporated such ideas in their publications.

Actually, you make your news release more interesting, informative and engaging with such additions. So, they are not fancy items to beautify your content. Each of them could serve several purposes.