To register you interest and claim you newsroom and matching release template please email us on charities@pressitt.com

Michelle Gilbert, head of corporate communications at Eurosport, comments: “Pressitt is an excellent service offering companies and organisations fast and effective social media solutions for their digital PR needs. We at Eurosport have been particularly impressed with Pressitt’s enthusiasm, high level of customer service and help in establishing our newsroom and leveraging our social media news releases. We are looking forward to a fruitful working relationship on these and other projects in 2011.”

Pressitt is an advertising free platform which is highly moderated, meaning your news will only sit alongside recognised brands and organisations.

Current newsroom examples include the DFID and Eurosport.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

Pressitt, the free Social Media News Release (SMNR) creation and publishing platform, today announces the launch of customisable newsrooms. The newsroom functionality allows users to create their own online branded news environment.

Now journalists, bloggers and anyone online will be able to find news information published by brands and organisations in one central, branded online hub. Additionally, the newsroom template will also serve as a branded release template for all past and future releases that are indexed on Pressitt.

Eurosport , Europe’s leading sports entertainment group, has been quick to jump onboard and become one of the first brands to utilise Pressitt’s newsroom feature as part of its social media plans for 2011.

One individual newsroom is priced affordably at £15 per month, but is free to all registered charities.

Newsroom features include: the ability to customise the header, footer and background of the newsroom to match the brand’s look and feel, and add Twitter and Facebook widgets. Fonts, links and text colouring are also adjustable to create a branded social environment to host a brand’s latest news.

Michelle Gilbert, head of corporate communications at Eurosport, comments: “Pressitt is an excellent service offering companies and organisations fast and effective social media solutions for their digital PR needs. We at Eurosport have been particularly impressed with Pressitt’s enthusiasm, high level of customer service and help in establishing our newsroom and leveraging our social media news releases. We are looking forward to a fruitful working relationship on these and other projects in 2011.”

Andy Merchant, director and co-founder of Pressitt.com adds: “Over the past year the free Pressitt service has been highly successful at giving brands and agencies an excellent multimedia-enhanced alternative to the ageing press release. Now with the addition of the customisable newsroom, combined with a release template service, we hope to encourage brands to use Pressitt as an online hub of information to showcase their latest news.”

Users who blog about Pressitt will also receive a special discounted offer of £12.50 per month for the first year only.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

The video overviews exactly what Pressitt does and how it can help your brand to communicate via the social web, in just over one minute.

Let us know what you think?

Social Media News Release creation and publishing platform - Pressitt from Pressitt on Vimeo.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

A Social Media News Release often has video and images embedded for simple sydication. So when I heard about Google Instant previews it seemed like the perfect match, a visual news release that’s visible in SERPS!

Here’s how Google Instant Preview works

A screenshot of how a Pressitt SMNR would look in a Google search.

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— Andy Merchant @andymerch

Pressitt would like to take this opportunity to thank all the brands, agencies, government departments and everyone else who has used Pressitt’s free, SMNR platform so far.

At this stage we would like to ask for your help to showcase the positive effect a Pressitt Social Media News Release has had on your campaign or organisation.

What Pressitt is looking for:

• Any case studies using Pressitt as part of your social media outreach campaign
• Any feedback from journalists or bloggers as a result of being presented with a Pressitt Social Media News Release
• Feedback from clients that you have produced a Pressitt Social Media News Release on behalf of
• Anything else of interest related to Pressitt.

Anything you can offer will be greatly appreciated, please email andy@pressitt.com with any evidence.

We look forward to viewing your next Pressitt SMNR.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

The  editable PDF document  will guide you through the creation process, allowing you to create your release in draft before adding it to the site. You can also  add notes with ideas for images and documents that you would like to see on the final SMNR.

We hope this will help you to plan the detailed elements of your release and also achieve sign-off from clients and internal teams as required.

The downloadable and editable PDF pre-release document can be found on your profile page or here.

We would love to hear any feedback on the document or recommendations to enhance it further.

We look forward to viewing your Pressitt SMNRs.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

If the first project goes well there is plenty more updates/concepts/user feedback to be integrated into the current platform.

The Role: freelance/short term

To develop and improve Pressitt.com on a freelance basis or short term contract, as and when required.

Working closely with our lead developer and front end coder, you’ll be responsible for coding various parts of the site, including bespoke and custom newsrooms from basic php functions within Code Igniter down to in-depth classes.

Built on Codeigniter, Pressitt is a fully featured site with combined client-side and server-side technologies allowing users to create rich and detailed news releases.

Required Skills

• Object Orientated Programming
• Model View Controller/Frameworks
• Linux Systems Administration
• Content Management Systems
• Social Networking (Web)
• Internet usability
• Accessibility (Web)
• Front end coding and javascript

Required Products

• Codeigniter
• PHP
• MySQL
• jQuery
• XHTML/HTML
• CSS
• LAMP
• Wordpress (not essential)
• Zend Eclipse (not essential)

So, if you can deliver on the above, live preferably near London/the South East, are hard working and able to work to strict schedules, please get in touch via email at andy@pressitt.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

What is Pressitt?

Pressitt allows you to create and publish a rich multimedia asset-assisted news release. Your release acts as a hub of information, giving Journalists, bloggers, and your online community more information to easily research your brand.

Once you have created your release it’s then up to you to use it as part of your blogger/journalist outreach campaign. We are not a newswire. We are a platform to create and distribute content in a relevant and useful manner.

Once published, your release is made available via RSS, categorised and searchable via tags. It is also tweeted via the Pressitt account, indexed by Google news and all other major search engines.

Coming soon

We are currently in the process of adding an exciting new string to the Pressitt bow. The new element has been driven by the large amount of positive user and fan feedback we receive.

At this stage, I don’t want to give to much away, but all I will say is that this new element will take Pressitt to the next level and help brands further engage with target audiences. Watch this space!

Get involved

We are committed to furthering the Social Media News Release format, so if you like Pressitt, want to get involved, have feedback, or would like to talk to us about any potential partnership opportunities please get in-touch by emailing andy@pressitt.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

The SMNR is useful because it opens up conversation and allow brand owners to engage with online users and vice versa. The conversation shouldn’t end after a few hours, days or weeks.

The beauty of the SMNR concept is that you can keep the conversation alive by re-visiting your SMNR and updating it with fresh content and then re-publishing and re-engaging with your audience. It’s the start of the conversation, not the end of your news.

Ideas to update you Social Media News Release:

• New quotes or updated quotes
• Fan videos/images
• Additional links to other news coverage or user generated content
• Update on the announcement
• New findings/research
• or even just to update your contact details
• Updated product shots
• Expert commentary from other sources

Standard newswires would charge to do this, but Pressitt allows you to make any amount of edits for free.

I hope this small snippet of advice allows you to use the social media news service of your choice more effectively, if you have any further queries, please get in touch.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

A social media release has 4 elements:

• Good headlines – write for 3 audiences / 3 readers (human readers first). Use subtitles (helps SEO). Short and to the point. Keywords up front if possible. Think to yourself, if it appeared on Facebook, would I click it?
• Body copy – 3 audiences / 3 readers – tell a story. No bullets, no PR or marketing speak. Write like a person. Write like an article, not an announcement. Write for diagonal readers (lots of scanning, 10 second readers – headlines / section titles / bold / links / pictures/ graphs / summaries). Use humour.
• Additional content elements- related content, multimedia, links to related articles, social media sharing, easy to email/print, moderated comments.
• Technical considerations – search engine ready, RSS ready, sharing ready.

All of which are very good pieces of advice, the third bullet rings especially true for Pressitt, which utilises them all of the key points listed and more.

Here are some additional useful links to help you understand more about the Social media News/Press release.

How to Write a Social Media Press Release

Social Media Releases - Everything You Wanted to Know

Why Use Social Media With Your Press Release?

Blogger Relations vs Social Media News Release (SMNR)

More about Pressitt

If you would like to discuss the benefits of Pressitt or the Social Media News/Press release format in general, please contact andy@pressitt.com

— Andy Merchant @andymerch