"No PDF Press Releases, Please!" van Amy Gahran is deel 7 in de serie van "Online Media Outreach: 10 Ways to Meet Journalists’ Needs Online". Ze roept op om te stoppen met het verspreiden van persberichten via een PDF-bestand en het via het web te doen. Haar argumenten:
1. YOU SHOULD PUBLISH RELEASES ON THE WEB FIRST, ANYWAY!
2. PDF FILES ARE BIGGER
3. PDFs REQUIRE A PDF READER
4. PEOPLE HATE ATTACHED FILES
5. JOURNALISTS DON’T CARE MUCH ABOUT LAYOUT
» No PDF Press Releases, Please! (Online Media Outreach, Part 7)

Online Media Outreach: 10 Ways to Meet Journalists’ Needs Online

Journalists are always in a hurry, today more so than ever before. They want to be able to find your organization online easily, go straight to your news, and learn who to contact by phone or e-mail for more info – virtually immediately. Most of the journalists I know get remarkably peeved by web sites and other online operations that waste their time or that make their job more difficult. A peeved journalist can wreak considerable havoc. If your organization values media coverage and wants to foster good working relationships with journalists, follow these 10 tips:

1. Create an easy-to-find online pressroom.
2. Include a complete and current list of individual press contacts.
3. Never use a web-based form as the sole channel for media contacts.
4. Include complete, specific contact info on every press release.
5. Publish press releases on your own site first.
6. Make it easy to link to your releases.
7. No PDF press releases, please.
Still to come in this series:
8. Publish your news by webfeed.
9. Offer an optional e-mail press release list.
10. Use real mailing list software (or a service) to distribute e-mail press releases.