Learn How To Write POWERFUL Press Releases

Part 1 of 2 in a series

When it comes to writing a press release for your business, you should understand what it requires for an editor, reporter, or any journalist to even want to read what you send them. Keep in mind a press release is a way to introduce your business/product or service to the media. If there is interest, the release could turn into a story, or be published. Before I get into the heart of powerful press release writing, let me make a few points very clear.

  • There isn’t a “secret” formula to writing a press release. It’s knowing and using the 5 Ws in your releases: What. Who. Where. When. Why.
  • A press release is NOT an advertisement. Keep away from “selling” your product or service. Don’t write a release the same as you would an ad. Your release is going to the media, not potential or existing customers.
  • Releases are NOT articles. Look at articles in your trade and consumer media. These are not press releases, but stories.

No two businesses are the same, and this is also true of press releases. The only formula that applies is having a headline, dateline, opening paragraph, body paragraphs, boilerplate and contact information.

Do’s and Don’ts

The news media has a list of do’s and don’ts when receiving press releases:

Make sure it is newsworthy. Examples are:

  • announcing a new product or service
  • working with a charity
  • making a charitable contribution
  • starting as new division or acquiring another company
  • releasing a study about your industry and how it affects your business
  • sponsoring an event, or having a grand opening
  • taking your company public, or announcing stock offerings
  • rebranding or reorganizing your company
  • hiring a new executive
  • hosting a seminar
  • opening a new office or relocating your headquarters

These are just a few of the types of releases considered by the media to be newsworthy. Read and study other published releases, not all of them are good, but it will help you understand what that specific publication considers to be newsworthy.

  • Limit the use of adjectives and adverbs. Stay away from adjectives such as “exciting”, “fabulous”, or “revolutionary” to mention a few. Using adverbs like “really”, “extremely”, or “very” do not enhance the release, but will get it tossed.
  • Don’t use exclamation marks.
  • When making a statement or an opinion, be sure to support it.

Providing facts or referring to other studies or experts, it will give the release credibility.

  • Write your release to match the audience. If you’re announcing a new product make sure it is sent to media specific to that industry. It’s ok to modify the release to apply to different industries.

In Part 2 we will discuss catchy headlines, the best day of the week to distribute a release, how to make your release SEO ready, and how to rank high using keywords and phrases.

How to increase awareness for your company

Publicity doesn’t just happen. A successful campaign requires planning. From press releases that are strategically scheduled for distribution to specific articles submitted to selected media all are part of how to create a successful publicity campaign that will gain media exposure.

Increase Awareness With Publicity

Before you begin contacting reporters it is important to prepare yourself and the company by knowing the specific elements in the plan. A few of the key publicity campaign elements are:

PRESS KIT. A digital press kit will help provide reporters information about your company, products and the services you offer. Included in this kit should be references to any published articles on your company, bios on key personnel, photos of products and executive staff, online brochures, etc. A Fact Sheet is a quick reference page that provides a summary of your company location, philosophy/mission statement, product listing, and contact person. Keep this kit updated. Create a special area on your website for PRESS ROOM.

PRESS RELEASES and ARTICLES. When writing publicity releases for your pr client, keep the information limited to the facts and do not use sell copy. Put yourself in the reporters position. If you receive a well-written article filled with facts, and benefits for customers, you would be more likely to publish the release. Even more so, you might call the company to get more background and information. Limit your press release to one page if possible.

PR Clients usually to want include everything making the release a 4 or 5 page document. You should also optimize your press release. If you are writing a release or article for a local company, consider the local media and reporters. You can distribute the release nationally, but always work with local reporters so they get to know about your company and products.

MEDIA LIST. Very important and critical to any distribution. Your list should be updated on a regular basis. Have different categories for the types of reporters and media.

OFF-THE-RECORD. Never say this to a reporter and then tell them something you did not want published. There is no such thing as off-the-record.

SOCIAL NETWORKING. If you have not included social media in your list of distribution, then do so. This includes bloggers, online publications, Google News, and so on. Businesses should use their Linkedin and Facebook accounts to let their network of people know what the company has been doing. It is an ideal way to spread the word quickly and get immediate feedback. Even Twitter can have links to your website or published articles.

These are only a few of the many things you should be doing to increase awareness for your company. If you want to know more, just call George Carson at 949-477-9400. The free consultation could help improve your company’s image and make prospects more aware of your company. Visit us at Carson Marketing, Inc.

Tips for writing press releases

Press releases need to be written as a newsworthy article, but in one page. Too often pr clients, or even professional pr writers put too much fluff into a press release and not the facts. Maybe it is because the pr client wants to believe that their news is more important than those published. That isn’t a reason to not follow the unwritten rules of writing good press releases. newswothy publicity

Here are a few tips that we follow in the industry. Follow them, and you will have a better chance to get published.

1- Is the topic newsworthy? Announcing the new position of a person in your company may be news to you, but not to the reporters or editors. Even an open house isn’t “big news”. This doesn’t mean those releases won’t be published, but the odds are not very high they will. Try putting something exciting into these. For example, for an open house, announce that you are having a guest speaker, or will be offering something to the community.

2- Make your intro paragraph interesting, not a sales pitch. Give the reporter/editor something that wants them to read more.

3- Be sure you follow the AP style/formats and that it is grammatically sound.

4- Is the release fact based and well documented?

5- Make sure the message matches your target audience.

6- Be sure all the proper contact information is listed.

These are just a few of the important tips you need to write a good press release. Also, keep it to one page if possible.  Your list of media needs to be considered when submitting the release. But that’s another topic. If you search Google for “writing press releases” you will see that these tips are mentioned by most all professionals and editors in the industry.

Local publicity can bring increase sales and awareness

Your publicity campaign should include local publicity media. This could be an Orange County publicity campaign, or a local media publication, such as the LA or OC Business Journals. Some local publicity is targeted to a specific audience, suchlocal and regional publicity as Children’s Resource Directory, which goes to all the Orange County outlets. It’s designed to help parents in this region find good sources for their children, whether it be about child upbringing, health issues, or the arts (music, dance, etc).

PR clients need to stay in touch with their local community programs. It is one method to gain local publicity. Although the rewards may not be immediate, you will see an increase in loyal customers.  Another method is to distribute press releases in your local publications. This is just one form of building a solid local publicity campaign. The Internet now offers a wide variety of web sites to further build upon this local branding campaign. Many of the local community publications have on-line web sites. In addition; you can find many regional and local sites that target your specific market.

So the next time you begin to plan your publicity campaign, be sure to have local publicity as part of the overall program. We have found this to be very rewarding for many of our clients. Especially now when pr clients are looking for ways to increase sales, but maintain a tight budget. If your publicity campaign needs some local direction, give George Carson a call. His Carson Marketing, Inc company has the expertise to get your company noticed which in turn will create more customers.

How to INCREASE your brand awareness without increasing your budget

When the economy worsens it seems companies, pr clients as well, always cut back on everything, and that includes advertising. If you want to increase your brand awareness without increasing your ad budget–and actually reduce your budget, then read on. This approach works great for local pr clients and national pr clients.

In today’s tough economic times, the companies that will survive are the ones who continue increase brand awarenesstheir marketing and brand awareness. You can do this by spending less money than your current ad budget! How? With a creative publicity campaign. Being a publicity professional since 1980, I recommend starting an aggressive local publicity campaign. This should be a series of publicity releases and submission of articles to the media, etc. Then continue with a social media network campaign and a web marketing/publicity campaign. Those are the main elements. To be successful during these difficult times, you need to be consistent. Other things smart publicity professionals would recommend would be your blog site. Start making your blogs work closely with your web site.

Did you realize that I haven’t said to “spend any media money”? Rather than spending media money (print, TV, radio, banners, keywords), allocate 50% of your advertising budget for publicity. Don’t get caught up in buying keywords, or key phrases either. The money you allocate to the local publicity or regional publicity campaign will generate more awareness than the media budget. That’s smart marketing. Impelmenting this will get your pr clients web site listed in all the major search engines. And in return that will create traffic and increase sales. Knowing how to put this all together could be a challenge. In the long run, even if you hire a professional publicity company, like Carson Marketing, Inc., the costs will be much, much less than the media money you would spend just to get “limited” awareness. A well-designed publicity campaign will garner many months of awareness while building your brand. Then as the economy improves, your company will be the one customers will remember and continue purchasing from.

How To Get Free Publicity

Ok, you want to know how do you get free publicity, right? It isn’t easy. You just completed your pr marketing strategies for next year and included publicity as part of the plan. Now you arefree publicity looking at getting free publicity as part of the marketing strategy. Well, there are no special formulas, trick words, or how you “optimize” your press release that will garner you all that free publicity. When you think about this topic, what is free? Are you willing to not pay someone to write a press release, or pay a pr distribution company, like business wire, to submit your releases? What about the do-it-yourself approach? Sure, if you don’t value your time or pay yourself anything, then I guess you got the release for free. That still leaves the media. If you do not have the contacts, your release, or article may never get published.

When people say they got “FREE publicity”, ask them if they paid for any of the services I just mentioned. In reality, free refers to the media. Unless you pay for an advertorial, or a press release to be published, then it is free. Unlike an ad, which you pay for that space (this even includes traditional publications, online media, social networks, etc) publicity is something that editors will allow to be printed in their media without cost. You need to realize that the editor, or publisher has the right to refuse, or publish any releases or articles. Whether it is about a new product, or service, it is up to that publication if they want to run it.

So how do you really get Free PR? Hire a professional company that knows how to write press releases/articles and has the media contacts, Then you may get the FREE PR everyone is bragging about. If your company wants free publicity and can’t do it in-house, give Carson Marketing, Inc a call.

How To Get High Ranking On Google

It is no surprise that one of the most effective methods is to have a solid pr marketing strategy that consists of published press releases. I am not saying this because I am a publicity professional and use publicity to promote my pr clients web sites as well as their products and services. On the contrary. I feel that there is a wall that separates the people in the IT web department and those in the publicity department. This is true in advertising agencies, publicity agencies and at pr clients.web site ranking

For some reason the people in these departments do not like to share their information, nor help each other. That’s because each wants to show how great they are. Well, if they work together, they might be more productive and more successful for pr clients, or themselves.

Ok, time to get into the meat of high ranking on Google. To get your web site ranked high on Google, or any of the other major SEO’s such as Yahoo and MSN, you need some background on how this process works.

Ever wonder when you do a search and type a keyword or phrase into Google how all those results pop up? It starts with a massive “index“. That is where the Google crawlers begin their search. Google uses Googlebots that search updated pages on their index, as well as new site. There are billions of pages on the web and this process isn’t easy even for a Googlebot.

A query is found by Google by matching the results to your query that are the most relevant. There are over 200 factors that rate this, and PageRank is only one of them. This brings in publicity. Yeah, a long way around to get here, but it’s important to know in simple terms how the process works. Since you now know the basics of website page rankings, now you can use this to improve the publicity releases you write. Remember what I said several days ago, that a press release needs to be optimized as well in order to help your web site get higher ranking–listing. Knowing that relevancy is important, make sure you have good content in your press releases and they are submitted to all the proper online media outlets.

You should look into having a professional publicity person help with the distribution if you want to get noticed and ranked/listed higher on Google. Remember, I’m here if you need the help to get your company noticed in a positive way. Just contact George Carson at Carson Marketing, Inc.

Use Web Marketing as part of your Publicity Program for Clients

I guess I’m on a web marketing kick. My last blog told you about web marketing and how to optimize a pr clients site for Google. Well, I want to now tell you how publicity can be part of your web marketing campaign.

First you need to realize that web marketing is not a once-in-a-while job. It requires an web marketing strategyon-going effort with savvy web people to make it all work properly. If you have a PR Client that is asking to get their web site ranked higher, such as on page one of Google, you better make sure you fully understand web marketing. Look at the definition of web marketing in wikipedia.

Web marketing has become a major career that an association, webmarketing association, was formed in 1997. Visit the site, it has some good information.

A Web Marketing campaign can consist of:  SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), banner ads, email marketing, among a lot of other elements. That brings me to publicity. Finally got there! Press Releases written properly can help a pr clients web site gain higher page ranking. But it is how the press release is written and optimized. Yes, even a press release needs to be optimized. Then the distribution channels you use are also critical. Just sending it to a free distribution service may not get you full exposure on Google Alert or Yahoo News. Even local pr clients who want local publicity, this can be an excellent marketing tool.

Another publicity effort should be social networks. Using sites like Facebook, or MySpace is good, but you need to make sure the podcast, or video has something solid to tell. It cannot just be an ad campaign. Places to test market would be on YouTube. Writing articles for Internet distribution is another great way to incorporate publicity into web marketing. There are many other ways to make a publicity campaign more effective when you use the power of web marketing. Need help? Call George Carson for a free one hour consultation. He can be reached at: 949-477-9400.

Start using Web Marketing as a publicity tool

Web Marketing may not be new to pr marketing people, or web developers, but pr clients do not truly understand the power it has. For example, it takes weeks sometimes months to get a press release published, or even an article in a trade or consumer magazine. When you use web marketing correctly, your publicity efforts can happen within days, sometimes hours!

It is important if you are a pr client to not forge ahead and start calling your publicity agency to do web marketing. That’s not their strength. What you need to do is have your pr marketing strategy team web marketingdevelop a solid web marketing campaign that targets your specific audience. If you do not know how to implement a web marketing campaign, who do you call? Web designers are not likely to know or want to do this. Your publicity agency isn’t prepared to create online campaigns; they are best at submitting traditional media. It is best to contact a company that knows what and how to get your company noticed.

Web Marketing is more than sending out press releases to online newswire services. It is a complete program that analyzes your web site and does more than optimize it. Knowing the language on each page that has links to those sites and pages within your site is critical in optimizing a site. Keywords are not the big thing anymore. You can include them, but keywords or key phrases alone will not get you noticed. What about buying adwords? I prefer to not do this. Yes, we would consider buying some adwords for clients that really can afford it, we prefer to use specially designed programs at Carson Marketing, Inc. to include a vast array of elements. These may include the optimizing I just mentioned, marketing to social networks, writing blogs, to publicity releases, links with credible sites that are ranked high, to an on-going publicity program for online media. These are just a few examples to let you know that web marketing isn’t the simple task of sending a bunch of press releases to the online media. It’s time to get noticed so that you survive this slow time in order to be on top of the competition. Let us show you how without burning a whole in your wallet. Call us at 949-477-9400.

How Many Press Releases Do You Send Out Per Month?

Your pr marketing strategy should include a series of press releases each month. So what is the total number of press releases to send per month? We recommend at least three per month. You don’t want to issue the same release every other week, but rather find a new angle, or create new releases each week.

publicity press releasesWe do not recommend flooding the media with dozens of press releases, especially if they are not newsworthy. That will get you negative publicity and probably be recognized as a pest to the media.

Your pr marketing strategies should outline for your pr clients a series of releases to meet the objectives of your publicity campaign. For example, if a pr client is introducing a new product, that warrants a press release. When the product has an impact, or makes an improvement to something, this can be another press release. Basically, follow through with the first press release to see how you can continue to get media attention. Reporters and publishers need good content and stories for their readers, so when writing your pr clients press releases, give them solid information that will want readers to learn more.

Keep away from “sales writing”. Press releases need to be informative, give features as to why the product or service was developed. Tell how it will affect the market, or industry. That is what reporters are looking for in their publications.

If you need help in getting your pr marketing strategy, or publicity campaign in gear, give us a call. We have the contact and expertise to get you noticed. Make the call; it can be the step you take that advances you ahead of the competition.