‘Fastest Growing’ Digital PR Website Asks “What’s Your Story?”
The PR world is changing with the growth of the semantic web, says Your Story (http://www.your-story.org/), the fastest growing free news and press release website (SOURCE Alexa.com).
Your Story was founded in the latter part of 2008 by internet entrepreneur Robin Scott. Then 24 years old, Scott believed that the PR industry was being left behind when it came to digital distribution. The website now regularly publishes in excess of 1,000 press releases during business days, without charging any user.
Due to the growth of social media and the semantic web – loosely, where online items are linked together by computers based upon subject matter – Your Story utilises the same sort of ‘tagging’ and categorisation employed by blogs and content sites such as YouTube to place every press release published on the website into contextually specific groups. These groups can then be subscribed to by journalists, bloggers or interested users who follow specific press releases as they are published by RSS, Twitter or email alerts.
The original idea was simply to publish in this manner, and have stories processed by bloggers and journalists, in a relatively ‘traditional’ relationship between the person seeking to distribute PR; the producer of fresh content (based upon the news or press release); and the eventual recipient of the information.
However, the ability to offer ‘packages’ of information on interest-specific categories to blogs and websites based around similar themes quickly came to light. Users on these websites are able to read around their chosen subject by reading press releases directly, having clicked on a recent headline fed in via RSS, Moreover or Google News based widgets.
In this instance, the requirement for such releases to be filtered through journalists is eliminated altogether, which is precisely the point of the Your Story website: to allow interested users access to the most up-to-date news and press releases on their chosen subject.
Demand for such services is strong from individual users: Your Story press releases are “Tweeted” approximately every two minutes, 24 hours a day: in 17 days, over 9,250 tweets have referred to a shortened Your Story URL. In particular, those in financial roles, those who are interested in humanitarian news and those who follow industries like fashion are particularly keen to read and share Your Story press releases based upon their favoured subject(s).
Including Your Story news and press releases based upon specific categories or tags using RSS is simple, and can be achieved simply with the addition of “/feed/” to the end of any tag, category or even search results page:
1. Subscription by ‘Category’ – Every press release published by Your Story must be placed into at least one relevant category. Categories are based upon industry type, e.g. Non-Profit press releases are found here: http://www.your-story.org/category/non-profit/ and the feed is accessible here: http://www.your-story.org/category/non-profit/feed/
2. Subscription by ‘Tag’ – tags may optionally be added to press releases. Press releases are tagged with items such as names, places, stock codes of the company(s) as well as the people or technologies referred to in-release. For example, press releases tagged with “China” are available here: http://www.your-story.org/tag/china/ and the feed for this category may be accessed here: http://www.your-story.org/tag/china/feed/
3. Subscription by search term – this is where Your Story gets really interactive and intuitive: users may subscribe to search results pages via RSS. For example, a webmaster who wished to display press releases which mention “LCD TV” would use the following search http://www.your-story.org/search/lcd+tv/ to produce the following feed: http://www.your-story.org/search/lcd+tv/feed/ which could then be used to generate a list of “latest LCD TV press releases” which updates whenever a press release featuring the terms is added to Your Story.
Your Story take press releases from any individual or organisation completely free of charge – due to the low cost involved in digital publication, Your Story only employs moderators who filter out PR spam – which is commonly associated with free press release websites – and developers, who work on XML solutions for publishers.
Larger producers of press releases, such as PR agencies or press release distributors, are able to push press releases to Your Story via XML push – again this is a free service, which makes Your Story almost unique in its ability to offer online PR services to tiny organizations as well as huge multinational companies.
This is what Your Story believes the 2010 audience wants: everything in one place, categorised by subject matter. For free.
The question is simple: What’s Your Story?
Issued By: Your-Story.org
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