When Press Releases Do (and Don’t) Help Your Marketing
Even when you’re connecting with a journalist by e-mail, and not just putting a press release on the wire in the hopes it will be picked up, include an attachment to a press release to help the journalists out. It makes writing about your company insanely easy, and establishes a good relationship that will help you get future press coverage.
4) They refine your messaging.
As you’re putting your press release together, you need to make sure you’ve nailed your messaging for the announcement to get maximum exposure. It’s the place everyone will go — both within your company, and externally — to get “the story” and cite important data points. When you’ve refined the messaging of your press release, you’re providing the right messaging for all other content creators to draw upon. From bloggers, to sales reps, to external content creators, everyone will be speaking about your brand with a unified message that’s set forth during the drafting of your press release.
5) The best press releases provide content for other marketing channels.
The content you should include in press releases is pretty standard from release to release: an opening paragraph giving more information on the story; background information on the company; quotes from employees; and, of course, your boiler plate at the end. But then there’s the extra stuff that takes a press release from typical to rock-star status. For instance, the previously cited research from Dan Zarrella shower that if you can provide links to videos and embed pictures in the press release, that increases engagement by about 18% for photos and 55% for videos.
Not only will your press release performance improve, but you’re able to repurpose some of that visual content in other areas of your marketing — like emails, landing pages, social media, and blog posts.
The Drawbacks of Using Press Releases
1) Press releases alone don’t help your SEO.
As mentioned earlier, press releases can help SEO if there is additional editorial content published as a result of your press release. However, despite popular belief that press releases help your SEO, they actually don’t help as much as you think. A recent article quotes Matt Cutts of Google[4] verifying that your SEO ranking in Google will not increase after a press release is posted.