Now here’s a subject close to my heart, the continued usefulness or otherwise of the age old press release. Publisher Ragan Communications and PollStream carried out a survey in the States, which found that only 49% of PRs think ‘it’s as useful as ever’, while 33% thought it was a ‘necessary evil.’

Ragan’s Lindsey Miller says press releases are becoming ever less useful due to – yep, you guessed it – social media. According to Marketing Charts, Ragan’s take is that communicators are using social media to get around ‘canned’ information and to target and reach journalists. And obviously via Twitter lists is yet another way that can be done.

I guess it all depends what you define a ‘press release.’ Does it really have to follow the conventional standard for it to be classed as one? For example, some companies have started using blog posts in place of standard releases – Twitter is a prime example. It’s something that makes sense in certain circumstances but to my mind, a corporate post is a release of sorts.

Image – Bohman

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When it comes to getting “e-noticed”, it really is a case of less is more.

As reported by Canada.com, Epsilon, “the world’s largest permission-based email marketer”, found that a shorter subject length and the order in which you put your words, will increase the chances of your email getting opened by the recipient.

Epsilon looked at 1.1 billion messages sent by consumer facing companies between June 2007 and 2008. Shorter subject lines had a greater chance of being noticed, but more important was to front-load the most important information first and to use so called ‘power words’.

For example, Carol Panasiuk of PR agency Cohn & Wolfe is quoted in the post as saying, “I sometimes put HELP! as my subject line when I need to get my husband’s attention. I don’t really like to mislead people with come-ons but if you can make it somewhat humorous, that’s great. My cousin sent me an e-mail with the subject line: ‘Recession is over.’ I opened it up to see pictures of him having fun on vacation in Arizona.”

Moreover, there’s an incentive to getting straight to the point. According to Epsilon’s study, 57% of email recipients will only see the first 38 to 47 characters of a subject line. That’s partially because a lot of emails are now read on mobile devices like blackberries and iPhones, where not the whole message is initially visible.

Then there’s also the phenomenon of ‘power browsing’, something we’ve talked about in the past. That when presented with a detailed piece of information, research has showed that even academics won’t take all of it in.

A piece of advice I’ve always remembered from one my first bosses, that he used to give when media training clients, is to ‘speak in headlines.’ So rather than the standard narrative of beginning – middle – end, that most of us use when describing something where the punch line comes at the end, start with the conclusion much like a press article does.

Squeezing your point into those first 38 characters is something that’s worth remembering, whether that’s in terms of pitching a story to a journalist, applying for a job or trying to get the ear of someone in a position of influence. 38 characters? Makes expressing yourself in the 140 characters Twitter gives you a real luxury.

Image – TimmyGunz