Getting the best services for your press release has two levels. First, write a PR and then email a press release to journalists for distribution to gain engagement.
The press release writing process is already a long process, from making news for the company to writing about it most compellingly, this is just half of the battle, next comes the most tedious part where you have to send the PR to journalists for distribution. If everything goes well, you can gain greatly successful public relations for a while. Here are some steps which you can follow to successfully execute this process:
Pre-sending Steps
Yet, this article is mainly meant for the sending process of a press release. But we will briefly talk about the pre-sending process of the press releases. Well, the following measures need to be ticked before you decide to email a press release to a suitable journalist.
1. Correctness of the Press Release
A press release has to be written in a very particular format and the format has to be well–versed and correctly proportionate. Here’s what an ideal press release structure should look like:
- Shirt Headline
- Gripping Subheader / Lead
- Dateline
- Elaborative Body
- Relevant Quotations
- Company info
- Logo
- Media contact information
But, while writing it you need to make sure there aren’t any grammatical mistakes or spelling errors otherwise it won’t look good. The press release should be written in the third person. You can use online tools to keep this formation in check.
2. Choose a Newsworthy Topic
You must choose a newsworthy topic. Here are some ideas that will do great as your next press release topic:
- Award News
- Product Launch
- Event News
- Change of Officials
- Business Collaborations
A press release is the best way to popularize your brand through genuine news. Based on your brand industry and business domain, you need to understand how you can utilize relevant topics to create better aspects for your business and company.
Sending Rituals
Once you have dealt with the first of the press release, and have written a compelling well-formed press release about an eminent topic, then you have come to the next and the most important part called distribution. Let’s dive into this elaborative process:
1. Identify the Right Journalist
When you are searching for a suitable journalist who can help in the distribution of your press release you need to understand two things.
- First, which journalists would be interested in your news?
- Second, which publication will offer your target audience?
In this case, you can do two things. First, you need to make sure that if you are going for industry-specific distribution then go for journalists who have previously covered this sort of topics. Or, you can also go for local news channels to make sure your PR is gaining popularity. You can also use both of these ideas and have a grand distribution. Another aspect that you need to take care of is searching for quality keywords. It has some filters that will generate better results:
- The data range of a journalist
- Location of your business
- Topic of the press release
With these filters, you can get the best set of keywords that you can use in your business. Through this process, you can also find journalists who have worked based on your keyword searches and make a list of potential journalists. Once you have completed the step successfully you can proceed to the next step.
2. Find your Angle
Once you have the list of journalists who have covered this sort of news in the past. Afterwards, you need to make sure that how to present your news to this journalist:
- Pick a factual topic and turn it into a press release
- Importance of the newsworthy topic
With these in check, you can entice journalists to make your news popular. If the topic and the angle of the PR are on point then a journalist can smell whether the PR will be effective to their audience or not.
3. Engaging Subject Line
While sending your email you need to have a gripping subject line. It is not to make sure that the journalist has the attention on your email. Mostly, journalists hire an assistant to go through the email and if you don’t put an attention-grabbing line then you will not have the attention.
- Short
- Direct
- Beware of Spam Filters
- Reference of the Email
- Mention Multimedia
Pitch your PR and give a reference to your press release topic to grab their attention. You can also use names to ensure your email doesn’t go to the spam. Also, avoid using exclamation marks and these characters to avoid getting spammed.
4. Email Measures
After having a gripping subject line you need to concoct an email to ensure that you share a brief on your press release. The following tips will help you write a good and gripping email for your press release.
- Greeting: Use “Hello”, “Ho”, “Dear”, “Sir”/ “Ma’am”, “Greeting for the Day”
- Introduction: Give a personalized introduction on behalf of your company before you start your email body.
- Email Body: Include important take away, then share the topic, include the 5 Ws, Offer a bit extra
- Attach the Press Release file; do not attach 2-3 files in one email, this can make your email enable spam filters. You can provide links to several topics and images though.
- Send It! The ultimate step would be Sending the email.
These are basic email writing measures that you need to follow you can also need to be extra careful not to get spammed at any point.
5. Follow up (If needed)
This brings us to the last and final step of press release distribution. This step is also one of the unpleasant and less talked about portions of PR distribution. If a few days have passed and the journalist is unbothered about your email you need to nudge them and ask them what has gone wrong or you will have to wait a few days more to get it published.
Most of the time PRs are meant to describe an incident waiting for more days is not an option. But following up with the journalist is important if you want your PR to be published. If they deny you need to have a backup plan, which is sending your press release to more than one journalist to gain more traffic. But don’t send a similar write-up use a different write-up for different journalists.
