Business owners often think they don’t have news significant enough to publicize, and that drafting a press release is complex. The truth? Your news matters.
Every company has moments that count. Even a small win—a partnership inked, product update launched, or sales goal reached—when publicized well can lead to a breakthrough tipping point. So when it comes to writing something as seemingly formulaic as a press release, every small business should explore how technology can handle the heavy lifting.
But the actual art of the process is promoting the release after it has been published, and this part of the process is where companies, both big and small, often fail. During her time in the media and PR industry, EZ Newswire co-founder, Caitlin Kelly, saw businesses make this same mistake again and again. They would publish a press release and hope it would magically reach a target audience.
“Companies often publish an announcement and then close their eyes and wait for the phone to ring,” she said. “But the real value of a press release is gained from promoting the news effectively with the right audience—prospective customers, investors, and other stakeholders—when and where they are most receptive to it.”
A press release is a digital breadcrumb that helps companies tell stories of growth and momentum and reaching as many existing and potential customers, news outlets, industry experts to alert them about how your business is growing requires a multi-touch and multi-pronged approach. Deploying the information in a variety of formats, and timing the promotion to reach your target audience when they are interested in learning about your business can create meaningful ripple effects.
To make promoting a press release easy, the EZ Newswire team created a checklist of tactics to consider when promoting your release, which is free to download here.
In the meantime, as a founder who is tight on time and wears many hats, Caitlin has identified three critical next steps after publishing your press release to create momentum and get the most out of this unique moment:
1. Email blast to key stakeholders
From internal team members to existing and prospective customers, industry-specific reporters, investors, advisors, and others, sharing your press release with your core network is critical and email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing channels for growing businesses. This email can be as simple as leveraging your press release copy (no need to reinvent the wheel!), dropping the email list into the Bcc line, and closing the email with a call to action (CTA) that encourages recipients to further share your press release and business news with their communities helps build organic visibility and virality.
Don’t be shy about highlighting where your press release has been published. For example, if you publish your news in the Associated Press, your email subject line could include “As seen in the AP…”.
2. Sharing on owned social channels and in industry-specific forums
Share your press release news on your business’s social channels and in industry specific forums—whether that’s a Slack community, Discord server, and/or email listserv. Similar to the email blast, you can repurpose copy directly from your press release and leverage multimedia assets like video summaries of the content, too. Soon, EZ Newswire will make it easy to create a video asset to easily extend the content to platforms where video performs best.
3. Updating your and your team’s email signature
How many emails do you send a day? If you think of each email as an opportunity for awareness of and engagement with your business, your email signature should include clickable content like a link to your business website, LinkedIn, and latest press release. Make sure that your press release includes an eye-catching CTA that teases your business news.
Here’s an example for CodingNomads’ latest press release: Become a certified software engineer, data scientist, and/or AI prompt engineer for $0. More here! ("Here" = insert press release URL)
If writing a press release from scratch sounds daunting, let us help! Create, publish, and strategically place your professional news release in minutes by clicking here.
