Best Practices for Creating Effective Press Releases
Crafting a great press release doesn't need to be difficult. A good press release will help you attract more visitors to your product or service. Reaching the target audience becomes fairly simple when you follow certain guidelines which are important for crafting great press releases.
Do things in the format expected and if your event is newsworthy and exciting, anticipate good results. Try to reinvent the wheel, and you'll get a lot of nothing for your efforts.
Let's check out several best practices when it comes to creating an effective press release.
Best Practices for an Awesome Press Release
A Compelling Headline – Make sure your headline does these two things:
- Is attention-grabbing, emotion-filled, and compels them to read further.
- Make it shorter rather than longer. Google will only use about the first 60 characters when indexing this in the search results, so keep that in mind when you're working in your company name and any keywords you hope to feature.
Brief Yet Useful Body Copy – Aim for a one-page press release if at all possible. The goal here is not to present the whole thing, but instead create enough interest that the readers will want to contact you to learn more.
Intelligent Linking – You often have limited chances to link out, so use these carefully. Link to relevant pages on your site, and any other resources that are directly applicable.
Inform; Don't Promote! – Remember this is news, not a salesletter. Resist the urge, (and it is hard to do!) to extol the virtues of your product or event in this press release. If you get overly promotional it will likely be sent back to you for revision before publishing. Word to the wise!
Insert Correct Contact Information – If you don't include or display accurate contact information, you will have just wasted a good amount of money and time. This is your opportunity to have people who read this contact you, so make sure it is all current and accurate.
Follow these basic guidelines and you'll find that not only will you be writing and submitting more press releases, but the traffic, links and search engine listings you'll get are well worth the effort.
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