I've been participating in an alpha test of a new social press release creation tool called PitchEngine (public beta coming soon). In the words of PitchEngine creator Jason Kintzler, "PitchEngine shakes up the PR industry making it possible for PR pros, brands, and agencies to build and share digital, social media releases with their contacts for free. Our PitchEngine SMR (social media release) takes the press release to the next level, eliminating the need for antiquated email attachments, word documents, image CDs, and more."
Although the tool has a few minor glitches at this point (the number of characters permitted for subheads and the "quick pitch" is way too small, the feature for adding Resources and Related Links is touchy, and hyperlinks have to be recreated after cut-and-paste from Word), overall it's very slick and easy to use. I created a social media release for version 10 of the Quick View Plus desktop file viewing utility (a VERY useful application BTW) from Avantstar, and other than a little manual effort on the links, the process was quick and easy. Reporting capabilities will be added soon.
PitchEngine provides an intuitive interface for creating the release; adding images, video and audio files; applying tags; and including social networking links for press contacts. It's a slick tool that includes some nice touches, such as automatically creating a shortened URL for use with Twitter. You can keep with the latest developments on the PitchEngine blog.
*****
Mike Bannan: mike@digitalrdm.com
Comments
The Quick Pitch is limited to 115 characters because sharing it by Twitter appends the bit.ly URL and the total has to be < 140 characters. The bit.ly URLs are ~20 characters. So theoretically, 119 characters would work for the Quick Pitch.
Thanks for the clarification. The character limit on the Quick Pitch now makes sense; it's Twitter's deficiency, not yours.
My subhead was limited though. Here is the original subtitle for the press release (162 characters):
New version of the award-winning file-viewing utility reduces help desk support and software licensing costs and protects users from opening infected source files
PitchEngine limited this to ~80 characters:
New version of the award-winning file-viewing utility reduces help desk costs
Two-line subheads / subtitles / decks are not unusual in press releases.
But again, that's a relatively minor shortcoming in what is overall an excellent tool.
I just checked, and there is no actual limit on the input, it just cuts off what you can see. I put in a subhead of 211 characters and saved, and everything worked.
Slightly confusing, but logical, considering the effort to keep the layout of the SMR builder "tight."
Surely you are not saying that M$ Word is needed to make full use of PitchEngine?
(ps. I have used almost no Microsoft products for over a decade, especially not Word nor Windows.)
Good catch, imprecise wording on my part due to the Microsoft Word "habit." What I should have said was: "hyperlinks have to be recreated after cut-and-paste from any word-processing program."
Better? :-)