[drupal-docs] Publicity materials

[Laura Scott]

I was wondering about any efforts in this group about putting together 
*publicity materials*. (I just posted a comment about this and came 
right here.)

Anyone in business knows that the best advertising is* free 
advertising*, and that happens when publications write about you, talk 
about you, refer to you. To help enable that, you create and post press 
releases written in 3rd person, as if they were written by a magazine. 
Press release occasions might be:

    * New releases of core
    * New releases of themes and modules
    * Major endorsements and migrations to Drupal


This content would be written for the press, not for users. As such, 
most of the content can be pulled from internal announcements and 
discussions.

We would want to create a *Press* area, linked from the front page, that 
aggregates the press releases.* This would be different from "News and 
Announcements"* in that only people with role privileges could post the 
press announcements. "News and Announcements" has all sorts of postings 
not related to the Drupal.org effort (such as the request for a 
consultant posted today).

My suggestion is to make part of the documentation effort is pulling 
together some basic publicity materials, and refresh them periodically. 
For example, each and every update should get a press release:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    Drupal releases 4.6.1

    [Date] -- Drupal (www.Drupal.org) announced a new release of its
    Content Management System software today.

    [Paragraph about new release's features and fixes]

    [Paragraph about what Drupal is]

    [Paragraph on modules]

    [Website link]

    [Publicity contact]


Each release would have a lot of repeat material, obviously -- but 
that's the point. We have to assume with every release that this is the 
first time the reader is even hearing about Drupal.

Next step is registering  the Press Releases page feed with the various 
news aggregators that are not on the Ping-o-matic list -- the ones that 
the news media routinely read.

What can happen from all this? Online mags and print pubs might start 
writing about Drupal more and more. Reviewers might decide to review 
Drupal. Mentions might happen in small news blurbs in mags like CIO or 
the tech page of a newspaper. Something might get a mention or 
endorsement on Romanesko or other press-industry email list. Etc. The 
net result would be more people coming to Drupal.

If there is nobody spearheading this, and it sounds good to the group 
and management, I would be happy to lead this effort.

Thoughts?

===
Laura S
pingV <http://www.pingv.com>

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