By Jenalee Savage

What good is a press release if no one reads it? In order to make your release a reader’s dream come true (and perhaps an editor’s as well), there are a few approaches and design/layout elements that you should be taking advantage of. What if you just…

• Write a brief, but catchy, headline
• Use a few bullet points
• Utilize bolding, italics and underlines
• Cough up some quotes

Let me elaborate on the above recommendations.

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By Renee Sylvestre-Williams

It’s been a busy week on the Small Business and Sysomos blogs.

Tannette Johnson-Elie took a look at how mentors can help small business entrepreneurs while Kelli Korducki wondered how companies can establish a corporate dress code.

Bad names happen all the time but a kids’ store named after an overblown, overwrought book about imprisonment and death? If you’re of a certain demographic, you may have read Flowers in the Attic. Angelica Moreno shows us why you really need to do some market research.

Entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den Arlene Dickinson launched Arlene Dickinson Enterprises this week for entrepreneurs.

On the Sysomos blog, Sheldon Levine looks at baseball’s 2012 World Series. If you’re not into sports but love politics, take a look at who won the three presidential debates and what Canadians think of the US elections (a lot).

Plus there’s all the great content on this blog. Like we said, it’s been a busy week!

By Gail McInnes

Before social media took over traditional media, many brands participated in product seeding, where groups of individuals in targeted demographics were paid to test out products and casually mention it in conversations. These were the original professional influencers – hired guerrilla marketers who were apt in the art of subtlety. (more…)

By Adam Lovinus

Editors and journalists are bombarded by hundreds of press releases each day, each one drafted with the same goal in mind — placement in a news story somewhere. So what makes a press release successful? Is there a formula for writing a press release that grabs newsmakers’ attention so that your company’s news winds up in a publication or on a broadcast? Well, no, of course there isn’t. But there are several things you can do to entice the media to make your news their news. (more…)

By Ryan LeClaire

If you don’t write a lot of news releases, it’s easy to forget how to write one.

Of course, formats can be slightly different, depending on what country you’re in and what newswire provider you’re with. However the following is a list of standard news release must-haves that you need to keep in mind. Be sure to consult your provider’s style guide to get a clearer picture of what you need. (more…)

By Deborah Baum, Senior Editor

Journalists are well aware of the Man Bites Dog[1] phenomenon in public relations and journalistic writing. No one reports that all things are flowing smoothly and going as planned; all news is news because it is unusual and interesting. Just be careful — this technique tends to put journalists on their guard. It’s fine to report the news in an arresting manner, but be aware that the more inflammatory the copy, the more care your company will need to take in order to keep the reader at ease with the information. Using too much bait-and-switch verbiage will easily become confusing and repulse interest in your news.

Here are a few tips to eliminate confusing text and help keep the focus of a press release on the news announcement: (more…)

By Eugene Borisenko, Senior Account Executive – Chicago

Nick Marshall, a successful ad exec from Chicago, woke up one morning and realized he could hear what women were thinking.  He was exposed to the full array of inner workings of female brains, no matter if they were strangers, colleagues or family members.  In plain speak, Nick asuddenly became witness to a real-time stream of unstructured verbatim data from about half of the world’s population.

This scenario is a plot of What Women Want, a romantic comedy starring Mel Gibson, released in 2001.  To some extent, the situation is similar to where many companies found themselves during the advent of social media, witnessing an entire new dimension of data pertaining to their businesses without much of a plan of how to utilize the multitude of social conversations in the cyber space. (more…)

By Anna Jeon, guest blogger and recent attendee at Social Media Week.

“Hire for passion, train for skills.”

This was one of social media strategist and author Jay Baer’s many recommendations when considering candidates to fill a community manager or social media coordinator position. (more…)

By Natalie Leal

Chances are you’re well-versed in the industry you’re writing about. But there is a possibility your readers will be scratching their heads after they read your in-depth description of virtual desktop infrastructure, Software-as-a-Service, or dynamic random access memory. And if they feel like they’re reading another language, and it drags on, they may tune out. Consider learning about the importance of brevity in a press release, if keeping readers is important to you. It won’t take long, I promise! (more…)

By Mark Evans

Is Google+ worth your time?

It’s a question many brands and individuals have probably been asking since the service was launched in July, 2011 after more than a year of work behind the scenes.

On the surface, it seems that Google+ has been a huge success with more than 100 million “active” investors among the 400 million people who have signed up for the service, which lets people share information and communicate with friends and business colleagues.

Even so, there seems to be ambivalence about Google+, which Google describes as a  “social layer” that sits on top of its other services – as opposed to a social network. (more…)

By Ryan LeClaire, Marketing Producer

There are a million reasons that your press release can succeed and only a few things that can hold it back. However, 90% of all press releases contain at least one of these mistakes and quickly makes the content easily forgettable and dismissible.

Here are five quick questions you can ask yourself as you write your release or while you’re reading it over. (more…)

By John Miles, Associate Editor

You’ve created the perfect press release, replete with groundbreaking information, a defined audience and a snappy headline that’s sure to grab the reader’s attention. All set for distribution, right? Sure, providing timely, relevant information to journalists and bloggers is still the single-most important aspect of a distributing a press release. Yet, without considerations for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you’re only ensuring that your release will be distributed, not discovered. (more…)

By Lauren Barlow, Associate Editor

“You don’t get a second chance at a first impression.” This statement holds true in many regards, including when writing a press release. The first paragraph of your release will either grab the reader’s attention, or make them lose interest and move on. Pull them in to keep reading by including the most pertinent and interesting facts up front.

The following tips will help make your first paragraph memorable, informative, and most importantly, make your audience keep reading:

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By Lisa Davis, Director of Marketing

If you were online today, chances are pretty good you came across an infographic.  You might have liked it enough to tweet it, and maybe you emailed it to a friend.  Heck, you might even be ‘old school’ enough to have printed it and pinned it to the wall of your office cubicle. There’s no doubt that infographics are everywhere.  B2B and B2C companies are producing them by the thousands to communicate information as diverse as oral hygiene and uranium production.  They are posting them to their websites and Facebook pages and building them into their product launches, marketing campaigns and survey results.  But why?

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Our Editors rock! There I said it for all to read. Not only do they juggling multiple clients on a daily basis, they are also ensuring that each client’s news is distributed accurately and on a timely basis.

Though not every Editor can win he Hawk Eye award, the following are two individuals that hand an outstanding month and helped many of our clients. Congratulations to Joshua Moore for noticing several irregularities throughout the month, but his main catch for the month was correcting a dead URL link. He realized that anything after the “.com” in a URL is case sensitive. Changing the case of after the .com corrected the URL and made sure the link was live and active. Not to be outdone, Alberto Carta-Guerrero also noticed that a URL for a client’s webcast was linking to their pervious quarters. Correcting this saved the client a lot of potential embarrassment and the cost of a correction release. Well done guys!

To get to know our winners better, we’ve asked them the following fun questions. Unfortunately Alberto wasn’t able to get his answers to us in time.

Joshua Moore, Associate Editor (Toronto)

• What does Beyond Words mean to you?
  Media, especially press and news media, are drastically changing as we move full-force into an almost exclusively digital era of communications. Words alone are no longer sufficient. We must communicate with all media in order to connect. It is our role to facilitate that this communication extends far “beyond words.”
• What’s your favourite movie?
  Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”
• What’s your favourite movie quote?
  “And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint.”
• What’s your favourite colour?
  Green. It’s just so lively!
• What’s your favourite day of the week?
  Wednesdays: that’s my night out after work. $3 bottles of beer at the pub near my house are pretty much the most exciting thing I do outside of work.
• Cat or Dog?
  Living in the city, I’d only ever have a cat. If I had more space, I’d keep both as pets. I always grew up with 2 dogs and 2 cats.
• What was the last book you read?
  “The Favourite Game” by Leonard Cohen
• If you could meet anyone dead or alive, who would that be?
  Rod Serling (from the Twilight Zone) or Alfred Hitchcock.
• If you could travel to any region in the world, where would it be?
  I would love to spend a good amount of time somewhere rural in the West Indies. Alternatively, Northern Italy.
• Mac or PC?
  PC, running Windows and Ubuntu.
• Windows, IOS, or Android?
  Android forever!
• If I could eat any food what would it be?
  I feel like I could probably eat any food that I want nowadays, in this Global Village. However, I have always wanted to eat sushi that’s been properly prepared.
• If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you want with you?
  A copy of James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.” Oh, and probably a big knife.
• What would you do during a zombie attack?
  This really depends on where I am when it goes down. I would secure the area, prevent anyone from getting in or out, and figure out what available provisions I have. I have a firm plan at my apartment, but if this happened while at work, then we’d definitely have too many people to just board ourselves up.
• Anything else you want to share?
  I think the work we do at Marketwire is very important, and we are on the forefront of a new generation of communications. I hope that we can all learn from one another so that we can collectively become the leaders in not only-traditional media, but masters of the internet. Yeah, I said “masters of the internet.”

Congratulations to you both and everyone else in Editorial who do amazing work on a daily basis.

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! So it’s not a legitimate holiday (you can’t take days off) but it is recognized around the world by people talking like an old-time pirate.

Of course we had to see what the world is saying about International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrgh!  (more…)

By Alex Hoag, Account Executive

Most mornings I start off spending a couple minutes combing through my Twitter feed. I am always finding fresh content that evokes new conversation topics to use when reaching out to potential customers. Recently, I came a across a three part series, written by Don Peppers (@DonPeppers), published by Fast Company, regarding customer service. Each article took a stab at ways to embrace customer service and inspired me to write about the importance of a consistent communication system. (more…)

Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge, nee Kate Middleton, is on tour of  the South Pacific and the Solomon Islands with her husband Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge as part of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.

The tour is already being declared a success but it has been marred by the announcement by France’s Closer magazine of topless photos of the Duchess.  (more…)

By Karen Geier

Last week, we talked about getting your visual elements of branding off the ground. This week, I’m going to help you find your brand’s voice, and develop your ‘Tone and Manner’ document. (more…)

As summer wraps up, another one of our local Marketwire soccer team (football to those outside of North America) finishes their quest. The Marketwire FC team from Toronto includes Morgan Chmara, Heather Sinclair, Janelle Seto, Absal Abdulhafedh, David Black, Cam Steed, Homam Estwani, Ivan Aranda, Amir Jafary, Michael Perulli, Mike Cui, Matthew Tunzi, Clive Woodrow and Raghunath Krishnan. The team, from different departments within our organization, finished their summer quest by placing second in their Danforth Tech division from a group of eight. During their spring season the team finished fourth and as expected they are extremely happy with their summer results. Their great second place finish resulted in the team being invited to open the fall tournament to be held this weekend (September 15 –16).

Overall Standings

The team had a game every week for 8 weeks and only met once a week for their games. Understanding their roles on the team contributed to their great success.

Left to Right Top: Absal, Cam, Homam, Clive Left to Right Bottom: Ivan, Morgan, Janelle, Heather, Raghu

Left to Right Top: Amir, Ivan, Clive, Morgan, Heather, Michael Perulli, Janelle, Absal, Matthew Tunzi Bottom: Homam

Congratulations everyone on amazing team work and on your second place finish! We can’t wait to hear how your Fall Season plays out and if you are in the area, make sure you get out there and support them on their goal of finishing number one!