A press release tells the media about your news and gives them an opportunity to publish your piece. If there's something exciting going on in your business, this is a great way to spread some buzz.
How do you write a press release?
First, it's a good idea to make sure you have something that's actually newsworthy. What might be newsworthy? A new website, a new product, a staff change, a promotion, you get the idea.
Second, unless you're a great copywriter you'll probably want to hire a writer or press release service to do the writing for you. If you are a decent writer, you can find some templates to use to help you with your press release.
Then, you need to get organized and make a plan for where and how you'll distribute it. There are free and paid options which we'll explore here.
The anatomy of a press release
A basic press release is a news item. It follows the typical news format which answers the classic newspaper questions, “Who, What, Where, When, Why?” Generally, a press release starts off with an eye-catching heading and the first few sentences of the press release are what will create interest. If you don't capture your audience in the first paragraph, chances are they'll move on to something else before even reading the rest.
At the end of the news bit, you have an opportunity to list where people should go for more information and this answer is your website.
How will press releases help my online business?
The success of the press release is two fold. First, people that read it could visit your site and buy something. Secondly and perhaps just as importantly, the search engines will read that there are articles on trusted sources out there pointing to your website and this, my virtual friend, will help you with your search engine rankings which is what you want more than anything online because that's the key to getting customers.
Ranking well for target keywords will get you not only search engine visibility but will get you traffic that consists of people interested in what you're talking about. Now, your website copy needs to speak well so that you can convert visitors into customers.
Press releases are something you can often submit to free services that will syndicate for you but this is not full utilization of the press release. If you pay for a service like PRWEB, you could increase your reach and find that many more sources will display your article, which can result in an incredible viral marketing campaign. You could end up in places like Yahoo! News, Google News and more and receive visitors already convinced that you are an authority in your niche based on how well your press release reads.
