Press releases can help you gain exposure for your business, products or services and increase your visibility and credibility online.
It’s the editorial feel and informative nature that separates it from tradtional advertising. This is a critical distinction. Journalists are trained to weed out and scrap any press releases that come off sounding like a thinly-veiled ad.
The idea is simple, “If you want to advertise your product or company you can buy the ad space like everybody else. If you want me (the journalist) to give you free publicity, you better make my job easier by giving me something that helps my readers live or work better; helps my paper or magazine sell more copies or more ad space, or helps attract more interested visitors and advertisers to my web site.”
You can target traditional media like magazines, newspapers and major online news portals or look to “grassroots” media, like influential site owners and bloggers.
An email press release should be a brief (350 - 500 words) and objective announcement about your company, product or service to the media. Paragraphs should be no longer than 3-4 sentences.
Spend time developing and writing from a unique angle that matches the mindset of your target audience. What you consider “newsworthy,” may be considered “old news” by a journalist. Try to find supporting, unbiased information that adds credibility to your angle.
As you draft and edit your press releases, keep looking at it from the journalists and then the intended reader’s point of view. You have to answer two simple questions:
1. “Why should I the journalist/reader care?”
2. “Why should I stop what I’m doing right now and read this press release?”
Note: It’s considered poor etiquette to attach photos and other documents when contacting reporters through email. It’s better to post that information on your site in an online media kit�including any photographs, biographies, white papers and other product/company information.
If you are working with a very small budget and possess some creativity and writing skill, you can get away with writing your own release and submitting it through free submission services. If you have the money to hire someone, there are many press release services available, with prices all over the map. If you have a larger budget, you can use a service that will write and distribute releases for you. Press Release Guidelines
* Submit to media that reaches your target market.
* The first line of the email message should read FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
* Compose a compelling e-mail subject header and headline (less than 10 words).
* Cover the �five W’s� in your first paragraph.
* Write for a journalist, not a customer (make it �newsworthy�)
* Position your story as a solution to a business or consumer problem or highlight your expertise in an area of interest/trend.
* Provide electronic contact information including an e-mail address and telephone number for the press contact and web address of the company.
* Include testimonials of key clients or endorsement from a ‘non-biased’ sources (with permission).
* Give a brief personal or company background at the end of the release.
* Don�t rely on spell-checker to proofread for you.
* Close the release with -30- or ### which are generally accepted indicators for the end of a story.
Example
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Peanut Boy Introduces Squeezable Peanut Butter
PLANTERS,
Body Text/Paragraphs
Hassan Ait Ali, HR Connect, Communication 1 Traduction Maroc
Are press releases really important ?
It seems to me that some web users are completely unaware of the importance and the power of a good press release.
I�ve read recently somewhere a user�s assertion that really scared me:
“Press Releases have been devalued a lot by Google, so they�re no magic answer.”
Who cares whether Google values or devalues a press release?
Press releases are not addressed to Google, but to the people! While online press releases might generate positive �secondary effects�, such as inbound links, this is not their main purpose.
You might be surprised to learn that press releases are really powerful online media tools. I am not talking just about immediate results, but also about results that can be seen in time, sometimes weeks, even months, after� “releasing the news”.
I am still amazed that people confuse advertising and publicity. Could it be because in the dictionaries these two terms are synonyms? Then I�ll not write �publicity� anymore, but public relations. Advertisers focus on the �now� and on the direct sales.
Public relations experts focus on the long-term relationships with the industry, clients, media and business partners. Public relations generate �credibility�. Sometimes PR experts present news about a company in the form of relevant press releases.
If online PR officers should focus on keyword optimization to ensure broader exposure, offline things are easier. But offline press releases don�t have such huge chances of coverage as it happens online! From my point of view, using the Web for certain public relations campaigns is far more worth than using offline channels.
Press releases are read by journalists online or offline, and if they decide a story is worth publishing, they might write an article or publish it “as is”.
To make a long story short, an online press releases has the following purposes:
- to give journalists information that is useful and accurate about a product, service, company and even a person;
- to gain public confidence and strengthen public image for a brad, company or product;
- to inform the market of a new or improved product or service.
The purpose of a press release, I have to repeat that till it is clear, is not to make a sale, but to �announce� in a sober, neutral and realistic manner news about products, services and changes. The press release is not a story that should be published word for word. It�s just a tool to grab the attention of the editors.
