Blog

Press Releases are a vital part of every company’s marketing strategies. Press releases are written communications that are aimed at members of news media. A successful press release may get you noteworthy news coverage as well as significant traffic. Online press releases are an extremely popular marketing method, and often provide significant ROI. Press releases have been around for more than a 100 years and are a proven marketing tactic.

Benefits of Press Releases

Each press release you write may have a different goal.   Some press releases are targeted at local media as an attempt to get local news coverage.   Others may be targeted at industry journalists, or perhaps at major mainstream outlets.   Press releases also may be used to directly get traffic from interested customers, or for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Reputation Management Purposes.

Press Releases To Get More Coverage

Press releases targeted at getting more coverage for your company should be newsworthy, relevant to the journalists receiving them, and must be written extremely well. Your press release should be worth covering. You should ensure that the press release is sent to the right journalists. For example, a finance journalist should not receive a press release about how your company just donated to an environmental charity. Journalists absolutely hate receiving boring press releases that aren’t relevant to them. To ensure that you reach the right people, you may need to hire a press release company or a public relations firm.

Some great ideas for press releases include new product and service launches, a new technological breakthrough, maybe your involvement in a charity. Perhaps you can reveal the scrupulous behaviors of others in your industry. The options are endless with press releases, and there are literally hundreds of different angles you could use.

Additionally, you can also use tools such as HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to gain coverage. HARO allows you to share your expertise with reporters who need them. In exchange you get free publicity. HARO is used by some of the biggest news agencies include FOX, ABC, and AP.

Another useful strategy is to use press releases to have your business comment on popular news in the press release. This is an extremely popular strategy as it can help you position your company as the authority regarding that niche.   The key is to find relevant and trending news that your company can provide valuable commentary and expertise on. Some company’s press releases often comment on a competitor’s blunders and differentiate themselves from their competitor.

The reward of a press release that gets picked up by journalists and gets covered is that it can often result in new traffic as well as new clients.

Press Releases for SEO and Reputation Management

Press releases can also be used in your company’s SEO strategy quite effectively. Since press releases are distributed to hundreds of authority sites they can be extremely useful link building tools. You need to keep in mind most press releases are no-follow links, and Google frowns upon people using keyword anchors in press releases. The best way to use a press release is to build branded links with your company’s name instead of the keyword you’re going for. For example, if your company is called Coco Solutions, and you sell consulting, use “Coco Solutions” as the anchor text instead of “Consulting”. I suggest that you target your best and most newsworthy press releases at journalists, while using less interesting topics for SEO, branding, or Reputation management purposes.

Reputation Management is the art and science ensuring your business’ reputation online is protected.   That includes suppressing negative news in the search engines down, and filling the search engines with your own positive results. Press releases are a powerful tool in this method as they rank easily and can help drown out other search results. They are an essential part of any reputation management strategy.  Additionally Press Releases often show up in Google News, which can be a massive help in sticky reputation management cases where there’s harsh news coverage on your company.

Comments

Comments are closed.