Did an SEO presentation to a local telco company about two weeks ago; guys present in the meeting room are from marketing, IT, and research. They seemed very interested in the online press release part I talked about. Let me share 11 tips on online press release and hope you find it useful.
Wait a second, why should we do online press release?
- Promote your company
- Drive your brand awareness
- Introduce your new products
- Drive targeted traffic to your websites
- Get people link to you (people especially journalists are dying for news).
- Word of mouth (social media)
11 tips on online press release:
- Do some research.
Google trends tool is helpful and some others. - Write Quality Headlines.
It matters and it matters a lot. People are thirsty about news and surrounded with news. Your headlines must be seductive enough with keywords in it. Read this 2 posts for more headlines tips.- 13 Emotion-Based Headlines That Work [Copyblogger]
- Writing Killer Headlines: Top 30 Viagra SPAM Email Subject Lines [Wiep.net]
- Use a picture.
Haven’t you heard, “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words”? - Use Statistics.
Use up-to-date, relevant, newsworthy statistics to get attention. - Cut the crap.
If people find this post helpful, they may be interested to find out more about this blog or who Rocky Fu is. If you just have to include some background information, move them to the end section such as “background information” or “further information”. - Publish Useful Press Release.
Who cares? If your staff are not even interested to spend some time to read about it, who else will? - Syndicate your press release.
Here are some websites you can syndicate your press release: - Include links on relevant keywords.
If you mentioned about your mp3 player model, link it to that page (not your homepage). - Include contact information.
Website URL, phone, fax, email, office address…make yourself reachable. - Add social bookmarking functions.
I did bookmark some press release. Have no idea what social bookmarking is? These links can get you started:- Social Bookmarking [Wikipedia]
- Social Bookmarking Tools [dlib.org]
- Video: Social Bookmarking in Plain English [common craft]
- Provide updates via RSS or email.
In my Google Reader, there is a few press release RSS feeds which provides me up to date information.
Bonus: HubSpot’s Press Release Grader evaluates your press release and provides a marketing effectiveness score. This score is based upon basic factors from public relations experts including the language and content of the release, plus advanced factors from Internet marketing experts such as links and search engine optimization characteristics.