Two weeks ago in my International Human Rights Clinic we had a class on press releases without one mention in the readings of how to promote press online.  My critical response for the week focused on how to blog.  Here are the highlights:

  • Add visuals – Visuals draw people to text, they also get you hits from Google image search.
  • Make headlines simple and direct, do not hide the ball with a witty headline
  • Add meta data and tags to increase Search Engine Optimization
  • Use broadcast tools to promote the press release – Twitter, Facebook, Digg, reddit, your blog, your orgs blog, list serves, Slide share, YouTube. In the human rights context use Witness for videos and for legal docs use JD Supra.
  • License your work for others to share your message with Creative Commons Licenses (this blog is under a public domain dedication)
  • Consider using multi media – a cheap 5 min video will get you 10X the number of hits a text post will over the long term
  • Provide links to related works
  • Invite community feed back – open comments
  • Enable community action – do not just give people a story give them a way to take action!
  • Provide links to related articles – see end of post
  • Make it easy for your reader to educate themselves through the press release with links. (to wikipedia or relevant sites)
  • Promote others that are talking about the same topic (see Cory’s video at end of post)
  • Keep it short 200- 400 words for short posts, no more then 1500 words ever.  If you are going over 750 word you better have an amazing reason.

Cory Doctorow: How to be an uber blogger:

Further reading:
Slate Review of Huffington’s guide on how to blog
Four steps to a great Nonprofit Blog by Sarah Davies

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