Press releases can
give small and medium sized firms great exposure and help fuel rapid
growth. What’s more, recent research
suggests they can significantly improve their chance of high visibility by
working a bit harder and creating a fully supported press pack.
Using relevant trade press remains a reliable way of raising
awareness and communicating your latest news amongst your target audience. However, it appears the days of sending out a
text based news release alone may soon be over.
Recent research suggests that including multiple media support with the
text version can increase visibility up to ten fold!
Before we look deeper into this, we need to be clear why
using the press is critical for most SME’s in the first place.
Research presented by Nicholas
Holmes recently found that over 60% of business owners had not spoken with
a journalist in the last twelve months, many fearful of the outcome! In reality, journalists, especially those
covering niche markets, are keen to build relationships with business
owners.
Journalists recognize that they are more likely to get
genuine information along with knowledgeable industry insight “…direct from the
horse’s mouth…” rather than relying on agency spokespeople. The natural passion for the subject that
comes from a business owner can often inspire journalists to produce compelling
coverage that can work wonders for a firms’ visibility.
So, how do you get noticed by a journalist in the first
place?
Build firm
foundations
Obviously, before you craft your press release, you need to
be clear about your messages, not just about your new news story, but the
“corporate” messages too. Be clear about
the strengths you want to emphasize but also be sure to have a clear position
on how to respond if challenged about a market threat or business weakness.
Use staff and colleagues to generate a list of positive and
negative questions about your business and the industry. Make sure the questions reflect the views of
end-user customers, channel partners, competitors and pressure groups. Building and maintaining this list, and
formulating responses, will help enormously when it comes to drafting the press
release itself and, perhaps more importantly, will help to build your
confidence about engaging with the Press.
Draft your press
release
Jerry
Brown provides some valuable guidance on this subject. Taking Jerry’s input, I see the steps involved
as a series of hurdles.
Hurdle 1: Getting the
journalist to read beyond your headline:
Stick with one key headline message. It must be clear, concise, obvious and
interesting to your audience as well as your target journalist (who will spend
just a few moments scanning your headline before deciding if it is something he
or she can use). Writing the headline is
harder than you might think which is why external PR or marketing support can
really add value if your time is limited.
It is often the last part of the release to be written but the first
hurdle to be cleared.
Hurdle 2: Getting the
journalist to read the first main text block:
This is often referred to as a “nut” paragraph. It is a really brief overview of your
story. What is the subject, why is it
important to the audience, and how will a reader be better off after reading it?
Hurdle 3: Getting the
journalist to read the main body text:
This is the story itself. The who, what, when, where, how and why. Always keep in mind the audience you are
addressing and be clear about why this story is important to them; how will the
information in the story help the reader?
Include one or two quotes from people directly involved in
the story. Keep the length of the
release to two pages where possible.
Remember to include a boilerplate
as a final paragraph. This needs to be a
concise description of your business and include your contact details. Avoid any sales pitch! This is all about
communicating news, raising awareness and generating some inbound
activity. The selling should only start
when readers react to your published article – the inbound activity.
But, there’s a
problem!
So, you have laid a solid foundation and jumped the hurdles
to get your press release in front of relevant journalists. Alas, evidence suggests you now have another
hurdle to jump, and getting this one wrong could hurt!
Hurdle 4: Getting your
journalist to accept your article over others:
PR
Newswire recently studied its press release data and found that text only
releases are losing out to those submitted with multiple supporting media
assets like videos, photos, slides and downloadable files. It appears that including multiple assets
with a text based release can increase published visibility by up to ten
times! The impact appears to apply as
shown in the chart below:
Chart 1: How including different content assets can improve press release visibility:
It appears that including additional content assets along
with the text based release helps journalists (and the publication’s design
team) present news in a more visually attractive way. It’s easier for them to present interesting
and engaging content in their publication.
They don’t have to go and find visually stimulating material to support an
editorial piece, it’s all provided for them. So it's not surprising that PR submissions containing multiple content assets are being considered ahead of many text-only
submissions.
Small business owners and in-house marketing professionals
who do not employ a full-time PR agency will now need to create supporting
content when they develop press releases and articles or risk missing out. Relying on text alone to get visibility is
going to be more of a challenge in future.
Marketing teams need to plan for the inclusion of the PR element of a campaign right up front as an
integral part of the content marketing plan. What's more, they will need to acquire the skills to develop
and create a range of supporting content assets. Either that or use external
support to help create the required content on time.
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