How to Make News
There’s a big difference between announcing news…and making news. Here’s a concise primer on how to use a press release, distribution channels, and media pitches to successfully tell and deliver a story that gets seen and heard. How to Write a Press Release When You’ve Got Something to Tell the World A press release is still the standard way companies announce news: an earnings report, a major client win, a new product or location, an important company milestone, a key new hire, an acquisition, insightful findings from a sponsored survey. Cision’s 2021 Global State of the Media Report indicated that 78% of the journalists surveyed “look for press releases…to make their job easier.” There are two essential elements in determining the outcome of your press release: how/where it’s sent, and how well it’s written. A third is luck (landing on the desktop of a reporter just at the right time), but that’s beyond the scope of this post, as is a how-to on writing one, as there are many perfectly fine places to find guidance online. I should note that it takes a good degree of craft to write one that will rise to the top of a reporter’s inbox. A how-to will take you on so far, just as a how-to on drawing a bowl of fruit won’t turn you into Cezanne …perhaps not the greatest analogy, as I don’t recall ever seeing a press release hanging in a museum. (Of course, we have PR pros on hand with specialized experience in your industry for a free consultation on how to write a press release that’s also optimized for the leading search engines.) If you’re a new company, it’s usually your introduction to the reporters, bloggers, and analysts who cover your industry and give you public visibility. It’s also a way of maintaining engagement and staying top of mind with industry gatekeepers and tastemakers as your company grows. If you’re a more established company, pushing out a steady stream of press releases shows that you’re a company on the march. The Competition for Eyeballs and Setting Expectations That said, many companies make the mistake of expecting a press release to leap from the reporter’s overflowing inbox onto the pages of a major trade/business pub or influential blog. Yes, it does happen (see the CuriousCheck use case below) but bear in mind that there’s an 8 to 1 ratio of pr pros to reporters, which makes it harder for a typical press release to get a journalist’s attention. Few get past the headline, and most that do are dismissed as soon as the journalist bumps into the first string of vapid buzzwords. Your odds dramatically increase if you’re a name-brand company and/or have a stop-the-presses announcement to make. If you’re among the other 99.7% of companies looking to make news, you should view a press release as more a conversation starter than a closing argument. What you’re really looking to accomplish with a press release is: Increase visibility Demonstrate you’re a company “on the march.” Give people visiting your website a “tick-tock” of your company’s “narrative” over the course of its history. The next step is considering how and where to send your press release, which we cover in the next section. How and Where to Send It: Press Release Distribution Channels There are a number of ways to distribute your press release. We recommend you use all the channels mentioned below to maximize its exposure. BackBone, our partner PR firm, also maintains a comprehensive and up-to-date media database that they use to send directly to journalists, bloggers and analysts. The key is making sure the topic of the release matches the reporter’s beat (for instance, you don’t want to send a tech story to the Washington Post’s health desk). Today, social media channels are also very effective for disseminating news, particularly as a post or article over Linkedin, which can reach well beyond your business network. Twitter is also a valuable channel, as many reporters and analysts live there and is a fertile source for news. We also encourage all of our clients to consider emailing press releases to clients, partners, and business prospects. As a piece of legitimate news, it won’t be received as a typical promotional email; moreover, since they don’t typically receive press releases, it tends to get more attention than a standard email does. There are a number of distribution platforms or “wire services,” a term from the days when news items were sent via telegraph to newspapers, and later, to radio and TV. The most venerable wire services are BusinessWire and PRNewswire, whose services and prices you can compare for yourselves online. There are also a number of alternative services, which are more affordable but also more limited in scope but offer considerable value. Last year we did an evaluation of three alternative services, which we are in the process of updating. At a minimum, these services send your release to many high-authority news sites – Google and Yahoo News, to name just two, and many niche news sites. The press releases remain online in perpetuity, making them easily discoverable. Pro Tip: Whatʼs the best day to send a press release in 2020? The best day to send your press release is Tuesday, followed by Thursday, then Wednesday. The worst day to send your press release is on Friday (For obvious reasons) and Monday (The busiest day of the week). The best time to send your press release is early at 9 AM. Why is a Press Release Important for SEO? In addition to announcing news and (potentially) leading to actually making news, a press release can have significant SEO benefits. A press release lives online in perpetuity and will come up in organic search results. Pickup on high authority news sites improves SEO It can increase social media shares, which is factored into your ranking. It increases name recognition. Following Up: How to Write a Media Pitch that Gets Attention As mentioned, journalists value press releases as brand or company validation, and as
Catching Buzz in a Bottle: Calculating Your PR ROI
Public Relations ROI As marketing budgets shrink, there is increasing pressure to show return on public relations (PR) investment. But measuring PR ROI (return-on-investment) has always been a tricky proposition. There is seldom a direct correlation between how much an organization spends on PR and how much business it pulls in. Indeed, PR implicitly resists hard ROI metrics. Public relations is about heightening company/product awareness and promoting a positive reputation. How do you catch, let alone measure, buzz in a bottle? The measure most widely used to determine PR success is the number, frequency, and breadth of media clips secured. But the scope of possible PR objectives is wide and success cannot be reliably gauged by clip volume alone. Let’s say positioning the company as a leader in technology innovation is among your top PR goals. After a year’s time, you’ve won a handful of prestigious industry awards and earn several glowing product reviews… You are invited to participate in speaking roundtables and have routinely carved out column inches in articles featuring the two or three top competitors in your technology sector. Still, there is no mathematical formula that connects PR activities and the short-term and longer-term business impact these activities have on the brand or company. The value of PR remains difficult to quantify. That said, it’s important to determine what can and can’t be quantified. Or, put another way, you need to determine how to assess both intangible and tangible ROI—in demonstrating the value of PR to your organization. The following identifies each component of a PR program and how to go about assessing success: 1. PR Messaging: Standard Deliverables This includes all documents and PR messaging authored and issued by your account team: press releases, editorial pitches, speaking proposals, articles, and white papers. If the new SATs can score essays, surely you can assess these communications for grammar, message, and tone. 2. PR Outcomes As mentioned above, counting the number and assessing the breadth of media placements is one metric—and an important one in determining Public Relations ROI—BUT this does not by itself tell a complete story. You need to gauge the quality of these placements. Clients assume their PR initiative is successful if they get coverage in the Wall Street Journal or Information Week. Sure, you’ve managed to appear in a top-tier publication and will be seen by a significant slice of your target market. Which is no mean achievement. But your ultimate PR objective is to secure coverage that amplifies your core message (and positively supports your market positioning). What will readers come away with? What action(s) will they take? This also applies to product reviews. It’s one thing to convince a reviews editor to take your software into the lab…it’s quite another if the review falls short of expectations. So again, the quality of coverage must be factored in as you assess the clips that come across your desk. Typically, one of your top PR objectives is gaining recognition in a competitive market— which means you want to make sure to appear in every article mentioning your chief competitors and that you stack up well in head-to-head roundups or comparisons. Again, you need to go beyond clip count and consider the quality of your coverage, particularly as it relates to your competitors. 3. PR Impact Roughly speaking, there are two types of impact: PR that prompts specific actions and PR that demonstrably changes perceptions. The first can be gauged in the short term; the second is more elusive and can only be gauged over a longer haul. Short-term PR impact • Calls/e-mail: How many calls or e-mails have resulted from your specific PR initiative? • Web site visits: An article appears in a prominent trade journal and lists your URL, but the question is, how many have visited your Web site as a result? In other words, what type of referral traffic did you gain from the distribution to these media companies? Long-term PR Impact Reputation, brand equity, market leadership… These are all critical measures of PR success. But it takes time to move the needle…it’s less about acceleration and more about gradual momentum. Indeed, it may take a year or more before you make discernable progress in burnishing your reputation, building your brand, and asserting market leadership. The best way of measuring success is by querying industry analysts and conducting surveys of customers and prospects. 4. Connection to Business Objectives The ultimate metric is in determining the relationship of PR and market penetration, market share, sales, and profitability. It is also near impossible to isolate PR and reliably quantify its impact on these key business objectives. In this regard, it is more useful to view PR as a tool in achieving these objectives. In another “Power Tools” advisory (Use It or Lose It: Using PR to Drive Sales), we draw distinctions between passive and active PR and show how the latter can—and should—be put in the service of sales (which goes to the other business objectives mentioned). Assessing the quality of PR communications, measuring PR outcomes, understanding the short-term and long-term impact of all initiatives, and connecting PR to business objectives, are all critical to your ability to maximize your PR ROI. But when you come right down to it, determining Public Relations ROI is about as scientific as former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of what we’ll call adult material: “I can’t define it,” said Justice Stewart, “but I know it when I see it.” Related: How to Make News CuriousCheck and BackBone Partner to Provide Integrated Content Marketing and SEO Programs for HR Technology Vendors PR in the Age of NewsBots: a Pitched Battle