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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....
Business Wire and Edelman Financial Communications & Capital Markets today announce the results of a new study supporting the use of visual storytelling in earnings reporting.
In total, 300 retail investors, more than 20 Wall Street professionals and select financial media professionals were surveyed about how earnings data is consumed, comparing traditional quantitative earnings releases with releases featuring visual, creative assets.
The conclusion was a clear consensus that using visual storytelling as a supplementary tool aids in the ultimate goals of investor relations professionals....
Google is constantly changing its algorithms. We all know about Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, but what people often forget is that each one is periodically updated, often without any confirmation or announcement by Google.
The latest known Panda update is Google Panda 4.1, according to the Moz Google algorithm change history log, which has had a profound effect on PR agencies.
The Panda algorithm, in particular, has made huge waves across the PR industry. According to the article ‘Did Google Panda 4.0 Go after Press Release Sites?,’ industry expert Barry Schwartz launched a study which revealed prominent PR agencies like PR Newswire, BusinessWire, and PRWeb lost up to 85% of their visibility within a matter of days.
Studies like this demonstrate that PR agencies are intertwined with the SEO industry, and must adapt or perish in a changing environment....
A lot of businesspeople wonder why a certain press release fell flat. Nine times out of 10, the answer is quite simple: It didn't highlight any news.
Once you're able to understand what's newsworthy, your press releases will start to generate results.
Focusing on the following six topics is a surprisingly common pitching mistake in the startup world. While some of the topics are trivial or just advertorial, others have a germ of an idea that could made newsworthy by a shift in focus in the press release....
Hot on the heels of the World Cup games, this announcement by Dynamic Architecture titled “The Dynamic Football Experience: World’s First Football Entertainment Centre to be Rotating Building” became the most viewed multimedia news release on PRNewswire.com.
It’s no surprise that the news earned so much attention; a spinning, soccer-ball shaped building to be constructed in the middle of Rio de Janeiro sounds like a story beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. But this press release does a great job at anticipating the questions a journalist or potential visitor might ask and includes eye-catching visuals, an intriguing story angle, and fifteen translations of the text release to entice soccer enthusiasts around the globe....
...Sher has uncovered a paradox: Journalists, who are in the business of telling stories, have actually ruined age-old narrative traditions through their approaches.
For Sher, the inverted pyramid writing style is one of the worst offenders, because it often reveals the juiciest part of a story in the first paragraph. So, why read on? Sher’s revelation was unsettling for his audience, a room full of journalists at this year’s Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Thankfully, Sher has a remedy. He offered some tips that he promised will help reporters tell a more engaging tale, whether they are shooting 60-minute TV documentaries or writing short Web hits. The following tips can also be used to tell your brand’s ongoing story in a press release. After all, your goal in PR is to appeal to the storyteller inside every journalist....
Should you REALLY invest in a PR Section on your website? We think not-- and here's why.The time has finally come: You can go ahead and get rid of that “Company News” section.
Nobody’s reading it. In fact, a recent analytical report compiled by Chris Scott of Headscape suggests that the fewer than 1% of visitors who DO read your press releases tend to leave your site shortly after.
So there you have it: your company news page – with all its press releases, employee event descriptions, award notifications and job promotion updates – is actually driving your prospects away...
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....
10 Yetis Vents - Google update has not killed press releases or PR Agencies its just killed crap content and spammy writing.
Right now the interwebs are full of "Google has killed PR Agencies/press releases" stories. These all relate to big G's latest update that talks about its crack down on keyword optimised press releases and the need to use no-follow links in stories that PRs push out.
Whether it is emails from nervous clients wanting clarification on the situation, or people on Twitter sending me DMs asking if I have seen various stories (because we set our stall out around being very SEO savvy), it is really up in my grill right now.
Not many public relations professionals have put their head above the parapet and come out with their take on this, so I thought I would give it the first shot....
Companies rely on PR firms for a variety of services and consulting ranging from strategy and message development to media relations and social media outreach to monitoring and reporting. Product launches, press conferences, event management and promotion, reputation and crisis management, media training, investor relations and of course content creation are all services provided by different PR agencies.
Press releases are most often at the top of the list of public relations content along with reports, white papers, newsletters, case studies, corporate website pages, newsrooms, blog posts, short form social media content and media from images to audio to video. To suggest that overly optimized press releases and other content will bring down the PR industry is simply a sensational headline.
It’s true, there are a lot of changes happening in the PR world right now and one area in particular that’s worth exploring risks and rewards involves the shift to native ads or as Google calls it, “commerce journalism”. I talked with Cara Posey about this recently and will likely post more about it here. But back to this business of optimized press releases killing PR agencies. Really?...
OMG BuzzFeed has gone Fortune and its Original Trust Content one better. Instead of cranking out BuzzFeed-like content for corporate-owned media, the publication will teach you how to draft stories like the pros. That’s right. You too can write scintillating headlines like “15 Reasons Taylor Swift Might Be a Cat” or “27 Better Ways to Eat Ramen.” It’s another form of journalists reaching into corporate pockets with the value proposition, “We can help with that burdensome chore called content development.”
With the ability to instantly publish a press release online, the world of PR has changed. Press releases now have the power to both attract media attention and drive traffic. This change in accessibility has also changed how businesses write press releases. Here are a few tips to help you write effective online press releases.
...More companies are realizing the value of blogging. The blog, like the news release is owned media. You create the message, write the content and publish it, post it or distribute it via many channels. But, here’s the $5 million chicken-or-egg question — which comes first? Should a company write a blog post to launch news or should it write a news release to launch news?...
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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....
When you should—or shouldn't—send press releases over the wire is a popular topic.
We found that Monday, Tuesday and 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern were the most popular times to send a press release. Our advice was to publish releases later in the day and week so your news didn't get lost in the commotion. Remember, all this is from 2013.
This year, we took our research a step further. First, we analyzed the distribution of more than 100,000 press releases published via Marketwired, PRWeb and PR Newswire in 2015. Second, we determined how many times each release was shared across nine social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn....
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....
...What I love about today’s Content We Love example is twofold. The company issuing the survey results, Videology, is doing a great job of promoting a piece of their own content by surfacing the newsy elements, writing a really good press release, adding an infographic and distributing the whole package to the media.
(Link to the release: Heavy Video Viewers 57% More Likely to Spend on Holiday Gifts)
However, the way the PR team packaged the story will help direct resulting any news coverage advantageously for the brand....
Google’s latest Panda algorithm will not spell the death of press releases. Rather, it will ensure they contain higher-quality content that consumers and members of the media are looking for, say major wire services.
Google rolled out Panda 4.0, an algorithm designed to prevent sites with poor-quality content from ranking high in its search results. While the company has updated Panda several times throughout the years, a recent report by Search Engine Land claimed wire sites lost "significant rankings" on Google, between 60% and 85%, after the most recent update....
There’s a lot of talk about storytelling today amongst communicators, and for good reason. In our frenetic, always-on, socially-connected, information fueled environments, information is continually washing over us. A few things stick, and those are generally stories. The key to a good story is found in the audience’s ability to relate strongly to something in the story, which naturally builds affinity. And affinity is important to brands.
A good narrative can also spur the audience to act. The best social media campaigns are all underpinned with strong stories....
New webmaster rules from Google just killed PR agencies according to Tom Foremski's post "Did Google just kill PR agencies?" last month.He highlights a Google webmaster update warning about black hat, linkbait press releases and other similar improper SEO content practices trying to manipulate search engine results.Look out PR agencies Foremski warns....
Google now calls links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. Even though Google took away the anchor text links in press releases (and guest posts and articles), there are still press release optimization opportunities.
Google's most recent update to their defintions of link schemes sent shockwaves through the SEO and online PR world; a real downer to link building strategists.
It's true: the world's largest search engine called links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. What does this mean to organizations using press releases to gain digital visibility in search and social?For brands publishing a press release or an article on your site and distributing it through a paid wire service, such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire or through an article site, you must first make sure to nofollow the links if those links are "optimized anchor text."
Is This a Big SEO Deal? Yes. No. Maybe.
Google has been slowly squeezing the SEO life out of press releases for a while now.
"In 2006 online press releases were amazing for SEO. In 2013? Not so much," said Joe Laratro, SEO expert and PubCon lead moderator. "Online press releases have had very little value in terms of links and content over the past few years – I would say it had been steadily declining. However, I still thought it was a good part of a large organic link building strategy until the new guideline changes."...
There are few companies or organisations that can come close to rivalling the power that Google wields over the internet and search in particular....
So when the search engine updated its rules on unnatural link schemes recently, making specific reference to press releases, it triggered a rather alarmist article from ZDNet asking whether Google had killed PR agencies.
The convergence of PR and SEO is something we’ve covered previously on the blog, with articles focusing on the importance of search optimised PR and suggesting seven SEO tools to improve online PR efficiency.
However the article on ZDNet understandably (and probably intentionally) ruffled a few feathers within the PR industry as it painted them as black hat SEOs, out to flood the internet with dull, keyword loaded press releases just so they could help their clients climb a few places in search rankings....
...This is the first of a three-part series we’ll be running this week. Check back tomorrow and Thursday for discussions about what you can do to improve press release visibility, and how distribution of press releases factors into the visibility equation.
SEO vs press release SEO When it comes to press releases and SEO, there are two sides of the coin to consider: web site SEO, which is concerned with building visibility for a website for specific keywords used by Internet searchers, and press release visibility, which focuses on optimizing the visibility of the specific message. That said, the two are not mutually exclusive. Good PR messaging can definitely be incorporated into the successful SEO strategy. The credibility of earned media is beneficial to not just a brand’s reputation, but for the brand website as well. And, as you’ll see below, the two work hand-in-glove to display online content to its best advantage....
A few months back, the popular rock band Stone Temple Pilots made a major splash in the news when it announced it was firing lead singer Scott Weiland. The group announced the shocking news in a one-sentence press release that read: “Stone Temple Pilots have announced they have officially terminated Scott Weiland.” Now, we’ve debated the topic of press release length on my blog, and though I’ve always believed that short and sweet press releases work best, I’ve never tried to argue that press releases should be just one sentence long. But the truth is that this single-sentence press release was incredibly powerful, and there are a few valuable lessons we all can learn from it....
...I was recently sitting in a webinar on news releases with my co-workers when the presenter recommended we tweet our news releases to promote them. I felt like gasping out loud. I tried to hold back and finally I just couldn’t. “I just have to say I do not agree,” I blurted. Our intern looked up curiously and asked why. My reasoning? Would you sit down with your friends and read your press release to them? No. Would you read it to a group of prospective new business clients? Would you pass it out to people as you walked down the street? NO. Or at least I hope not. I have been asked many times to tweet a news release and every time it makes my blood boil. That’s not social. It’s not a conversation. It reminds me of the annoying person that only likes to talk about themselves, constantly. No one cares. It’s like shoving dry cereal down someone’s throat without stopping to offer them milk. And my favorite reason, “if you tweet it the media could see it.” Oh please, I assure you the media isn’t going to pick up your news release because you blasted it on Twitter....
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Press releases aren't necessarily dead but they do have to be much better. Journalists offer a collection of 9 tips to get it right.