The Perfect Press Release, 2014 Edition

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I have a New Year’s resolution for business owners: Embrace the changing role of the press release and how it affects your company’s bottom line. Gone are the days where press releases were a one-and-done pass to securing media coverage – with new channels popping up every day and more businesses competing to be heard amidst the noise of their respective industries, it’s rare that a journalist reads a release and writes a story as a direct result of a traditional wire distribution service alone. But despite their changing role, press releases can still be an important part of making sure your story gets the attention it deserves – they’re just evolving a bit. Here are five essential components any modern press release must have to make it through today’s media storm:

1. Keywords are key: I always tell clients that nowadays, the main benefit of sending a press release over the wires is for SEO ranking. However, that one benefit is crucial for businesses and makes the effort entirely worth it. It’s the right keywords that will set your brand’s page or news above the rest and lead customers to you instead of your competitors. Google and other search engines index new content based on the quality of keywords contained, so take the time to do some research on what people are searching for in relation to your press release. Google AdWords has a great keyword tool that is simple to use.

Note: Wire services can still be great and offer lots of benefits (including SEO help), but as they can get quite pricey, we recommend picking and choosing which releases you pay to distribute vs. which you do through free wires.

2. Make it newsworthy. Although search engine visibility is a paramount goal, it’s important to ensure your content is still interesting and truly newsworthy. We’re all biased toward our own businesses’ interests – it’s human nature – but take the time to think about what other people will care about outside of your office. Did you hire an experienced, Fortune 500-level CEO who will be implementing a whole new customer service program? Go for the press release and broad distribution. Did an associate vice-president get promoted? Post the press release to your website. 

3. Location, location, location: Even if they’re interested in your story, most journalists are extremely busy and will not take the time to read your entire press release, whether it’s included in a pitch or they stumble upon it through web search. That being said, think strategically about how you’re placing information. Have an important main point and CTA? Place it in the first or second paragraph – think a 30-second read at the most – and the last. This is where people are most likely to look for a summation of key content. That way, even a glance can catch a journalist’s eye and leave them wanting more.

4. The eyes have it: Photos, infographics, and video are increasingly important additions to any modern press release. New media in general is catering to a visually-driven consumer, and placing these aids in your release is basically guaranteed to amplify your views. According to PR Newswire, a press release with even one photo will get 14% more reads than a text-only release. A release with a video and no photos will get 20% more views than text-only, while a release with both a photo and a video will garner 48% higher consumption. If you really want to maximize the power of visuals, interactive components like infographics and charts will skyrocket you to 77% more views when combined with a photo and a video. If you really want to get creative, make your whole press release an infographic. These are hugely popular and very impactful, and a graphic designer can easily whip one up to stay on budget.

5. Check yourself: Even if your press release covers the most groundbreaking, compelling news of the decade, readers – especially journalists – won’t take you seriously if it’s not well-written. Keeping your punctuation, grammar, and clarity on point will help you better hold consumers’ interest and respect your brand; prompting them to want to learn more and, with any luck, further engage. A poorly written release will leave readers assuming you and your company are unprofessional and will take the same care with delivering a service or product as you did with your writing. At the very least, have a trusted coworker who understands editing proof your work. However, working with a PR firm will guarantee your press release is not only written well, but contains messaging primed for connectivity.

6. Make a connection: Another thing that a successful press release should have is well-thought anchor links. The words you choose to anchor link can make a definitive impact on your press release’s search engine ranking, as well as its general “clickability.” For example, say your release is discussing your coffee shop’s award-winning lattes. For your intents and purposes, you’d be much better off using “best lattes in San Diego” to link to the award site or your company website over something like “award.” When people search for “best lattes in San Diego” in Google, your site and release will be associated with that term.

Press releases aren’t the only thing that can make a business successful on the web and in the press, but when combined with a careful strategy and solid media relationships, they can be a fantastic tool when leveraged properly for today’s consumer. To learn more about how the perfect press release and other PR and communications services can help your business stand above the rest, visit www.wrightoncomm.com.

What’s the Benefit of Newswire Distribution Anyway?

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By Chancelor Shay, Account Executive

If you’ve worked in PR for more than an hour, you’re probably familiar with “the wire” and services that help move your news across it. And whether you’re with an agency or working in-house, your clients or CEO are probably familiar with it as well. What they don’t understand, and even some PR professionals don’t get, is that distributing press releases over the wire typically does not drive meaningful coverage.

Gasp.

Bummer, right? I’m sure every PR pro would love to craft a magnificently worded and poignant key message-riddled news release and then simply press a button to have their news covered by every outlet reaching their target audience. But as it turns out, the media are in the business of making money by providing content their audience will value and your release announcing that there will be an announcement typically won’t cut the mustard—unless you happen to be Apple, the White House or Charlie Sheen.

With that said, wire services should be looked at as another tool in the PR pro’s toolbox that, when utilized properly, can still provide value to your client. Here are three tips for understanding why wire distribution may or may not be in the client’s best interest.

1. Relationships still rule

Each day, journalists receive hundreds of highly targeted and personalized pitches from PR professionals they’ve already developed relationships with. This provides them with plenty of potential content for stories. Unless your news is earth shattering or is a larger announcement from a global brand (Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Toyota), it’s highly unlikely that your impersonalized news release blasted over the wire will cut through the hundreds of tailored pitches the journalist received to spawn a story. If your client wants coverage, explain to them that the resources spent on wire distribution would be better used developing relationships with targeted journalists and working with them to develop something useful for their outlet.

2. Bigger doesn’t mean better with distribution circuits

Clients will often suggest they want their news distributed across a large circuit because they think the more outlets it’s sent to, the more coverage they’ll get. It’s our job as PR professionals to explain that wire distribution doesn’t work like a batting average, where the more opportunities at the plate you get, the greater likelihood you’ll get a hit. To the point above, where’s the value in sending the release to more journalists who will completely disregard it? Online outlets are no different. As PitchEngine Founder and CEO Jason Kintzler points out, you must also evaluate whether the downstream sites where your release is posted will be visible to your audience. Most likely the answer is that it won’t, but the value of those sites is...

3. SEO

That’s right, even if no reporter or buyer ever happens upon your news release hidden away on Yahoo! Finance, the mere fact that it’s posted to a live web page with inbound links to your website provides search engine optimization value for your news. This is especially important for industries where executive level decision makers are actively looking for news on industry trends, topics, players and rumors. Choosing your keywords strategically is essential to realizing the wire’s biggest benefit and there’s a definite science to why you’d choose one key word over its synonym, so do your research. Nobody knows exactly how the algorithms employed by Google and the other search engines work, but as long as you’ve done your key word homework and are following SEO-friendly news release best practices, you should be in good shape.

When some PR pros get the phone call from a client wanting to blast news over the wire, they feel like they’re walking the plank, but hopefully with these tips in your pocket, you’ll feel like you’re balancing on the wire.

A rose by any other name can't be found by Google

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A rose is a rose is a rose. And nothing smells sweeter for a business than a great search engine ranking in their product category.

So when writing press releases, take a moment to optimize the content to match what your buyers are searching online.

If you sell a new organic fertilizer for roses, be sure to include in your release, not just the word rose, but popular varieties of roses or diseases and funguses that gardeners are likely to research online.

Not only will it show prospects and the media that you know your Floribundas from your Grandifloras but it will help you pinpoint those online targets who are most motivated to purchase such a specialty product.

This applies to companies large and small, and often we see clients get so caught up in the messaging and word smithing, that the release uses expressions or words no human being uses. That's when a rose becomes a 'fragrant petal system with robust stem security.' Can we just call it a rose?!

Google is Your Permanent Record

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This post will go on (W)right On's permanent record.

And so will just about anything you, your employees, friends, enemies, and family post to MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Del.i.cious, etc.

Critical, unfavorable or downright bad search engine results that appear in your top 10 Google returns can easily become a stain on your record.

There are ways to manipulate search engine results so that favorable items recieve higher rankings, eventually relegating undesirable results, which are often inaccurate or really old news, to the second page of results.

While your online marketing team and SEO experts work hard to move your site up to #1 in the rankings for your category, be sure you have an online PR team working just as hard to keep the other nine results aligned with your desired image and pushing that cheapshot blog post to #11 or higher. (If after reading this, you're unconvinced of the power of 11, please be sure to watch the video primer that follows below.)

Google is essentially your company's home page and first impression. But there's also now a web project called the Internet Archive and, if Google is your permanent record, Internet Archive is your high school yearbook.

Thought you took down that embarassing webpost or terrible first attempt at a website? Think again and surf over to the Internet Archive: you'll find it there in all its former glory. While this can be painful, it can also be an excellent tool for research if you are looking for an old news release or other data that is no longer cached in the Google results. But it could just as easily be a liability to an organization that thought it had rid itself of a bio from a bad hire, content that it was sued over, or similar material. The bottomline is your overall online reputation is more important than a fleeting TV news story or traditional print coverage, except where that material is indexed by the search engines and becomes a part of your online image.

In the event that you've found this post a bit heavy, we will leave you with this excellent primer on the benefits and advantages of eleven, which is not simply restricted to unwanted search engine results but is also a great asset to amplification technology.