Micro press release on Twitter brings coverage or leads?

Press releases as used to be

Formerly specialized agencies used to send out Press Releases to the press bureaus and offices in the world.
This was a selective process as only the press agencies could communicate with the press or press bureaus.
A well defined format of page layout with predefined paragraphs was being used.
Anyway these were costly undertakings to get the company or product in the press.

The Internet PR

Then the Internet enabled the free press releases.
Now anyone could just post a press release on one or many of the press release syndication websites. Your press release could get exposed to the entire world within hours at no cost.
The free press releases has several drawbacks:
- your press release was accompanied by advertising for other companies that could be related or not – or even competition.

The format was less strict as anyone could write-up a press release and no format is imposed.
Although the distribution is over the Internet, getting your PR in print is less likely.

Still the option exists to post the press release using a renowned press release syndication for a certain fee, with the benefit of getting into the printed media too.

The MicroPR

Now recently (May 15,2008) Brian Solis created the MicroPR – the micro press release using Twitter.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging.

You can post a micro press release directly to the community of journalists and bloggers on MicroPR or you can target a specific journalist or editor. The number of journalists and bloggers is limited.
Still this channel opens up the process of press releases even further than the Internet: free and direct.

MicroPR format: requires clever writing

The format makes it a micro press release as you start with only 140 characters for a Twitter message.
Additionally you need to specify the header: @microPR (8 characters) and in case of addressing a specific journalist @reportername (abut 10 characters).
Thus in case you include a journalist, there are only 120 characters including spaces left over.
@microPR …………………………………………………………………….. @reportername
As you need to include your company or product name (or preferably the website), then the message shrinks to less than 100 characters.
@microPR www.LEADSExplorer.com……………………………………….. @reportername
Or you can send a second tweet with solely your url, but then the receiver needs to combine them afterwards.

Due to the limitation of 100 characters, one has to be very brief and clever to write something interesting still having sense, or send multiple messages.

In any case the format is a far cry from the standard Press Releases in the print media.

Trying MicroPR

If you don’t try you will never know.
We tried it out, first apparently a broadcast, as we didn’t read the complete manual.
Next we handpicked a journalist: Gabe Rivera of Techmeme. (Please accept our apologies, we hope you don’t mind we picked you)
And gave it a try.
Now we wonder if the MicroPR will be read or not.

There is a special page on twitter to read these MicroPR messages. Or you can also run active searches or feeds on Summize or TweetScan.
Currently there is not much content.

By looking at the pages, our messages start looking like spam, as we used several tweets to get the message clear. And some tweets seem to be duplicated as there are two originators: Engago and MicroPR?

Impact?

Will it really have an impact?
Will we get references on the Internet?
Will we get press or bloggers interest or not?

The long way: if this gets some press coverage, then people in companies could read about our solution and could become interested.

If we get some press or blog posts, generating additional visitors or even leads, then we will let you know.