In the world of media, journalism, and marketing, nothing can be more important than spreading your voice. Even more important is spreading your voice, your message, or your ideas in a way that is in your own words so that you can tell your story and express your information as you see it. This is a key element to making sure that your news is heard, and it’s a fundamental process in the industries aforementioned.
Making use of a press release is a way that we can express that voice and be heard. Most notably, it’s a good way to get the news out there in a timely fashion. Press releases are an invaluable asset, and they’re an asset that can give great returns on very little effort and investment. With all of that in mind, it’s very useful to know just how and why a press release may be used.
Not everything needs a formal announcement or acknowledgment, but there are plenty of events and information that have to be passed on in the proper way. Here is a list of some of the reasons why it can and will be important to send out a press release.
Create Brand Awareness
A company, an organization, a product, or an individual are all examples of what could be branded, but it matters how people perceive them. Press releases are used to announce something, like an award, or an executive hiring, but they can also be used to help promote a brand and garner some awareness. Looking at a sample press release at https://www.ereleases.com/how-to-write-chapter-1/, you can tell how this is a useful way to manage expectations, announce something, and grow the brand’s image. This press release can signal to reporters that they want to be taken seriously and that they have something of value to be reported on.
Any good brand should take advantage of the fact that press releases are a standard media item. They’re simple to make, but they produce great results if done properly. This is especially true for those smaller brands and companies that need some help getting noticed, which is why a press release is key.
Make a Serious Topic Made Aware of
Every day we see hundreds of ads, stories, and other topics of conversation and information. It’s impossible to ignore, and with TV and digital technology, we tend to skim over a lot of it. This can be good or bad. The good is that we are finding out a lot more about the topics that should be covered, which we may have completely missed before. This proliferation of news is helping us see more of the world, and see more stories from different perspectives. That is always a major plus.
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On the flip side, the bad is that we are missing out on a lot of stories or topics because the never-ending faucet drip of news is making it impossible to keep up. Even though stories can be archived, we find it impossible to stay on top of current events. The solution is that people can begin to take things into their own hands by creating these very valuable press releases. There are plenty of press releases that are filler and are banished to the waste bin or computer trash can, but there are a lot of gems in between these that help us be aware of the goings-on around us. This is a primary reason for a press release, to help us be aware of the news.
Announce a New Product
Brand new are two words that often excite people like nothing else. You see that sticker or announcement and you feel compelled to go out and get one for yourself because it’s exciting. This is a popular marketing tactic and it works quite well, but many times a product (or service) falls through the cracks because as stated, there’s just too much to keep upon. When this happens for a company’s product, it’s hard on them and their sales, and they need to compete.
Issuing a press release in hopes of garnering interest from reporters is a great way to make sure someone out there finds out about this new product or service so that it doesn’t go unnoticed. Issuing a press release to announce a new product is very useful if this product feels like it can be of value to the consumers. It all depends on who picks up the release and decides it’s newsworthy, but it’s a good chance to make sure that the message gets out there.
Repair a Brands Image
If a press release is a good way to create brand awareness, it could be just as equally valuable to try and salvage that image as well. Many things can damage a brand. The most common examples include unlawful activity, inferior products, and services, lack of customer satisfaction, disreputable behavior from members of the company/organization/group, or general bad behavior. This is damaging to a brand and can hurt how they look to everyone involved.
Whether it’s the consumer, the shareholder, or the general public, it’s important that a press release is issued that can help repair some of the optics lost or damaged during a time of misfortune. It’s not a guarantee, but good brands are able to successful pivot out of bad situations through crafty techniques and use these kinds of tools to garner sympathy.
Practice Crisis Management
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Crisis management and brand imagery are very similar, but crisis management warrants its own section because it’s more about an event or act than the image of the company itself. They lend to each other often, as bad press hurts a brand, and a faltering brand image can lead to a need for crisis management solutions. In essence, a good press release is necessary after an incident that would be labeled a crisis. This could be a defective product that injures people, leaks or hacks that result in lost customer information, a politician committing a crime, or an immoral act.
The art of crisis management is a tough skill to learn because you never know how you will handle a situation until you are in one, but one of the first things anyone should do is create a press release to stay in front of the situation. Before anyone can spin the story or talk on your/the company’s behalf, it’s good to get the story out in your own words from your perspective. This is one of the key rules of crisis management which makes press releases so integral to it as a skill in PR/marketing/business.
Create Buzz About Something
A new product launch and a news story certainly qualify as buzz-worthy topics, if they are of interest to a reporter and the public, but creating a buzz about something through a story doesn’t end there. The other major examples of buzz-worthy topics that warrant a press release include rebranding of a company, an announcement of an award, an executive position hiring, a company merger or acquisition, relocating a company, announcing earnings or reports, or announcing an event. There are many more like this, but these are newsworthy stories.
Creating buzz helps legitimize whatever it is that’s being announced, not to mention it puts it into people’s minds. If you held an event for a milestone achievement but didn’t tell anyone you’d look pretty silly, so a press release is a way that companies and brands can do this to help spread the word. Similarly, it’s also useful to brag about something that’s worth the buzz. If you have a particularly good earnings report, you’d want people to know. It’s also important to issue the news even if the topic in question isn’t great for you, but it’s still buzzworthy. Filing an earnings report, again, is one that is required by many companies so it’s certainly something that would draw some interest, at your expense.
Form Important Networking Connections
The world runs on connections. Every single person you meet is going to mean something to you in the social contract sense. This could be meeting a potential business partner, an investor, someone who provides education, someone who shares gossip, a loyal friend that helps with favors, a person that opens doors for you into different social groups, and many more. Networking is a part of life, and in business, it’s an essential skill to have. The way to get stories or topics discussed is by subscribing to the thought process that networking can open plenty of doors, and it does. Getting press isn’t always easy, but creating a press release is a way to get it.
The press release you send out can help open up these doors by making the story known. Eventually, a reporter might reach out to you and discuss the story. This is the bridge to building an initial connection, and a way into the media networking circle. It starts small, but eventually when you start getting introduced to more and more reporters, editors, and people involved in the industry, you start building connections. These connections are lasting and make sure you are able to effectively get your news out there, but this is one of the reasons why people do and should use press releases for their important news.
Cost-Effective Way to Market
Another important part of using press releases is that they are a very efficient way to market. Buying ad space is expensive, and announcing news is hard on your own if you don’t have any pull behind your name or your brand, so a good solution is to send out press releases. The cost of writing an effective press release is nothing. It’s entirely free to create a press release, but the cost comes in the form of your time spent writing it, which is a quite useful tradeoff. Getting effective at writing a press release is also easy and requires very little other than practice.
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The cost-effective model of marketing comes in various forms like the many listed already. Networking is a form of marketing, creating a buzz is, and so is brand awareness or crisis management. All of these are different types of marketing efforts that can be used to help further the reach of a brand and establish why and how press releases are so vital. It’s not always about the big homerun marketing campaign, but the concerted efforts of PR management that turn into great returns for a company. The press release is a good example of that, and the evolving landscape of SEO (search engine optimization) can be used to help improve the reach as well.
Easy and Instant Distribution
Finally, the use of a press release is effective for the simple fact that it is easily distributable. Not only is it cheap, but it takes a very short amount of time to get a story out to hundreds of people. In just a matter of minutes, you could be potentially sitting on the valuable press by creating a press release. The average time it takes for someone to read through these releases is under 30 seconds, and that means you need to be able to create one that is hard-hitting with the meaty bits ready to be absorbed fast. When you can do this, someone can read your release in a very short time.
That means your turnaround time on whether someone will read it or not is quite fast, but this helps you. Getting easy and instant distribution of a story or announcement is not easy, but it is possible when you can master the skills of crafting press releases.
When you picture a press release you probably envision a dull or drab report, and while there are many that are like this, they aren’t all the same. There are plenty of ways that press releases are important as well, and here is a sampling of why they can be so valuable.