Today there are a great many ways to be visible in a short time, however, relying on the big advertising giants does not allow us to set certain prices in the medium and long term, and recent restrictions on profiling have greatly reduced the precision with which to segment one’s target audience.
Instead, spreading news about one’s company allows us to generate the right curiosity around our brand and make it grow in a genuine way. For this topic, which is distant from the performance of a site but complementary within a successful digital strategy, I decided to interview Cristina Maccarrone, a journalist and trainer for companies, to let her tell us some practical tips.
Find out how a company can make headlines!
What is a press release?
This is a question that seems trivial and yet it is very important, dare I say crucial. A press release is basically a document that is written by a press office, external or internal, of a company, entity, organization, association. A text, accompanied by images, but possibly also by videos, audio files, etc., through which one communicates to the press, but also to bloggers, news, an opinion about something that has happened, one’s own point of view, a new product, service, and so on.
As I say in the book Writing to Inform written together with Riccardo Esposito, it is crucial that there is something to say behind a release.
Instead, companies often want to do it to mark territory or manifest their presence. But without “news” or without it showing a certain angle, journalists or bloggers (because they send to both now, thankfully) are unlikely to pick it up to write an article.
What are the questions you ask yourself before you start producing the content?
I think this question is critical in light of the recipients to whom the press release is sent, namely journalists. The questions then that you need to ask yourself are those that the media might ask you and that you already answer in the release.
To understand this better, “Is there news?” and again, “Does the release give something concrete or does it revolve around something said and said?” or “What is the evidence that can support what you want to say in the release?” The evidence can be numbers, research, quotes from people who have participated in the project, and so on. These are, in my opinion, salient and fundamental questions before producing the content.
This is why it is sometimes better to have a journalist write a statement: we are a very sui generis category and also quite pretentious. If you are not a journalist that is fine, as long as you know them inside out and know how to deal with them.
How to structure a press release?
As I said starting with the news. A press release in some ways is not very different from an article therefore, just as I say in the chapter on the press release in the book “Writing to Inform,” it has to be highlighted what you are talking about, so that the recipient understands it right away even by scrolling distractedly and dedicates whether to continue or not.
The so-called attack can follow the 5 W rule or start with a quotation mark, for example from the CEO or another person important to the news. After that you put in all the additional elements, more quotation marks, more data and well communicated, any stories of people that journalists and bloggers can then elaborate on, and so on.
Not to forget the headline, which should not be too long and should always be accompanied by a summary.
Another key thing is to include your contact information at the bottom: e-mail but also cell phone, preferably one that is always on. Because if the journalist needs a piece of information to complete his article, the press office must be available even at 7 p.m. or 8 a.m. (obviously not at night).
I will add one more thing: I really like to format the release, as one would do for an online article. That is: put boldface on keywords, link to any sources, avoid walls of text, and, if the release is long, break it up into paragraphs with H2 headings. If then the journalist will copy-paste-which is absolutely not recommended, but happens often-at least it will come out online with the best version I have edited visually as well.
What strategy do you use to distribute it online?
The same ones that apply to offline, but with some extra accuracy. The press office works if the press officer knows how to maintain relations with journalists and bloggers, so maintaining contacts, meeting them at events, inviting them perhaps to company initiatives, and so on.
With online there are additional possibilities: you can get to know many journalists and bloggers simply by following them. That is, on social, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and see what they write about and how they communicate. This way you avoid sending out an urbi et orbi communiqué, but by knowing what the interests of the journalists and bloggers are, you do targeted communication.
You can also decide to contact them first via social media, get connected, and only then send the communiqué via e-mail.
To read: how to do Digital PR to grow your project on the web.
How important is it to include it in an editorial plan?
With the understanding that, in my opinion, the best thing would be to have a dedicated press area on your site where the press can find all the releases you have published-area with restricted access or not-I would say that a release can be included in an editorial plan, sure. How? In a way that I find very useful, but still underutilized: one can link back, from the press release, to the blog (with a customized, trackable link) where there are further insights with respect to the topic of the release and thus build a much more in-depth article and at the same time give additional insights to the press.
This in fact can be doubly useful: for the journalist who perhaps wants to go deeper and who, thanks to the communiqué, can thus land on the company blog-where there will be other articles “treated” in the same way-and for the reader. The latter, in fact, is not the recipient of the press release, which is written, as we said, in a certain way because it is addressed to the media. Therefore, starting from the press release and writing an article that is suitable for reader personas can be a way to have some of the news that the company wants to communicate to its audience found within its blog. It means building them as you see fit and also reasoning from an SEO perspective trying to rank for that content.
Acting in this way does not mean choosing between media and blogging, but it means doing media relations and using the blog as a medium.