In the last article on the Social Media News Release, we discussed reasons to avoid using the SMNR for all of your press releases and that caused quite a buzz 
. That’s not to say that the SMNR is a bad investment altogether. In fact, it’s a pretty good way to start out if you’re new to combining press releases and social media in your business. But as you get increasingly comfortable using the SMNR and want to customize it for your own particular needs, here are some ways to go about it. Remember that if you are using the press release for SEO once you send out that press release, the sites that may be interested by what you have to announce will most likely be the same as the ones that will pick it up again so your added link building juice/benefit will be minimal.
1. Customize the Template. The value of the template is that it allows you to use as many or as few elements as you need. So include whatever you like that you feel will benefit your business and get your message out.
2. Use It on Your Own Website. Once you’ve customized the template, put it up on your own company’s website and nowhere else. After all, the idea is to keep people coming to your website, not to someone else’s. Create your post using blog software as it will automatically produce an RSS feed.
3. Create a Text Version. Once you’ve customized the template and posted it to your blog, create a text-only version to send over the wire. Your text version should be roughly 250 words and should include about 3-4 optimized links. One of those links should be a backlink to the full release that you just posted to your own website. The point here is to get folks to your site. This gets people talking on your own site and helps you build links.
4. Grade Your Press Release. The web is full of tools that will analyze your press releases for you. So take the text-only version and have it analyzed by one of these tools.
5. Send it Out. Send that text-only press release over the wire. This will save you lots of money over the full SMNR template, and people will still get to see the full release when they go to your site.
6. Send SMNR only if you feel that your keywords and industries targeted are very different from your own. For instance if you are a marketing firm and most of the press releases are about marketing but this last one is about an alliance with an airline then this may be a good opportunity to spend those extra bucks in MSNR as that press release will also be distributed on sites that typically will not link back to you because they are in another industry.
So there you have it. The SMNR is a great tool if you customize it and use it in a way that saves you time and energy, and gets potential customers back to your site.
Seomul Evans is a senior Search Engine Marketing consultant specializing in Meta Video Search Engines and SEO articles.
