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We've seen a lot of intentionally silly press releases over the years. But this one, sent out by Colle+McVoy for client Cub Cadet, is not kidding around.
The Minneapolis agency recently helped the industrial brand launch a new line of Cub Cadet PRO Z commercial riding mowers. These are seriously badass machines. They have the only Triple 7-gauge steel deck on the market—the thickest, strongest steel deck in the industry. Landscapers apparently love the stuff, as it lets them clear rugged ground without worrying about destroying the mower.
So, what kind of press release does such a Terminator-style mower deserve? One that's also made out of Triple 7-gauge steel, of course.
You can see more photos of the thing below, which was sent to consumer and trade media. It weighs 14 pounds, 13 ounces, the agency tells us. It's the standard 8.5-by-11 inches, but its 0.625-inch thickness is impressive.
Oh, and this "press release on steroids" was also shipped in a custom crate with a crowbar. Because you can always use an extra crowbar....
Marketers and public relations professionals can find plenty of advice on how to write a press release, but rarely is that advice directly from the journalists that press releases attempt to engage.
It turns out, journalists have a lot to say about press releases. It also turns out that marketers have a lot to learn.
Although I recently joined an inbound marketing agency, I'm a 25-year veteran the Chicago Sun-Times and the Contra Costa Times, among other. For decades I started my mornings weeding through the press releases in my inbox, one finger hovering over the "delete" key and ready to strike.
Wondering whether things have gotten better lately, I reached out to several journalist friends.
"Most of what I get is garbage," said Mary Pols, a longtime Portland Press-Herald/Sunday Telegram reporter who has also worked at the Los Angeles Times.
Ouch.
Follow these top 9 recommendations to stand out....
It can be difficult to get a news release approved internally—even without thinking about search engine optimization.
However, if exposure, disclosure or page views are your goals, you must heed content discoverability and make your release SEO-friendly.
A list of search engine violations and penalties shows ways your content can fail to attract attention online. This applies to all your owned media content—including your website and news releases.
What makes some releases more successful than others in terms of drawing traffic? They’re written with healthy SEO features. These successful news releases appeal to Google’s latest algorithm, which rewards high-quality, unique and non-spam content.
Follow these five simple steps to create releases that can rank high in search results....
While many find the press release to be an antiquated and now inefficient method of delivering content, the truth is that the press release is far from dead.
There are many audiences online who still rely on press releases as key sources of information.
Be it tradition or its deep roots, they continue to be used, and by more than just public relations (PR) departments. Except nowadays, many different types of press releases serve many different purposes.
But if you’re interested in creating effective and relevant press releases for distribution, you’ll have to understand the history, its evolution in a growing content universe, and all of the options you have available to you.
Consider this a crash course in all things press release...
The weight of a press release from an SEO standpoint has evolved both on and offline. Whether or not it’s actually beneficial really depends on several key factors. If you’re a well-known B2B (or even B2C) business with a hefty budget and clout among your targeted demographic, then a press release could be beneficial as your news is less likely to get lost in the mad shuffle of it all and hit some major media headlines.
However, if you’re a small to medium-size business focused on a local or niche demographic, there are other avenues you can (and should) utilize to get your news circulating within appropriate channels. Most of us have to adhere to a marketing budget, and let’s be honest, press releases are quite pricey and rarely give us much bang for our buck.
Here are 3 creative alternatives to the press release that our team has found to be much more effective for the small to medium-sized business, and much easier on your pocket book!...
Google likes to keep us PR pros on our toes.
Last year the big update to search results came through the “nuclear bomb” that was Panda 4.0. The age of the keyword was essentially over, and proper storytelling blogs and press releases were in. Many claimed that SEO was on its way out completely.
Recently, Google made even more changes. Though the advent of Panda 4.0 made press releases seem borderline useless, the search engine has now revalued them. There’s one big alteration, though, that changes the way savvy PR pros should use press releases....
Check out these 8 tips for writing a press release that attracts attention from journalists and consumers.
Start 2014 off with a blast of PR.Press releases used to be the powerhouses of public relations firms — a way to fax timely, relevant information out to journalists. Nowadays, online publishing platforms like social media and blogs cut down on the supremacy of the press release. It’s now just one tool in a sea of educational channels available to the online marketer.
Nevertheless, we think well-written press releases are important in targeting news audiences and leading them to sites where they can find more information about your offerings. Here are 8 tips for writing a killer press release that attracts attention — and results!.
I wince at 99.99% of the press releases I receive daily. That’s because 99.99% look like sloppy cut-and-paste jobs, ones that have nothing to do with the Daily Fix and its readers, and everything to do with the sender, the sender, and, oh, right, the sender. Reading a press release that doesn’t make me wince is rare—yet not impossible.Now and then, I receive press releases that are smart, audience-focused, brief, and interesting. So, for this week’s post, I thought I’d stay on the sunny side of the street and share seven traits about press releases that DO get read....
PR Newswire recently took a look at how press releases sent on the wire perform in terms of number of views. The stats are quite revealing: Need I say more? Adding multimedia to your press releases, articles and blog posts will give you a remarkable bump in views. And since that’s the goal of content, it’s truly amazing to me that only 55% of the PR folk recently polled by PRESSfeed about their online newsroom content, say they are using multimedia with news content. Seriously? Look at the graph again, please. A 77% increase in views. A study of corporate websites and newsrooms shows that not many companies use multimedia with their press releases. The vast majority are text only....
Though there are many, many ways to get news coverage without issuing a news release (for some ideas, see my seven-part series on ways to earn good media coverage), press releases still work. That said, it’s also all-too-common for companies to make fatal errors in the way they write and distribute news releases. Here are 10 common problems....
The press release is a tried-and-true public relations workhorse which (despite many premature reports of its death) remains one of the most popular communications formats for PR pros today. That said, we can all agree that the last few years – heck, the last few months even – have seen tremendous change in how information is consumed. To ensure your press releases are effective in reaching today’s wired audiences, avoid these common mistakes that can sink your message’s visibility....
Check out the four examples of companies reinventing how they use and present the press release. Every year, for the last ten years, someone has proclaimed that the press release is dying. While the rumors of its demise are exaggerated, they are not totally unfounded. That’s because the press release is, in fact, being eclipsed by digital alternatives that are more flexible, more interesting, and more relevant. ...This shift in medium and message represents a new era in corporate communications. News now needs to be conveyed in an empathetic tone and delivered in a user-friendly format....
...When we asked journalists to rate how useful they find social media channels, we also asked them to rate two more conventional information sources commonly used by journalists, corporate websites and the good old fashioned press release. The results surprised us – the participating journalists scored press releases higher than any other information source in terms of how useful they are for researching articles, closely followed by corporate websites....
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I spent 20 years as an analyst at Forrester Research. During that time, I received 10,000 press releases. I estimate that about 200 had even the tiniest amount of relevance to me. Even of those 200, 80% of the words were meaningless fluff. That’s about about 20,000 meaningful words out of 8.5 million total words, for a pathetic little meaning ratio of: 0.2%. That is waste on an epic scale.Christopher Penn’s analysis shows how useless releases arePenn, who is VP of Marketing at Shift, a PR firm, shares a few press release facts that he figured out:PR people create 1,000 press releases a day. They’ve created 236,356 of them this year. The median number of clicks on one of those releases is zero.The median number of social media shares is two.The median number of inbound links is one.And as Penn points out, since Google devalued press release distribution, they add no SEO value, either....
In thinking about how to prepare this post, I couldn’t help but remember the 2006 Samuel Jackson movie, Snakes on a Plane. The name of the movie always makes me squirm because it gives away just how awful the plot line is by providing a correspondingly awful title. The title did receive a lot of press, albeit for how controversial it was. However, when it comes to your press release, you want your headline to work across the board. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of equally distressing or controversial headlines found in press releases. To be fair, I haven’t actually seen Snakes on a Plane. And, in all honesty, the title has its good points: It’s succinct and we get a very clear vision of what the movie is all about. If only all press release headlines incorporated that measure of clarity, but without the negative press attention. Take a look at a couple of examples of headlines that make you go hmmm….
PR Newswire has advised our clients to include images and video in their press releases for a number of years, and we are now seeing a much greater usage than previously. In 2015, 42% of releases included visual elements.
This is a sharp increase from the mere 14% we saw the last time we analyzed these numbers in 2013; however, there is still room for improvement. When you look at last year’s 100 most viewed press releases, 68 included multimedia, a 42% increase compared to 2013’s top 100.
It’s clear that the use of multimedia in press releases is quickly becoming standard practice within the industry. With the continued influx of visuals across the larger communications landscape, I expect these numbers to continue to climb....
If you want your press release to be discovered – by search engines, journalists, customers or investors – your entire press release process needs to be focused on providing an engaging experience for your audience.
On their own, an eye-catching photo, interesting headline or robust distribution aren’t necessarily going to save a press release that has been carelessly planned and executed in other ways. From beginning to end, you must be thorough and consistent.
The following four steps will get you started when crafting a press release that cuts through the clutter and makes a lasting impression....
You have exciting news to share about your company, but how do you get the word out? One of the most effective strategies is to create and distribute a press release.
With an attention-grabbing title and the right hook, your company news can be shared with the right audience at the right time.
Do you need help getting started? We’ve talked before about how to format a press release and even included a template here. We’ve also shared 28 great examples of real press releases from the pros. And, in case you need an in depth analysis of which press release distribution service is best, we’ve got you covered too....
With so many press releases crossing the wires every day, it’s a wonder anyone ever sees the fruits of your hard work on your press release.
From keeping your headlines short to focusing on your keywords and including a call to action, use this infographic from Erv
But there are several ways—10 listed here—to get more eyin & Smith to help you get the most out of your press releases:...
Too many business-to-business press releases fail. Why is that? Publicity can be admittedly a bit hit and miss – but the main reason that most press releases fail is simple. They’re not actually news.
When I look at press releases which don’t hit the mark, they most commonly fail in two ways. The first is that the topic chosen for the release really just isn’t newsworthy. The second is that, while the topic itself may be newsworthy, the writer has failed to identify the heart of the topic – and delivered something which then isn’t newsworthy, when in fact it could have been. Let’s look at these two things....
Press releases will continue to be the workhorse of public relations, even after social media has allowed businesses to engage directly with customers. Here are 10 mistakes to avoid when pitching one.
There might actually be news here, but this transcendentally offal news release won’t tell you what it might be. Lack of organization, absence of clarity, nauseous, self-congratulatory, “look how great I am” tone makes this wordy train wreck fail the “who gives a *bleep*?” test. Can this new venture afford a professional writer?...
Last week I penned and article for Ragan’s PR Daily titled “The 5 Mistakes Press Release Writers Make” and followed that up with a more detailed post here titled, “The 6 Mistakes That Can Sink Press Release Visibility.” I shared these on several PR discussion groups and solicited additional feedback from my fellow members, asking what other press release tips they would offer....
Each week, Dear Gracie answers questions from ProfNet Connect readers with advice from our network of nearly 50,000 ProfNet experts. Dear Gracie, Some of my clients repeatedly ask me to pitch announcements that I don’t think qualify as “news.” I know if I do pitch the information, journalists will be annoyed and I could damage my media relationships. How do I explain this to my clients? Peeved Pitcher
Great news for PR practitioners: Despite rumors to the contrary, the trusty old press release is not dead. Text 100 surveyed 72 journalists and found that the press release is still the preferred format for receiving corporate news.
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![The State of Multimedia in Press Releases [Study + Infographics] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/nsfZonQLcnT6cFUuceChQjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
![How to Write Press Releases: Best Practices for Content Discovery [SlideShare] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/ppCi3qvNx3xvlDfYTrYF3zl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Now that's a press release with a strong lede. Sometimes a stunt is the best way to get attention.