How to Write Press Releases

How to Write Press Releases


 How to Write Press Releases?  When you are running a business, you want to be the first to get media attention whenever an opportunity arises. Writing good Press releases is a critical tool to use in getting the word out about your existence, purpose and your amazing line of products and services.

However, many professionals lack the skills to write a good PR with the proper hook that makes a newsworthy article. In this post, we will train you on the importance and qualities of a good press release to grab the attention of peers, journalists and eventually customers.

Posting A Press Release
Posting A Press Release

Are you a marketer?                                          


Every online and offline business needs the extra attention that a press release can draw to its amazing line of products and services as well as the milestones along the way to success. This puts pressure on every marketer to understand the inner workings of a press release. Press releases are often mistaken for fake news but they are not that at all.

On the contrary, good press releases are awesome media to make the public and media digest your latest news. Writing a good press release gets you more coverage and readership and is the first step to making a cost-effective and successful online marketing campaign.


Press releases are great but only when you do them right. 


They only cost the time spent writing them but the can cost your business dearly when poorly done. Mainstream media and the best bloggers receive so many of these but only respond to the best formatted and engaging pitches.

 Read through the following and be well on your way to writing something for front pages and avoid the delete button. Thankfully, there are a few ways to get your press release right. Here are a few tips you can make use of to turn things your way.

Let’s see if you can get all the tips and tools you need to get your company and business the attention it deserves by writing a press release that drives results.


How to identify a newsworthy topic for your press release


Hours spent downloading press release templates can go to waste if the article cannot be tied to a news item and a current development. It is true that sometimes it just easier to replicate successful press releases with examples to follow but when you cannot make the press release your own then it will not be an effective part of your campaign.

It is obvious that every good news and the newsworthy story has a hook to it. Readability only complements the content of a press release. Getting your first line read is the ultimate goal of writing any copy of a kind.

Simplicity is the universal key to getting your content read each and every time including your very first try. A press release would be useless if it is not read and digested and therefore you should channel all your energy into making it newsworthy and readable.


So, what is a press release anyway?


A press release is a two-page document sharing some breaking news with the public. Well, sometimes the general public will encounter a press release but they are meant to disperse information to journalists and media houses for publishing. 

Press releases take after the news article on a regular daily newspaper. The reverse pyramid writing techniques ensures that the most important information is presented first.


Why do we need press releases?


Companies and businesses around the world whether large or medium-sized will write press releases for a range of benefits. Common objectives include the primary one discussed above of getting media coverage. Apart from media attention which is always for driving profits and captivating goodwill, here are some common benefits of writing good press releases.

  • Popularize new products and services
  • Building an authoritative brand image
  • Crises management and mitigation
  • Building backlinks to authority media sites
  • Cost-effective marketing
So whether you are looking to relaunch your brand image or you simply want more people in your sphere of influence to learn about your amazing line of products, an old fashioned PR will do the trick.


When is the best time to send a PR?


Any time you have something newsworthy to share about your company and brand then its PR time. It could be breaking news announcements, the official position of your company on a matter or you are launching this revolutionary new range of products.

Upcoming events, new partnerships or going public, or winning awards and pretty much all achievements that you think your customers need to know. For larger entities, hiring new executives makes the news. Media outlets want to be the first to cover new developments and welcome the favor of making their reporting work a lot easier.

When something that could potentially harm your reputation happens, it’s best to get your story out before someone else does.

Better yet, find a good excuse to write an amazing press release piece and go ahead and write a fantastic one.

What to include in a press release


The standard format for writing a press release includes the following features:

Heading: you can go for a catchy heading that pretty says clearly why your story is news worth reading.

Press contact: provide a means for the press to get in touch with you.

City-state, location: every good news story has a setting with location and date

Body copy: Your amazing story goes here with the important details put first.

Boilerplate: This section describes what your organization is all about. Good public relations wouldn’t hurt.


7 Tips to Writing an Amazing Press Release


  1. Understand the format

The structure of press releases is what makes it a unique and effective tool to spread the word about your achievements. Adherence to the correct format and readability will earn you more media opportunities. As a rule of thumbs, your opening should answer the five W questions namely;

ü  Who
ü  What
ü  Where
ü  When
ü  Why

  1. Keep it brief

People hardly have the time to follow through a novel in the form of a news column. Think of the press release as an announcement that must communicate all the important information within a limited word count. If the media want to know more about your copy then they will contact you.

  1. Use a professional tone

The press release is a professional document and the tone you use must reflect the same. The press release is read by journalists and colleagues and therefore needs to sound professional and intelligent.

  1. Write for press

When writing your press release, think like a reporter too. You need to have a hook to the story and the must-have facts. Only when you can appeal to the journalist and editor that you will be awarded a greater audience.

  1. Make it mobile-friendly

Today, it’s important to make sure your article is not only neatly written but also readable with large fonts for optimal reader experience on all screen sizes and types. When you are posting your press releases on your blog then the buttons should also be clickable in addition to responsive web design. Contact information should be easily reachable and you can make it easier for your readers to reach your social media handles as well.

  1. SEO optimization for press releases

Like any other copy, good PR requires proper keyword research and optimization to be found on search engines. Search engines' news searches should effectively broaden your reach and impact of your press release.

  1. Use quotes

Quotes are a powerful ingredient to use in your press releases. They not only draw out the important points but also make your writing stand out as authoritative. The media requires these to publish and they will reward you for making their work easier.

Where to send press releases?


If you are just starting out, you might be wondering where to submit your first PR in order to get the much-needed media attention. For this, you will need to make a list of your local outlets and their contacts which you can get online. These include industry publications, local newspapers, general news sites, industry partners and bloggers. It is best to start small and build your list of media contacts from scratch. Soon enough, you can have major publications highlighting your achievements.


Write an amazing Press release


Now, you are all set. Go and write an amazing press release that journalists will find irresistible to use in their next big story. We believe that the above summarizes the most important points to bear in mind when writing a press release that will eventually get published and enjoyed by your readers.

Remember to answer the great W questions and include some must-have facts while avoiding fluff, its one of most important features of a press release


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SEO Is Not Dead

SEO Is Not Dead


SEO Is Not Dead, right?  Just posing this question to any SEO guru makes them cringe or agitated or both. Just the same, the question of whether SEO even works anymore might as well be just as old as the practice itself. So where did the idea that SEO is dead and what proof is there to show that good old Search Engine Optimization is alive and well? Let us find out.
                                                                                                                                 
For decades now, people have been cheering the death of SEO for no apparent cause. Might this be the curious case of the proverbial Hare? He could not reach some fruits on a tree and consoled himself by saying how the fruits were not even delicious
SEO Is Not Dead
SEO Is Not Dead

Proof SEO is not dead


Case study. You just typed in ‘SEO is dead’ or ‘Is SEO dead?’ which by all standards is a competitive keyword. Definitely you will get arguments supporting and against SEO. Now, on a separate tab, please take count of all results that are for SEO and those that are claiming that it’s obsolete for the first page of SERPs.

Not surprisingly, you will discover that nearly all the top results for these two search phrases are in supporting SEO. Now, the answer to your query is already staring you right in the eyes. Every problem eventually resolves itself. People who don’t care to include good SEO in their marketing plans never make it to the top organically. The above is our first proof that SEO works.

How Search Engine Optimization Drives Growth


While SEO is still alive and well, it is a dynamic area and most of the original stuff is now obsolete. With each new update of Google’s algorithms, SEO has been proclaimed dead more times than we care to count.

Each passing year brings new developments to the SEO industry and there is no monopoly of knowledge here. The rapid change in what works for SEO and good practices for that matter is what has skeptics screaming at the top of their lungs.

Technology is growing in leaps and the trends in which people interact with the internet have gone through several metamorphoses. Just the same, the Search engine remains the custodian of the vast resources of the web. Website owners who want to found organically must unravel their riddle and SEO aids with that.

As long as ranking on Search results remains relevant, one surefire way to fail is to practice bad SEO or not to care at all.

Age of the AI takeover is upon us and we have algorithm-driven algorithms and so much more to comprehend. But SEO still remains a vital part of making money online today.

People argue that with the advent of the IoT, machines will not require SEO to navigate the web. It is hard to imagine how SEO could help with M2M communications once every device on the planet is connected to each other.

On the contrary, SEO is even more important to machines than to humans. Our eyes and brain have the incredible power to decipher meaning from virtually useless scraps of information. Machines have to iterate over content searching for clues from the contextual meaning of keywords and match up the best results. It is almost like finding a date online with millions of possible matches.

SEO for the future


Moving forward, Search engines are strategically even more relevant. The use of voice picture searches will be on the rise. Therefore optimization for algorithms will be a dire need for every business.

Optimizing for humans still remains relevant because when we use voice searches we tend to say more words. A conversational tone in a post will make it more natural and an irresistible hit when speech is converted to text.

The new generation of search assistants is now taking over with greater precision. In the future, even being on the first page will not matter because the search assistant is keen on getting that perfect hit that users want.

Leaders in the search industry including Google, Apple, and Bing now want to discard irrelevant first page results and present one best fit. This makes most niches especially local searches even more competitive.

As unsettling as this whole discussion might be for webmasters, it’s important to emphasize that
content is still king. Real users and search engines are still the main targets for web content. Methods of search my vary but you will be found for as long as you have high quality, original content optimized for finding.


Google vs Bing and Yahoo


The search engine industry is more of a monopoly with Google owning about 96% of the market today. There are other players like DuckDuckGo which have been struggling to stay competitive or at least afloat. Reportedly, DuckDuckGo has been on the upward trend even with the decline of Yahoo and Bing. Just the same, search traffic outside of the three most dominant search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing remains just under 1%.

According to Merkle Inc., a Columbian based performance-marketing agency and big data company, Bing and Yahoo lost their share in the total search engine traffic from 0.8% to 0.6% in 2018.

This explains why ranking for Google is synonymous with driving organic traffic. Google Ads drive a giant share of the giant as if an assurance that organic results will always have their place. Buyers are constantly becoming aware of the need to click on an organically ranking website rather than Ads for more solutions that are credible. Search Engine Optimization has actually just become even more relevant than ever.


New trends that are driving growth from Organic results


Internet searches for stuff performed by people are not going anywhere. Rather than search directly by punching a keyboard, we might prefer having our phone or watch or car listen. Without intuitive and well-optimized content, getting hits will become increasingly difficult with the following new and emerging trends in searches.

Mobile and smart devices


People often assume that the use of new and emerging technologies and the departure from desktop environments to mobile devices means the end of searches. This is not the case as mobile space is one of the largest sources of search engine traffic. Websites that are not mobile ready with responsive themes and intuitive web designs are doomed to fail.
It is important to understand that searches are the business Google is into and they are also the main proponent of the continued growth of the mobile space. Further, as much as mobile is growing in leaps, the desktop environment is not going anywhere because it is still a favorite for students and researchers.

Answers driven search results


Google may have started out as a result-driven operation but the focus is shifting from results to answers. The company has updated its results page design and presentation to make search results answers and solutions to users.

Voice search and search assistants


Voice searches and many other search modules only emphasize on the need for a naturally flowing piece of content for each post.  Also, long-tail search queries are an area webmasters need to polish up on and a good SEO team will help with that. An average voice search query is a sentence that is 7 to 8 words long which specifies the user’s intent.

Sites only providing the information many not profit much from targeting Voice assistants. These assistants are only in their infancy but the rapid integration into smart devices will see them spread faster than android ever did.

The projected growth of the sector is over 40 billion US dollars by the year 2022 worth of sales in the US e-commerce alone. In the future, there will no longer be the ‘10 blue links’ phenomenon of search results. With increasing searches and fewer money sites getting the lead, SEO is an excellent channel for making your case.

TheStreet predicts that by 2022, up to half of all searches could be hands-free. Any website that enjoys huge traffic today from organic searches and paid ads would be negligent to ignore such numbers.

A Deja vu


History repeats and especially with developments on the web. Anybody who has been monitoring the industry over the last decade will agree that the growth curve for voice searches is strikingly similar to that of mobile commerce seven years ago.

With the inevitable internet of things up and coming, the winners of tomorrow’s online business are entrepreneurs and firms that choose to make the best engaging and SEO tweaked the content.

Conclusion


Yes, the world of SEO much like the tech world around is growing and evolving at a fast-paced speed. Just a couple of decades ago, it was hard to picture how cellphones and smartphones could take over the world. Today, the smartphone has been benched by smart-almost-everything-else. Cars, microwave ovens, fridges, houses and such now have a ‘brain’ of their own.’

All-new smart technology relies on searches to make decisions which in turn increases the search traffic to prepared websites. Now smart devices are expected to rule the next decade with increased access to high-speed internet with 5G. Whether for man or machine, good content and best SEO practices are paramount to achieving any rank.

Some people who have been skeptical of SEO from the start tend to think that new technology will do away with a nicely written web copy but that is untrue. In fact, it could not be any further from the truth as good content will win today and tomorrow’s traffic.

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