5 Press Release Best Practices
Writing a press release isn’t rocket science but it isn’t easy either. In your head, you’re writing a winning press release only to end up getting denied or disapproved after submitting it to the top PR sites. What gives?Before we dive in to the best practices, let’s see why Press Releases don’t get approved:
- You submitted a press release in all UPPER CASE LETTERS. A newbie mistake, but a mistake commonly made.
- You’ve embedded HTML, Java or any other markup language. There’s a right place to put it, and this is normally assigned by the press release submission site itself.
- You’ve violated the rules of the press release site you’re submitting to. Save yourself the trouble and go read the guidelines before submission.
- It’s full of grammatical errors, punctuation marks are incorrectly placed, incorrect use of words and spelling.
Now that you’re aware of the why-nots, here are some of the best practices to implement when writing and submitting a press release.
- Make it news-worthy. There are typical angle to a press release – product launch, relaunch of a website, new management, received awards, survey results etc. If your press release doesn’t have news worthy angle, then by all means, do not waste your time – do not submit it. It will only get rejected.
- Write an attention grabbing, head twisting, snappy headline. The wonder of press releases is this – once it gets approved, and it really is an interesting piece, you not only get approved in that site, it might also get the attention of the other sites thereby syndicating your release. The more it gets republished, the better for your brand.
- Make your press release effective by including a quote. When writing your press release, make sure to include a quote from an authority figure in the company or a satisfied customer. Dust some quotes in the middle or the end – but don’t overdo it.
- Pepper it with keywords. Keywords are important especially since you’re submitting a digital press release that gets crawled by the search engines spiders. From the title to the content, ensure keywords are included. A word of warning though – don’t force it. You’re writing for a human being, not search engine spiders. It has to make sense to them first to make a successful impact.
- When formatting your press release, write in short paragraphs. Keep it simple silly, as they say. Use bulleted or numbered lists to break up chunks of information. Make it easier to read. Why? Because nowadays, people scan and skim then if it’s deemed important then that’s when we dwell on it and read it.
Press Releases still make an impact for the brand – exposure wise, and SEO wise. Neglecting to give it a try means losing potential clients. What other best practices are you aware of? Do share!
Read more articles like this: Branding, Digital Marketing, Keyword Strategy, seo