Last week, we reported on results from a PRNewswire/Crowd Factory study that found Twitter drives more traffic to press releases than Facebook. So how do you make your press release more Twitter friendly?

-“It starts with the headline,” says Sarah Skerik, PRNewswire’s VP of social media. “The press releases that got the most shares and views were those that had headlines that were in the range of 120 characters, which makes them the perfect tweetable link.”

The number of characters is important for retweeting.

“You need to leave retweet space to remove any barriers for audiences,” said Tom Becktold, SVP of marketing at Business Wire. “A lot of people want to add a little comment so leave 20 or 30 characters.”

Read more

PRNewswire has partnered with HubSpot to provide greater distribution and lead generation services to customers. PRN’s iReach platform, which is designed to create more online visibility for smaller businesses, will incorporate a HubSpot Canvas app to identify influential prospects and customers, and reach them. HubSpot is an inbound marketing software developer.

Content that’s pushed out will appear on social networks and the PRNewswire.com website.

Separately but related, the two companies are hosting a webinar on November 1, ”The Science of Press Releases,” focused on creating effective press releases. More info here.

Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype that will bring video calling to the social network’s 750 million users. Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion and has been a Facebook partner for some time. Today’s announcement also included a new chat design and the addition of group chats. More info is available on The Facebook Blog.

Perhaps you heard that the President hosted a Twitter Townhall today? Radian6 will be working with Twitter to analyze those tweets. Pre-townhall research conducted by Radian6 yielded a number of findings, like national security and financial security are two topics that drive tweets. Additional findings are available here.

Read more

Walt Disney‘s earnings results were accidentally distributed 15 minutes before the close of the New York Stock Exchange, which prompted a quick decline in stock price of more than four percent. According to the Wall Street Journal, a company official told analysts on a call that they “are investigating how this occurred.”

The Wrap and Business Insider reported receiving the release early.  The company announced a 6.7 percent profit decline.

Scott Mozarsky, EVP and chief commercial officer with PRNewswire, has been keeping up with the news. He says that mistakes are more likely now that IR groups have gotten smaller.

Read more

PRNewsire launched a re-design of its Website today, featuring an “Optimized News Platform” which organizes releases to appear more as they would on a news website, as opposed to just a wire service. New features include enhanced search, “most read” and “most emailed” story rankings and the ability to sort releases by popular news topics, such “Health Care Reform.” New social features also make it easier to share releases or directly publish them to your blog.

“One of our goals with the redesign of PRNewswire.com was to make it easier for our audiences – media, communications professionals, Investor Relations officers, small business executives and the general public – to enjoy immediate access to tools, expertise and content that helps them meet their objectives,” said Ninan Chacko, president and CEO of PR Newswire in a statement.