Direct To Consumer Press Release: or News Release

If you haven't lived in a cave in the Himalayas for the last fifty years, you've been exposed to the ever-increasing barrage of advertising in the media.  With the advent of digital communications methods, like digital broadcasting, cable systems, and the internet, the number of avenues for advertising has grown logarithmically since the early '90s.  With all those channels for communication, the paradigms of advertising and press releases and public relations are breaking down.

Old style advertising and press releases are built on the presumption of media scarcity.  When there were only three television networks (Yes, there was a time within living memory when this was true!), advertising could be more intrusive, because there weren't nearly as many options for "channel hopping".  Unfortunately, as digital media has grown, the people creating it haven't changed their focus to take advantage of it, and we get an ever more discordant, shrill cacophony of work aimed at our attention spans.

Which leads to the first rule of advertising and press releases:  Talk to the consumer, not at them.  The modern media consumer is well versed in the idea of filtering out content that doesn't benefit them here and now.  Watching your kids; they're usually watching television while surfing the web, instant messaging their friends, and probably listening to music while checking out video clips at the same time.  All ostensibly while they're doing their homework even.  This sort of multitasking means that when something doesn't communicate with them directly, it gets filtered out of the mix until something interesting does come on.

With press releases, you need to focus on making your message appeal to your targeted demographic.  It has to be interesting to them, and it has to show them the immediate benefit they get from paying attention to it, or show them the benefit they get for grabbing your product.  So, inform people about your product, like in a conventional press release, but tailor your message to the audience who's going to get it.  Most modern press release exploders have both media exposure on press releases, and an direct connection RSS type feed, where people can use Real Simple Syndication to get press releases that match tags that interest them. 

When you write direct-to-consumer press releases, it's a fine line between informing the recipients about your company's news, and direct sales; you want to lead them to conclusions, rather than present them with it all wrapped up for them; they want to "figure it out" for themselves based on the information you give them, so keep the sales pitch somewhat light, but keep the informatics direct and personal.  If your content management software allows customers to comment, or post link-backs, even better – let your customers do your advertising for you by word of mouth and links.