New Media: Staying Visible in the Internet Age

 published 2006

Are you still writing for, and distributing your media releases through, the conventional media - newspapers, magazines, television and radio?  If so in today’s ‘new media’ age you are probably missing a good proportion of your target market.

In fact US research indicates that today’s consumer is increasingly regarding the internet almost as much of a news source as traditional media.

The study, by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that the internet is increasingly becoming a primary source of news for Americans outpacing traditional local and national newspapers.

When asked where they got their news from 43 percent of respondents included the internet - more than the 38 percent who said they had read a local newspaper and 17 percent who said they had read a national paper.

The only media ranking above the internet among the 3011 respondents were 57 percent who included local television among their sources, 49 percent included national television and 49 percent included radio.

The study found that 70 percent of adult Americans had access to the internet, and half of those had a home broadband connection.

 Australians are not far behind with 56% of households having access to a computer at home (ABS Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2004-05) and that means your potential “New Media” audience is huge.

So next time you are sending out your media release ensure it is also placed on the internet.  However, ensuring web traffic on your press release can be difficult in the ever-growing mindfield of Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Search engines use 'bots' to scour the web hunting for words, analysing articles and ranking them. They don't rate on style, humour or content, but on algorithms instead.

Already the media is changing the way they write headlines on their web sites to accommodate this complex process in a bid to stay on the search engines first page.

Knowing how to write for this medium has become a skill in its own right, adding another aspect on to the abilities of PR agencies. The question is ‘does your PR agency have these skills?’