Press releases may have gotten a bad reputation over the years as poorly-written ones flooded the web as a black hat SEO and spam link building tactic. But, despite that, a well-written, newsworthy press release is still a great asset for your brand. When it comes to press releases, it’s about quality and not quantity. Here are some press release tips to keep in mind for a more valuable, effective press release:
1. Make Sure Your Press Release is Newsworthy
Before writing a press release for something about your business, take a second to ask yourself – who cares? And, be honest with your answer.
A press release shouldn’t be written to please shareholders, investors, your boss, your coworkers, yourself, or anyone else aside from your target customer. Will your ideal customer care about what’s in this press release? Does it matter to them?
If the answer is yes, then you likely have a press release that is newsworthy and that your customer base will care about. If the answer is no, then you may want to reconsider whether what you want to talk about is really newsworthy. It may be a better fit for a company news section on your website, a social media post, and/or an announcement in a company newsletter rather than a press release.
2. Tie it Into a Reputation Management Strategy
Your online reputation is important to your brand and your business. Press releases can be a great way to help boost your brand and your reputation on the web. So, you can use press releases as part of an online reputation management strategy.
They can be used for brand awareness in general or you can tie what you do for the press release into a reputation problem to help address it. For example, if your biggest negativity online is related to customer service-related issues, you can have your employees attend training to improve it. Then, your brand can get involved with the community by hosting a workshop where your employees share what they learned and teach those skills to others.
This is a great way to tackle the issues your customers are bringing up, resolve them, show your customers that you are listening, and also help your local community too. Not only is helping out the community something worth talking about in the local news, but it is also a good way to incorporate some Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into what you’re doing.
3. Keep it Concise
Keep your press release concise, clearly written, and informative. A reader should be able to quickly know what you’re doing, where, why they should care, and how to get involved. Not only does this help make your press release easy to digest for a reader, but it also makes it easy to share and promote as well.
4. Leave Out Industry Jargon
Your press release needs to have a wide reach and be easily understood. Industry jargon can limit your reach and make your press release harder to understand.
If readers have to spend energy trying to dig through jargon and fluff to get your message, they won’t finish reading, they won’t share, and they may end up with a negative impression of your brand.
Write your press release, wait a few minutes, and then reread it to remove the fluff and simplify your language. Read it out loud if you have to or have a friend look it over. Do what you need to do to make sure you’re leaving out industry jargon and keeping it simple.
5. Build Relationships With Local Media
Local journalists, bloggers, and more all make up contacts in your local media who, generally, are interested in local news and events and are involved in the community. Learning about them and building relationships with them can help you better promote any events you have going on and increase your press release’s reach.
Plus, by building a relationship with these contacts, you’ll also learn more about what news they like to share and focus on. This allows you to better target your press release and outreach to make sure you’re only reaching out to local media contacts whose audience will be interested in what you have to share.
Keeping these press release tips in mind can help you write a better, more shareable, and more valuable press release.