How To Get Your Press Release Published Online
July 19, 2010
If you have decided to use press releases as part of your online PR or search engine marketing mix then you want to know that your efforts are well spent. Making sure your press release has every chance of being published on the websites you post to is the first step in making sure you get the optimum results.
Writing a press release that is unlikely to get published is like writing a letter and never posting it. It’s just wasted time when you could be doing something else.
Worse still, if you keep on writing press releases that don’t get published, you will never increase traffic to your website.
Here are my top 10 tips for getting your press releases published.
1. Make sure the title has some kind of time related information.
Your press release should be talking about something that is current i.e. your press release titles should be specific to the present and not something generic. The more time dependant the better. e.g.
Fred’s Fishing Tackle offers Soft Bait for a super discount
This is not a good title, as there is no time dependant element here. A better title would be
Fred’s Fishing Tackle Launches August 2010 Charity Fishing Competition to Support Low Income Families
Here we are talking specifically about August 2010. Better still would be to include the actual day and time of the event.
2. Do not ask a question in the title of your press release.
If you ask a question in your press release it is more likely that what you are writing is an article rather than a press release. If this is the case then post the article on an article site. The reader of a press release site is different from that of an article site. Press releases are factual and event based, with readers looking for up to date information.
3. Try and make the title ‘event based’.
The title of your press release should ideally focus on a specific event that is happening that you want people to know about.
4. Do not use FREE in the title.
The inclusion of Free in the title usually signifies to the press release reviewer that your press release is spam and not a great news item for their site.
5. Make sure your title does not read like an advert.
If your title says something like ‘£5 off this weekend at Beautiful Bouquets’ then that is not going to get past the reviewer. You need to make it more relevant and put in more of a story. Try giving the sale a ‘reason why’ it is happening e.g.
Beautiful Bouquets Launches Spring Collection For Easter Weekend (£5 Off Purchases)
6. Make your press release location specific.
If you mention the location that your press release is relevant to then you are giving the press release more focus and letting the reviewer know that this press release is relevant to their traffic. e.g.
Manchester Piccadilly Branch: Beautiful Bouquets Launches Spring Collection for Easter Weekend 2010 (£5 Off Purchases)
7. Make sure your press release title has more than 20 characters.
Short titles usually indicate short and badly written press releases and so the reviewer might just give up at the title. No super long titles either, anything over 150 characters is way too long and will probably get you left unpublished.
8. Avoid unpublishable or offensive material
Most sites will not post releases referring to pornography, gambling, racism or other offensive topics. Most press release sites use Google adsense to generate some of their revenue and so are bound by Google’s terms and conditions which do not allow adverts to be placed on sites with such content.
9. Stick to the accepted format of a press release.
Title, Introduction, Body and then about us section. Many press releases fail to have the ‘about us’ section of the press release. This is not a reason for instant deletion but it doesn’t look professional.
10. Spell check and get someone to proof read your press release.
A press release reviewer is not going to think twice about deleting your press release if it does not make grammatical sense or if it contains spelling mistakes.
24 responses to "How To Get Your Press Release Published Online"
Thank you Mark. Pretty useful tips.
Hello,
Thank you for the advice on “How To Get Your Press Release Published Online”.
I’m looking out for a good list of Press Release websites for our iPhone and iPad audiences.
We write press release content for our new apps.
Kindly advice.
This is for Vinod, I think the normal press release websites would be ideal you just need to get the right content. If you can discover a few keywords that your audience might have set up as ‘google alerts’ then you will be able to reach them. Your subject ipad and iphone is a bit too broad for me to understand exactly what you are trying to do as there can be applications written for many different types of user. If you have a set of apps that you create try and profile a typical user and then think about what interests them and what news they read, then put your news into this channel.
I really liked your blog article. Awesome.
Thanks Mark
It is helpful to have guidelines and reminders to keep me focused.
@Mark Hammersley –
Thank You Mark.
We develop games and other utility applications for iPhone and iPad.
Is there any source for a list of Press Release websites?
Sorry to bother you.
Regards
Vinod
Thanks for the tips.
I was just about to write a press release, so this came in really useful.
Hi Ian and Mark – thanks for these tips. Article writing and publishing is definitely a fine art and very time consuming so this will be useful.
@Vinod, Bangalore – @Mita Majumdar -
Great post. Suggest adding urls to relevant Websites and links to photos . We often use http://WWW.yousendit.com to store and provide media access to images. Dick Pirozzolo, Pirozzolo Company PR, Boston, USA.
Hi Dick Pirozzolo,
I like the idea of providing a yousendit link to photos as it gives people access to the high quality images they need for print. Does the yousendit link not expire though after a certain time?
Mark –
The information on what to put in the title was very helpful! I didn’t think a longer title was a good idea, but I better understand what information to include.
Thanks!
Victoria
Perhaps it would be useful to have some example of good and bad press releases.
I will risk criticism by providing the one I created via pressdoc.com
http://binreminded.pressdoc.com/2401-binreminded-com-launches-its-new-text-reminder-service
This was originally a Word document created by prforless.co.uk
This has led to an article on the 29th July in the Real People magazine for women. Sometimes you have to wait a few months before deciding whether it was a waste of money.
Hi David thanks for the link – am always happy to share resources with everyone even if they are competitors. I just want people to get more out of online PR and to do that we have to share successes.
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This is a useful post about PR.I really enjoyed reading your article and have subscribed to your RSS feed.
I echo the location advice. Most businesses need a geographic reference alongside their key search term in the headline to be useful in a Google search.
Numbers are good in a release headline – percentages from survey findings, for example.
For the body of the release, it’s helpful to follow a journalist’s standard question-based approach.
The first sentence should contain lots of answers to the standard journalist’s questions: who? what? where? when?
Follow up with the answer for why? (a quote is good).
Then answer how?
For example:
Birmingham-based (answers where?) ABC company (answers who?) today (answers when?) announced a new XX service (answers what?).
Jo Bloggs, MD at ABC said, “Feedback from customers was telling us it was hard to get XX and when we researched the market, we were surprised to find very few offered an affordable XX service.” (answers why?)
ABC was assisted in developing XX by their local enterprise agency who supplied them with a mentor with experience in XX, who introduced them to a range of suppliers and potential associates to help them develop the service. (answers how?)
Heck: you could send this to your local off-line media too!
You’ll find more stuff about releases at my website: http://www.phpr.co.uk/downloads.html
Re Vinod’s enquiry: the following would be a good start: http://www.social-media-traffic.com/press-release-submission-websites-big-list/
@Mark Hammersley -
You send it limits by time or number of downloads , which is 200, more than sufficient for a NEWS release.
Dick Pirozzolo
I completely agree with @Penny above. The who-what-when-where-why-how cycle is key to getting a journalist to pick up your story. So is mastering the “nut paragraph”. In these high-speed worlds we live in, it’s key that you simply enable Internet-savvy reporters to pick up your story and run with it.
Essentially, you are doing their job for them – writing the whole article (within the limits of your word count – which can be different online than Penny’s 120 or so words for a one page story). What was interesting to me is that the “buy now” aspect by having an event which is happening by a certain time – this implies a limitation or scarcity, which is a common sales tactic.
So you are definitely also selling your product and these points should also be kept in mind. (And while you’re on the subject, check out Collier’s sales pages to see how to tell a story that sells…)
There is possibility of rejection of your press release if you use too much advertising language and you may get following reply from the editor.
“We regret that your press release cannot be published,because it contains too much ADVERTISING LANGUAGE or too many LINKS.”
@Vinod, Bangalore –
Thanks again Mark.
We are working on it and the list of websites is quite useful.
Regards
Vinod
Nice and direct.
Over the last three years I’ve gotten our national professional association to use press releases as a method of staying in touch with both consumers and the trades.
It is just hard to keep them focussed!
Thank for this nice write….just released some press articles in The Netherlands but this is useful for me!