Five ways to get more from your press release
By Publicity Heaven writer Michael Barratt
Now you have your press release completed, with that all important newsworthy angle and killer headline to boot, all that’s left to do is send your press release out to journalists across the country.
Well, you could do that but you may be missing out on a world of opportunity.
Iimplement the following steps to ensure you get that little bit extra out of your press release.
The first step is research, but this is only a precautionary measure to ensure your press release doesn’t end up in the paper bin. Have a look at popular press release websites like Businesswire and PRWeb and take note of the style and format their releases possess. Is your press release written in a similar style? Does it have a newsworthy headline? Is the content length just right?
If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then you know that your release has a good chance of being accepted.
This next step is excellent for anybody that is looking to get their press release published online. Keywords are a very good tool that can be used to get more traffic to your website or lead page. Again, do some research and have a look at the keywords that people are using to search for products or services that are similar to yours. Gather together the top searches and see if you can get them in to your release with the best keyword in your headline.
A call to action is a very important part of your press release. This should be towards the end of the release and should include information about how to follow up any interest in your product or service. Your website or lead page address will suffice.
Replace your business name with your business’s website address. When people read your release, and this includes journalists, they will want to find out more information about you and the service or product that you are offering. By including your website address in the release they know exactly where they have to go to get that all important information. Just including your business name is not enough. There may be a company in the US that has the same name as yours and when people type your business name in to a search engine, they could be given the website of your US namesake.
Find the best day to send your release to a journalist. Weekdays are much better than weekends. Think about the amount of press releases the journalist has to trawl through on a Monday morning. It is much more likely that they will source the releases they want at a glance and dispose of the rest without reading them. Sending a press release to a journalists on a weekday has much more chance of being opened and read.
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