The Power of Press Releases
By Kevin McGeough in association with Zero-One Design Limited
Press Releases are a very simple and effective, yet often disregarded tool for getting exposure for your business. There a number of benefits to be had by using a well-crafted and optimised press release, in this article we will look at some of these benefits and see how they can increase your companies’ online presence.
Increasing the amount of traffic to your blog or website with a great press release
What? You don’t have a blog? The web-log is a vital component in the struggle for recognition. There are millions of voices online all vying to be heard; although most of them don’t have a lot to say that would hold the interest of anyone outside their immediate family or circle of friends, there are businesses, some of them your competitors, who are pushing themselves to the top of the business heap by telling the world about their products or services. They are doing this by blogging. The question is: why aren’t you?
You have to get the message out, tell the world about your company, what you offer, what difference you will make to your readers’ lives, your products, your services, how their enjoyment will be enhanced or the pain of their problems can be solved by what it is you are offering! How are they supposed to know what you offer if you don’t tell them? That is why you should be blogging.
As I mentioned earlier, there are millions of bloggers out there, writing billions of blogs, how will people find yours? By telling them it’s there; by issuing a press release. The world is hungry for news, it can’t get enough, readers want to know what’s going on and the internet has made that easier than ever before. There are free press release websites on the internet where you can release news about your company, your staff, your products or services in the same format a journalist would use in newspapers. This press release can contain links not only to your blog, but to your company website. Journalists pick up your press release, people read your press release, they want to know more so they follow the links to your blog and your company website and all of a sudden yours is not a lonely voice in the wilderness.
Increasing your visibility with a great press release
People will read it if it is written the right way. If a press release is written with an attention to detail people will want to read it and your visibility will increase. You have to keep in mind your target audience:
- Journalists and other websites: there is a demand for newsworthy stories; if a journalist doesn’t meet that demand they won’t get paid. If they can’t find their own stories they go to press release websites and use what they find there. Now, it’s important to remember that they are busy (some of them lazy) and have to meet deadlines, therefore they don’t want to spend time going through your press release correcting spelling and grammatical errors; they are more likely to reject your news and move on to the next snippet. And that next snippet could have been written by your competitor!
- The public: These are, after all, your potential customers, the life-blood of your company. They won’t read it if it doesn’t capture and hold their attention. Make them read on; like a novel, write it so they have no choice but to carry on reading until the end. Make them want to find out more about your company, your products or services.
- Spiders: “You fool!” I hear you cry, “Spiders can’t read.” Ah, but they can, and they do. Search engines send out these “spiders” to crawl over everything on the internet (is that why it’s called the worldwide web? Ouch…sorry about that) sending back information on the content to the search engine database and follow the links provided to see what’s there. In this way the search engines rank websites according to relevance based on what search terms people use. A well optimised press release that uses the most relevant keywords is most likely to be found.
The best press release will read pleasingly for, and meet the demands of all of the above.
Building your brand with a great press release
Tell them, introduce yourself, say “I’m here, this is what I do” and more importantly “This is what I can do for you.” Let’s be honest, your customer is asking:” What’s in it for me?” They’re not going to buy from you or employ your services to do you a favour. So tell them, convince them that they absolutely cannot get by without what you have to offer.
You have competitors obviously, but their influence will wain as your star rises. Be the brand that the customer thinks of when they need whatever it is your niche provides. For example, people don’t do the vacuuming, they do the Hoovering, even if they are using a different brand of vacuum cleaner, they still refer to it as “the Hoover”. Therefore, unless they are shopping for a particular brand such as Dyson, it is Hoover that springs to mind when anyone is browsing for a new vacuum cleaner. Brilliant!
To achieve this you have to put yourself at the forefront of people’s minds and the best way to do that is to embed your brand in their subconscious with advertising, this starts with a GREAT press release.
Become an expert with a great press release
For every subject you can name, for every product available, for every niche market there are experts. They are the people we turn to for advice, even over that of our peers. They are the ones in the know, almost God-like in stature they gaze benignly down on us mere mortals from their lofty perches. Rubbish! You know who they are? They are the ones who talk the most and talk the loudest on any given topic. That’s all. They have set themselves up as experts and people follow what they say.
Ask yourself this… what do they know that you don’t already know about your niche market? Probably not much – if anything. So why are they experts? You should be asking yourself: WHY AREN’T I? Well, you can be. You can generate authority and credibility with a great press release, you have knowledge that other people lack so you should be telling others while at the same time indirectly promoting your product or service. A great press release will announce your expertise to an audience who want to know what you know – TELL THEM!
REMEMBER: If people regard you as the number one authority in your field then they will come to you first!
Applying SEO to make a great press release
As you probably know already, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. For any copywriter who is composing online content, THE most valuable skill. Remember the image of those little spiders, their tireless little legs following links to and from the millions of websites, skittering across endless blurb? SEO is about giving those little critters the most information possible, making it easy for them to read and understand.
By cramming in a certain keyword or phrase, the keyword or phrase that people are most likely and most frequently using as a search term, as many times as possible, while still retaining a readable sentence structure for a human audience.
By embedding anchor text links in the body of your press release, you can get quality backlinks. Search Engines such as Google will love you for that and you will rank higher. And that’s what it is all about!
Keeping the world informed with a great press release
Now you know, get the word out there. Tell them and keep telling them. What’s stopping you?
“I don’t know what to write about.” Write about you, your company, your product or service. Make announcements about new products or services, special offers, your website, your new customer, your members of staff.
Give it a really great headline that will make people sit up and take notice, then make it newsy (IS THAT EVEN A WORD?). Newspapers turn just about anything into a national crisis:
“Queen stubs royal toe, is bedroom furniture a death-trap?” Well, you catch my drift.
“I haven’t a clue about search engine optimisation.” How about you get your great press releases written by somebody who does? Get in touch with Steve at Zero-One Design Limited and ask about their Press Release and Article Distribution Service. You’ll find that it doesn’t cost much to have well-crafted and fully optimised press releases written for you. And if you want to get ahead of the competition, can you afford not to?
Let us tell them about you!
For more information about Press Release and Article Distribution or for an informal chat about any aspect of this article contact Steven Day at Zero-One Design Limited on 01827 300820
Email info@zod.uk.com or visit our website at www.zod.uk.com
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