Making Your Press Release Work For Your Business

Not Getting the Press You Deserve?
Do you feel that your press releases aren’t getting the response that they should? If yes, it’s time to make your PRs more effective by adding relevant keywords and including a video or an image in it. Studies have shown that a mere 14% of press releases posted on major wire services are optimized for the search engines. Another study reveals that as compared to text-only PRs, the ones combined with videos/images can hold the viewer’s attention to up to 30 seconds more, and get shared three times more. So, if you want your PRs to work, here’s how to get the job done:

Use relevant keywords: Many companies use their product names as the keyword to link to their website. But did you know that you can get better results by hyperlinking a relevant keyword that people search more often? To find competition and monthly search volume of your core keywords, you can use Google’s keyword tool and then finalize a list of keywords that you will use throughput your press release. It would help if you pick one or a few primary keywords, along with some secondary and tertiary keywords. However, you should weave the keywords in your PR without disrupting the natural flow of the content. Avoid stuffing the PR with keywords, which would make it sound unreal.

Using images: To enable people using image search find your PR, use images with good resolution that match the news you are putting out. You can optimize such images by naming and tagging them using relevant keywords. While selecting images, you can opt for the ones that are expected to strike a chord with your readers. For example, if you are launching a product, rather than using just a product shot, you can grab more eyeballs and impress your readers by putting up images of customers using it.

Using videos: Did you know that while an image in a PR can increases engagement by 14%, the engagement rate almost doubles when you add a video along with an image? If not, it’s time to do it for making your PRs more effective. While creating your videos, keep the duration under two minutes, and make it interesting. You can use charts or graphics to demonstrate your point, but steer clear of self-serving advertorials. Though you can host such videos on YouTube or Vimeo, you can distribute it along with your press release over the wire to increase SEO and syndication. Once you have uploaded your video, ensure that you have tagged it with relevant keywords. You may also include a transcript of the video to enable the content being indexed by search engines.

Use social media to your advantage: Put a coordinated campaign for promoting your PR on various social media platforms soon after your PR is released. Tweeting the PR url, posting the url on your Facebook page, pinning a relevant news-related image to Pinterest, posting a YouTube video with a link back to your webpage/blog where you have published the announcement, and posting the announcement page on other social networks like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit - all can give your PR the much needed exposure and publicity.

So, go ahead and use these techniques to empower your press releases.