Press Releases Now Adding Multimedia

Your small business can now take advantage of a new trend in press releases by using a Multimedia News Release (MNR). Instead of releasing a text version you release a whole package – it can include 3-5 minutes of video and/or audio, photos, brochures, PDF’s and text.

If you don’t have video you can use photos to create an animated slide show. The idea is to cover all of the bases in one package for prospective customers.

Previously, you would use text news releases through someone like PRWeb.com

For multimedia press releases there are distribution companies out there, the most prominent one being MultiVu at PRNewswire.com, which I believe originated the idea.

They can broadcast your MNR nationally on the PR Newswire, submit your video to online video portals, allow embedding of your video on other sites or blogs, submit links to Social Media sites, add your photos to photo galleries, add it to their email marketing list and provide links to other files like PDF’s or longer videos hosted on your site or elsewhere.

Another company, AtomicPR, has offices in the U.S. and London. A similar company in Canada is CNW Group.

The whole idea of a home office or small business having a web site is owning your own broadcast medium – audio, video, pictures and text – that you control. This has the added advantage of taking your content, in whatever form, and distributing it on the web.

The advantage is disseminating your brand and/or products, drawing in potential customers and adding external links to your web site.

Caution: in the same way that the old text style news releases were supposed to be about news, not sales, your release isn’t a sales come-on. It should pique everyone’s interest and lead them to your site for more information. Your site is where you make your sales pitch.