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The marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. The reliance on the mainstream media to break stories about companies and products is waning, while the number of press releases grows daily. It’s increasingly difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to gain mainstream coverage from conventional media forms. So, rather than narrow their focus towards journalists in the hope of hitting the publishing jackpot, small and medium-sized companies are now producing press statements that target web site publishers and bloggers relevant to their niche, as well as targeting customers directly. Tools, networks and services are facilitating and simplifying the system for creating and distributing new media releases. PR experts believe that the traditional long form press release will continue to be influenced by the brevity and accessibility of social media. Though, the format of the press release isn’t the only factor in its evolution. PR professionals are now experimenting with the new distribution channels. Likewise, many are finding that the form of the press release isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for every channel. Vistaprint’s Public Relations Manager Jeff Esposito believes that the press release will continue to evolve into multiple iterations for various audiences, channels, and situations: “Over the next five years, I think we’ll see three types of press releases that will assist different audiences. The first is in a video format where there will be a short description followed by a link to a video giving information on the news from a company source, hitting on the five W’s and also offering sound-bites that can be used for stories or added to a news story. The second iteration will be a further evolution of the social press release that is being used today, except more brief and more focused. The final is similar to what we see now with company boiler plates, stock quotes and additional information.” In the end, the press release’s future may simply depend on media consumption trends, according to David McCulloch, director of public relations at Cisco Systems “…It’s pretty clear where the press release will go next: It’s going to get shorter; link to more sources; be focused on simplification and explanation; and it’ll come in many more flavors. Practically speaking, that means the press release of the future will deliver its content in text, video, SMS, microblog and podcast form, to any choice of device, whenever the reader decides, and preferably it will be pre-corroborated and openly rated by multiple trusted sources.” Kelly McAlearney, an account supervisor at Edelman Digital, agrees that based on natural progression, the press release will continue to get shorter, for concision’s sake: “And interactions have naturally become more concise as many brands are in constant, direct contact with consumer audiences and media via online channels.” Lou Hoffman, CEO of The Hoffman Agency, brought an interesting perspective to this conversation. He said that the back links generated by press releases are reason enough to continue syndicating them, even if the contained information is of little use to the audience. He speculates that if search engines were able to point out and devalue republished news releases and their included backlinks, companies would find better ways of dispersing news. “Looking beyond five years, I could see the algorithms of search engines becoming smart enough to discern whether a backlink comes from syndicated content, which in turn causes it to greatly reduce the value of the backlink. In other words, even if a news release is syndicated on the Wall Street Journal, with all the “authority” that comes with the site, the search engine figures out that it’s nothing more than a republished news release, so scores the backlink super low. If this happened, we would see the volume of news releases significantly decline.”