AllinaComm

If you want to write a “search-engine friendly” news release (and you should if you write news releases), take a look at this two-page tip sheet from Shift Communications, a Boston and San Fran PR firm. Lots of good suggestion that are easy to integrate into your writing…

4. Use the most popular keyword phrase in the headline, which carries the most weight with search engines, as well as in the body of the release and in hyperlinks.

and a few that take a bit more effort…

12. Include rich media content such as images and videos that will augment search engine pick up in places such as Google Images or Google Video. Be sure all media?rich content is appropriately tagged with keywords.

Press releases optimized with keywords and hyperlinks have been proven to increase traffic to websites, improve search engine rankings and secure greater coverage in the media. These tips can help you maximize the value of the work you’ve already done writing your release.

This is the Wall Street Journal article Amy mentioned in the Wednesday meeting about nonprofit hospitals.

Nonprofit Hospitals, Once For the Poor, Strike It Rich

Also this WSJ Health blog item.

On Top of Tax Breaks, Nonprofit Hospitals Reap Big Profits

The media monitoring firm CustomScoop’s Ike Pigot on how to leverage media convergence for our own PR goals. CustomScoop is a media monitoring firm that sponsors the For Immediate Release podcast (highly recommended) and includes a brief commentary on newmedia/pr issues in each episode of FIR. This is from the March 13 FIR.

 

 Media Convergence and PR Basics [1:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Relax. No one here is as crazed as the folks in the this NY Time story. Still………..

They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Read the article here.

For those ex-newsies among us, the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today.

http://www.pulitzer.org/2008/2008.html

Be aware that the big award (public service) winner is the Washington Post for it’s work on a series of stories exposing the poor treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Hospital.

So, it’s not just disasters and politics. Reporters can make their bones on our collective carcasses.

No locals among all the winners or finalists.