It’s something esd has practiced for a long time: press releases should contain enough information to catch an assignment editor’s interest, to cover the bare essentials and invite a reporter’s questions. “$25 Million Press Release,” by David Seaman on Entrepreneur (and repeated on Fox Business, where we found it) lists the steps to a successful press release:
Keep it short. Seaman says, “Treat a press release as a teaser or elevator pitch–something you could comfortably say to someone in about 30 seconds to one minute. If you need to give more information, you can always link to an information-rich PDF file or longer release on your website.”
Keep it easy. You have two objectives – announce the news and provide clear, direct contact information. “Provide clear contact information in your release: an e-mail and phone number work best. You don’t want a TV booker to have to sift through hundreds of documents simply to find out whom to contact–no one has the patience for that.
Write for long-term search engine traffic. “A press release can be a great way to increase the organic traffic you get from Google and other search engines,” Seaman says. esd makes sure press release headlines contain key words, and we make sure that primary keywords appear several times within the body of the press release.
Persistence, persistence, persistence. “If you hang in there, you can get more press… Persistence is crucial.” As you can read in our stories leading up to the Shriner international convention, we contacted local news media regularly – through emails, electronic press releases and Twitter. We got good pre-convention coverage and the local and national media reporters came out in full force for the convention.
The article is a great reminder for all of us. You can see the complete column on Entrepreneur – connect here.
And see the results of esd’s approach to public relations here.