Issuing Press Releases to Generate Awareness & Improve SEO

The goal of any marketing team is to widen the reach of your brand and generate awareness of your content. In digital marketing SEO content is king, as search engine algorithms are how most people will interact with the internet and the information contained within. An impressive SEO strategy will utilize many different forms of content, all to improve visibility through SEO. Blog posts and social media content are popular formats, but one form of content you should not underestimate is Press Releases.

Press Releases, when handled correctly, are a powerful tool to aid businesses in not only providing relevant information on their services but creating further visibility for their brand. Here at W.D. Strategies, press releases are one of many kinds of content and strategies that we leverage for our clients in order to improve their visibility on the internet.

You may have heard of big PR firms managing press releases for multinational corporations or even popular individuals and sports teams, but smaller and medium-sized businesses can benefit from this form of content as well. As a proof of concept, we want to discuss how a press release helped our own efforts and garnered us a lot of attention and opportunities we would not have had otherwise.

Continue reading to learn more about what exactly a press release is, how it helps businesses and our case study of how a press release helped generate invaluable opportunities for our business here at W.D. Strategies.

What is a press release?

A press release can take several different forms, but its most important use is in communicating a newsworthy announcement to members of the press, in hopes that they will provide coverage of this event.

This will generally mean reaching out to individual journalists, papers, and other outlets with a neatly formatted content brief that details some new announcements regarding your business that you feel the outlet would be willing to cover in their content. This could mean new product lines, new deals, or even a new location.

You should also consider who your announcement is important to. Is this a general newsworthy event, or is this specific to your region or industry? From there you can understand who you should contact with your press release.

How does a press release help?

How does offering this content to press outlets help your business? Well, with any publicity, it is about creating awareness of your brand through the use of as many media outlets and outside sources as possible. You will have your own website and content-generating leads for you but having as many outside sources as possible leading back to your content is how you maximize your visibility.

This point is further emphasized when you consider the usefulness of backlinks. Backlinks refer to your website or content being linked in an external source’s content so that it can lead back to you. Backlinks are incredibly important for SEO and brand visibility, especially when it comes to high-ranking websites because it improves the reach of your brand to audiences.

For instance, if your content can be found on sites like Facebook or Twitter, or big news outlets, then your brand is visible to that higher population of visitors. This can sometimes be even more valuable than your own content and website.

How to start writing a press release?

With the importance of this content format established, how can you create this content for your brand? Well, there are a few key concepts to keep in mind, and writing a press release will have different requirements than writing your other SEO content.

An important distinction with press releases is that they are typically created for the direct viewing of a journalist. Therefore, you should seek to adopt a more journalistic approach to this content, rather than seeking to satisfy an algorithm. Let’s cover a few different concepts you should keep in mind, including the Inverted Pyramid, Tone-Neutral Language, and AP Style Writing.

The Inverted Pyramid

This is a content structure that journalists use in their own writing and will help your press release be more easily reviewed by them. The inverted pyramid is an approach to organizing information, with the first few paragraphs including important facts and pressing details, basically anything that makes this story interesting. Next, you would delve into more context for your announcement, and perhaps even provide quotes and insight from other relevant parties. Finally, you would include your contact information, so that your contact knows who you are and who you represent.

Tone-Neutral Language

Mastering a neutral tone for your press releases means making sure that your content is focused on key facts and details and is not overloaded with personal remarks. This approach to language allows journalists to quickly understand the key features of your release and determine any newsworthy information.

AP Style Writing

Considering AP Style writing and formatting for your content is essential for making sure it sees the widest release. AP Style is the standard for news writing, and most of your news contacts will predominantly work with this formatting. Creating your content in this manner allows your work to be easily understood and therefore distributed, with errors and misunderstandings minimized by using this common technique.

What can you expect from a press release campaign?

So, let’s say you have a firm grasp on the purpose of a press release, and you have managed to create your own for your business’ announcements. What can you expect from a successful campaign? To illustrate what a well-performing press release campaign looks like, we’ll share how our press release garnered us some of the most significant engagement out of all our content.

The release-worthy announcement in question was our assistance with the creation of the Alleghenies Marketplace, which offers an online platform for entrepreneurs in Central Pennsylvania to sell their products. We created a press release to communicate this event to news outlets, and it was most significantly picked up by the Associated Press, who provided coverage of the announcement, as well as background into our business and services.

On top of the Associated Press, however, this release went on to be picked up by over 450 news outlets. This is where the strength of press releases lies. On top of just the general headlines and information on the outlet’s sites, they also all provided backlinks to our content. This means our press release produced exponential engagement, and it directly led to new clients reaching out and even gave us further opportunities to discuss our other efforts with local news outlets.

Partner with WD Strategies for your next Press Release Campaign

We are well versed in SEO content, and how marketing teams need to strategize to increase their visibility on the internet. But for other businesses without our experience, we understand how creating press releases and managing these campaigns can feel overwhelming. If that is the case for you, consider partnering with W.D. Strategies, and gain a valuable partner for your digital marketing strategy.

We can plan your entire press release campaign, including the writing of the article, managing distribution, providing stats and analysis of the impact of the content, and we can even provide professional photography and other services if needed. We have an incredible track record not only for our own brand, but for our clients as well, and we are ready to accommodate the unique goals of your business as well.

Visit our site and learn how our press release services can empower your marketing team to generate awareness and exposure for your brand. For further insight into our process, or if you want to discuss with our team and learn more about how we can serve your business, you can book an online session here.

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