When you’re looking for more ways to create quality content, press releases offer another format to share your news. My clients in the design and construction industry typically send out press releases to keep their name in the news and gain credibility as being an expert in their field.
If you need some idea starters, I created a helpful list:
10 Newsworthy Reasons to Send Out a Press Release
- Promoting a Grand Opening, New Office or Expansion
- Publicizing Speaking or Exhibiting at a Trade Show
- Placing in a Competition or Ranking on a List
- Adding or Promoting an Employee
- Gaining an Important Certification
- Adding a New Client or Project
- Publicizing a Special Event
- Promoting a New Product or Service
- Announcing Pro Bono or Community Service Work
- Winning an Award
I distribute press releases via PRWeb (an online distribution source) and I email the news releases directly to the appropriate editors, as well. PRWeb helps get the releases picked up in Google and Yahoo, etc. and has shown good results in supporting SEO initiatives. Plus, my clients still like to see their news “in print” when we can get it…so also emailing the editors at traditional print publications directly is still important.
One word of caution, please do not be tempted to use “free” news release distribution sources that share “pseudo news”. These sites generally do not have high credibility rankings with Google, and I’ve been told by my website gurus that distributing through such sources can hurt your organic rankings. (Nobody wants that!)
If you don’t have the budget to distribute your release through a credible news distribution source, you can still post the releases on your own website, blog and cross promote them in your social media channels and also use them as content in your email newsletters. Whenever you create quality content, you want to get as much mileage out of it as possible!
There are a multitude of helpful “how to” guides online if you want to learn how to create your own releases. For ongoing campaigns and higher-level directed pitches to specific publications, hiring a PR consultant or Public Relations firm may be a very wise investment.
There is a famous saying (author unknown) that sums up the value of PR most succinctly, “Advertising is what you pay for, publicity is what you pray for.”
Good luck in sharing your news and gaining all the great publicity you deserve! If you need help with PR, please feel free to contact me for an evaluation.
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