New Life for the Much-Maligned Press Release

Pity the poor press release.

It gets carefully crafted, painstakingly reviewed, persistently pitched, and sadly, often largely ignored. 

This pattern seems to be getting more common at a time in which the Covid-19 crisis, the fight for racial justice and equity, and, increasingly, the upcoming November election dominate the news cycles.

Your odds of getting traction obviously go up if your news relates to those issues in a compelling and authentic way, but even then it can be hard to break through in a world of time-strapped and increasingly furloughed journalists. 

So it’s time to rethink your press release as a beginning, not an end. View it as a foundation for getting your message out and starting conversations around the news coming out of your organization. Here are 6 ways to make it happen: 

1. Use it as the source of an op-ed or thought leadership piece: There’s news, and then there’s what that news means. Take a look at the content of your news release and consider if there are any angles or facts you can expand on to offer unique insight that would be relevant to your audiences.

2. Share it directly with key audiences: This may sound like a no-brainer but lots of organizations don’t think about consistently sharing news with their core stakeholders. Get the news out in your newsletters, internal channels, and online communications.

3. Pitch it to like-minded organizations: It’s not only the media that can amplify your message. Think about trade and advocacy organizations that might welcome the opportunity to share your news. Case in point, we recently reached out the American Association of Community Colleges to let them know about our success getting a community college approved for Erie County Pa. They plan on publishing our press release in their daily newsfeed to members and the public and may do a follow-up piece for their bi-monthly magazine.  

4. Reach out to media that might have a connection to your newsmakers: Does your press release focus on an individual who would be of particular interest to specific publications? For instance, I think a frequent miss by PR pros is to not pitch the story to that person’s hometown newspaper. “Local product makes good” stories are often a slam dunk. You can get you some glowing coverage to share online, and you can’t really put a price on the potential benefit of your newsmaker’s mom proudly sharing the news around the old neighborhood. Also, send the release to colleges the person attended so they can publicize the news in their publications.

5. Build a micro-social media campaign around it: You can get more mileage out of a press release if you think about it in Tweet-sized pieces. Definitely promote the release itself via your social networks, but you can also build engagement by pulling out some interesting facts or quotes from the release and then rolling the posts out in a period of time. 

6. Think hyper-local and radio: Of course, everyone wants to land in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, but the competition is fierce. Same goes for daily papers and TV stations in mid-size to large markets. One way to potentially reap at least some limited coverage is to pitch to smaller daily or weekly newspapers in your area and also local radio talk shows. Also don’t forget about local radio for paid advertising if it would be relevant. It’s pretty affordable and depending on the topic might connect with a key demographic you are trying to reach.

So, actually, don’t pity the press release. 

Look at it as one tool that can be the catalyst for many promising communications opportunities.