Writing Press Releases
Your Release is not an Advertisement
“Johnson Motors will be selling new cars at prices $1 below dealer invoice on Tuesday.”
That’s not press release material. That’s advertising material. Paid distribution sites with real editorial standards won’t take it. It won’t attract reader attention. It certainly won’t inspire a media professional to get in touch with you.
You can’t use your release as an extended classified advertisement. That’s just not how press releases work.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a story in a statement like our example, though. What if Johnson Motors has an interesting reason for the sale? What if there’s a record involved? What if you could find a way to make a fairly run-of-the-mill car sale into something people will want to know more about?
It’s possible.
“City’s Oldest Auto Dealer Doing Everything it can to Avoid Becoming Another Recession Victim” might be a story.
Don’t try to turn your display ads into press releases. It requires more effort and more creativity to get the job done right.
News Releases and Syndication
Ideally, your press release will be seen by as many people as possible and will generate as many inbound links to your website as possible, too. That can happen thanks to the power of online press release syndication.
Many websites and blogs rely on press release distribution services for content. They utilize the release sites and/or their feeds to pull content for their own sites. That means that a press release at a popular distribution point may be republished on literally scores of other websites.
Every time it appears, it’s another chance to drive traffic and another backlink pointing toward your website. There are many reason to love press releases, the aggressive syndication of releases and the value it creates for marketers should certainly be near the top of that list. If you’re still on the fence about pursuing an aggressive press release strategy, be sure to take the potential power of syndication into account when making your decision.
