Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

Putting Multimedia Presentations into Press Releases - Part 1

Podcast Video | Posted by Phil Leigh on June 10, 2008

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If you would like to learn how to embed multimedia presentation in your press releases, this program is for you.

The multimedia press release is not merely an idea whose time has come; it is one that is long overdue! Although I receive most press releases via email, they are still composed as though the delivery mechanism is the U.S. Postal Service. Moreover, they are overflowing with bad writing and technology companies are the worst offenders. Nearly all of their characteristically jargon-filled releases fail miserably to explain why anyone, other than those who wrote them, should have any interest.
An example of a news release that could benefit significantly from an embedded multimedia presentation is this one from the Feedroom.com.  See if you can make sense out of it; or the following excerpt:

“Included in this functionality is the display of synchronous captions for individual videos and an “AccessMap” that provides an HTML representation of the video library with navigation that is comparable to that in the standard user interface. Other features include transcript files for blind users to process while listening to accompanying audio, screen reader or alternative input device capabilities for those unable to use their limbs and speech recognition technology to automatically link to different screens.”

Part One of our program discusses and demonstrates two easy-to-use tools enabling multimedia presentations to be embedded into your press releases, websites, or email and track who is viewing them.

One tool is from BrainShark. If you can use a telephone and narrate a PowerPoint, then you can use BrainShark.

The second tool is named Proclaim from Netbriefings. Anyone who can post to YouTube can use Proclaim.

Part Two of our program follows next week. It will focus on the production and distribution of multimedia presentations from scratch for those of you who decline the benefits of easy-to-use-tools like BrainShark and Proclaim.  We’ll talk about (1) cameras, (2) editing software, (3) website construction, (4) podcasting, (5) webcasting, (6) media hosting, and (7) website hosting, among other topics.

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3 Comments so far
  1. Multimedia for Business » Blog Archive » Putting Multimedia Presentations into Press Releases June 11, 2008 1:07 pm

    […] Watch the video […]

  2. Tom Cross June 12, 2008 8:02 am

    Hi, Phil,
    We put our Flash tutorials in our PR and blog
    http://blog.tmcnet.com/cross-talk/
    Some with audio and some not. We also do podcasts.
    However, I agree with you multi-media PR is long overdue as I have always said “putting static text on the internet, is a waste of the internet.”
    However, we have found that marcom professionals and their bosses still prefer text rather than use Flash, video and other tools.

    Cheers,
    Tom Cross
    Creator of the World’s First And Largest Animated Library on Technology - http://www.techtionary.com and medical tutorials at http://www.msnopedia.com

  3. Phil Leigh June 12, 2008 8:27 am

    Thanks, Tom.

    You make a great point about static text being a waste of the Internet. Nonetheless, as you note, there is no reason to avoid text in the press release, but merely augment it with embedded multimedia presentations.

    Additionally, I believe that the writers of the press releases that I see generally do a poor job of expressing themselves. They could benefit substantially by reading “On Writing Well” by William Zinnser.