Make Your Next News Releases More Impactful 

The news release has lovers and haters.  Some say it is an antiquated and ineffective way to communicate. Others see it as a valuable tool for helping companies build trust, credibility and value. Whatever side you are on  - one thing is clear - the news release is not going away. In fact, it may be more important now than ever before.

The news release came on the scene 100 years ago as a way to respond to a tragedy and today still remains a vital tool for companies and brands to talk to key audiences. Recently with social media and a proliferation of other channels bombarding audiences everywhere - the news release has become even more misunderstood and misused. 

So we thought it would be a good time to take a closer look at ways to make sure your news release is effective in today's extremely competitive environment. Here are four points to consider:

1. It's the Headline Stupid.  The average attention span of a reader is 8 seconds (1 less than a goldfish). You have to capture attention right away - yet in a credible meaningful way. This means don't use jargon or speak from the company's perspective.  In fact, a good rule of thumb is to write the headline that you want to see printed in a news article.  Then modify it to make it more realistic and emphasize what is newsworthy and important to your target audience.  What you need to ask is WIIFT (What's in it for Them?).
2. Make it Visual.  Images, videos and infographics are vital to how we consume information and need to be part of your news release. Journalists are 78% more likely to run a story with a visual. News media outlets need visuals to appeal to their audiences. In fact, Cision's 2019 State of the Media Report shows the most cited feature among reporters for making a story engaging was an image. All news releases need to be thought of as multi-media releases with images, videos, supporting materials, call-out points and other key pieces of content needed by busy journalists. We found Reportable to be a great tool for this. As well as providing an easy way to create and distribute multimedia news releases it lets you track them too, providing measurable performance metrics. 
3. Validate your claims. Everyone knows a news release is issued from a company and so the information presented is biased and taken with a grain of salt by journalists.  As much as possible, try to include third party sources in your announcement to validate your news. If this is not possible, try to link to other supporting material so that the story includes a variety of perspectives (as it would in a news article). Customers and market analysts are good sources to include. 
4. Customize your message.  While it is fine to send out a news release to a general audience its chances of being picked up are greatly enhanced if you take the time to customize pitches to the press. The information in the news release is the same - however, you can pitch it in many different ways and should send it out to key contacts with customized messaging.  

When used properly, the news release works.  The news release still remains a valuable tool for companies to build product and brand awareness and for journalists to source story ideas. It just has to be used properly.

As an integrated PR and digital marketing agency for B2B technology companies, Wired Island has been issuing news releases for clients since the early 90's. Our 30-year track record of helping technology companies leverage PR to increase awareness and market share demonstrates that PR still works and the news release is far from dead. In fact, it is why we are so excited about at tool like Reportable.  Reportable is a new way to create, share and host a multimedia news release on a dedicated URL that serves up exactly what busy journalists are looking for in a way that's relevant and meaningful in today's era of digital and social media

Side Bar - how to create Visuals for news releases 

Often times the nature of a news release means there are not a lot of visual elements handy to issue with the release. This means we need to get creative.  Here are some ideas for how to come up with visuals to support the news release. (See graphic "Don't have a visual" )