Ideas & Considerations For Your Press Releases

In early 2006, a notable Northern California blogger made a passionate plea for the demise of the press release. In his opinion, press releases had become nothing more than corporate speak, hype, spin, and hyperbole widely disseminated “to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists.”

His proposal was “to deconstruct the release into special sections and tag (associate a key word/phrase with) the information so that as a publisher, I can pre-assemble some of the news story and make the information useful.” The first template for the Social Media Release (SMR) was born soon thereafter.

The rationale behind the SMR (aka: SMR, SMPR, hRelease) is enviable:

• Reduce the hype and hyperbole that can be found in most press releases.
  
  
• Succinctly tell a story that will be useful to your targeted audience.
  
  
• Provide multimedia elements and links to spoon-fed online information that adds value to your page of content and gives the reader additional resources.
  
  
• Provide something that people will want to share in order to incite a conversation.

The purpose of this article is to show that these key points can be integrated into any press release issued over a wire right now without the need for a set template.

Important Considerations

• Decrease corporate speak: Read your press release draft before you submit it. If you were a journalist or consumer would your content sound honest? Is it newsworthy or topical to your core audience?
  
  
• Identify the goal for the release: What is the objective for the release? How can this objective be clearly defined within the first paragraph of the release and alluded to, or clearly and concisely stated in, the headline?
  
  
• Reading habits: Studies suggest that people reading online content scan rather than read. Remember this when you are writing your release since a majority of press releases are read off of a computer screen.

Short text, especially with visual elements, is accessible and attractive to readers.*

Reading decreased as story length increased.*

Headlines and photos were the first visual stop for readers.*

· *Poynter Institute EyeTrack07 Study

CONTENT IS KING

Business Wire and EON:Enhanced Online News provide excellent visibility and distribution for your news. However, a release will not perform at its best if it is not written around words and phrases that will render the content findable online or relevant to the reader.

Invest time thinking about key words and phrases. Think about the topic that you are issuing the press release about. What words and phrases would people use to find that release if it were in the Yellow Pages or if they were looking for it themselves in a search engine? Focus on 3 per release and plan on using them repetitively throughout the text.

• How often and the placement of words is as important as which words are selected. Consider the Business Wire Text Optimization Tool powered by NewsForce. For $20 this tool will help identify keywords and provide guidance as to where and how often to use them in your text. (http://bw.newsforce.com)
  
  
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com is a good free tool to see the popularity of words/phrases that you are considering along with alternate variations of your query that have appeared in searches.
  
  
• Can’t make up your mind? Use Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) to compare search volume on Google between words and phrases.

Fun with formats

The layout of a press release’s text can change on a release-to-release basis in order to satisfy the needs of the release. Please look at the following examples:

• Dell: When Dell wanted to issue content about The Dell Lounge webcasting the 2008 PLUG Independent Music Awards, they didn’t write a narrative release. They used hyperlinks and bullet points throughout the release. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080303005224/en
  
  
• P.F. Chang’s: P.F. Chang’s issued the following release about new menu items. Note how they utilized bold and underlined text to break up the release by menu item. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080207005286/en
  
  
• Durtbagz.com: Durtbagz.com, an online retailer, wanted to make it as easy as possible for readers of their first release to link to the company YouTube page, photo sharing sites, and Facebook page (among others). http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20071121005047/en

While you can be creative with how you lay your release out, always remember to consider your audience and the goals for the release.

Hyperlinks, bullets, bold… oh my!

Embedded links (hyperlinks from words/phrases):

Don’t know how to add an embedded link to your Word document? We have a brief tutorial available on YouTube. Embedded links allow you to direct people AND search engines from words/phrases in your release to relevant and valuable pages of web content.

Tips:

• Try to keep your links to 1 link per 100 words of your release. There are exceptions as long as you’re linking to pages that contain the word/phrase that you are linking from.
  
  
• These links provide an opportunity to create valuable inbound links to pages on your web site (for those links that point there).
  
  
• Contextual links can be more valuable than creating a link from an unrelated word or phrase. If you are a company that does “custom widget stamping” then link from that phrase to a relevant page on your website.

Try this: “Today we launched our new custom widget stamping product.”

Instead of this: “Today we launched our new custom widget stamping product. For information, click here.”

• If you link from a company/industry-specific term, or from a company, product, or service name, try to link to a page within your website that is specific or relevant to the term that you linked from (vs. www.homepage.com).
  
  
• Avoid adding embedded links to your headline. Search engines may view this as spam.

Bold text:

Bold text is a great wayto make words/phrases stand out to the reader and to the engines. Like anything else, moderation is key. You don’t want to overdo it so pick and choose what you bold carefully.

Bullets:

Bullets are a great way to clearly identify key thoughts to the reader/journalist. Additionally, text that follows bullet points is given more weight by the engines. Bullets can be used to highlight key product or service details, main themes for the release (like a mini table of contents), etc.

Valuable Additions

Add multimedia:

Numerous media studies suggest that the presence of multimedia with a release influences whether or not a journalist will use that content. Additional studies show that multimedia attracts the eyes of print and online readers.

• Multimedia elements make a release tangible
  
  
• Multimedia makes the release more robust
  
  
• Your release with multimedia allows for immediate access to content that can be used with a story or post
  
  
• Multimedia allows your content to stand out from plain text releases
  
  
• Multimedia can provide further incentive for consumers to check out your product, service, or company more closely.

Add a company resource center:

Turn your release into a full-blown online resource by directing the reader to more information about the company, product, and/or services. You could use links to provide direct access to pages or feeds within your website, incorporate social media sharing platforms that can be set up for free, and more! Here are a few ideas:

Link to your free photo sharing account on sites such as Flickr or Photobucket.

Why? You can post photos of your team, product photos, advertisements, graphics, tradeshow photos, etc. These can all be accessible to readers of your release along with anyone searching the Net for images.

• View our photo gallery (http://flickr.com/photos/curltech)
  
  
• View our photos (http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t9/curltech/)

Link to your free video sharing account on a site such as YouTube.

Example: Check out our company videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec)

• Why? Not only are you directing readers to your product videos, instructional content, etc. from your release but your video content could be found by people performing web searches.

Direct the reader to your company page on http://Del.icio.us. Why? Del.icio.us acts like the “Favorites” bar on your internet browser. You can post links to your press room, key pages within your site, articles about your industry/company, etc. all in one place. Better yet, this information might be stumbled upon by people searching the Web and/or Del.icio.us.

• Visit our Del.icio.us page (http://del.icio.us/EON_Resources)

Provide a link for your company newsroom’s RSS feed.

Why? This makes it easy for the reader to add your feed to their RSS reader ensuring that they receive all of your future releases.

• Subscribe to our RSS Feed (http://eon.businesswire.com/rss2/aenewstalk.xml)

Link to your company blog.

Why? Your company’s blog can be very important in providing a human voice to what you do. Your releases can promote and drive traffic to your blog.

• Please visit our blog (http://blog.hubspot.com/)

If they care they will share. Provide a link to an appropriate social sharing site.

Why? If you write your release for your targeted audience they may choose to share it with other like-minded individuals on a social media sharing site. It’s never bad if others help spread your information!

• Share this information on Digg (http://www.digg.com/login)

I hope that this information is handy. More information on the anatomy of a press release will come!