3 Common Press Release Mistakes
Press releases are one of the most underutilized tools in business. Whether you’re representing a non-profit, selling to consumers, or selling to businesses, press releases can help you brand your business and improve your bottom line. Regardless of your business model, how you approach a press release generally remains the same, and this is where people often make their mistakes. Let’s take a look at three common press release mistakes and talk about how to avoid them.
No One Cares
The information you publish in your press release has to be news. And while it seems like just about anything can be news, it really isn’t. News is something that people care about. It matters to them and it impacts their life. You hiring Janet Smith to your business isn’t news. What Janet Smith brings to the business and how that impacts your customers can be news.
So it’s not only what you have to say, but how you say it. If Janet has 30 years of experience leading Fortune 500 customer service teams, then that means that your customers are now going to get better service.
Of course you’d have to tread lightly here because you don’t want to imply you’ve been giving bad customer service. You also want to think about why the media would care and that takes us to the second mistake that businesses make when writing and publishing press releases.
No Distinct Goal
Why are you publishing a press release? What’s the goal? What do you want to achieve by putting in the time and energy to get your release out there? Think in terms of a smart goal. That is to say that it should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Your goal can be anything, and you can certainly have supporting goals.
However, it’s much more productive to craft your release to help you achieve a specific goal. For example, “To increase website traffic to sales page by 5 percent within one week of press release distribution.”
Once you determine your goal, you can then craft your content to support it. You can make sure, for example, that you’re writing a call to action and including a link that sends your readers to a sales page. You can make sure that the content in the release supports your readers to want to visit the sales page to learn more.
Not Capitalizing on Social Media
A third mistake is to not leverage the power of social media. There are actually several different ways that you can accomplish this. You can share your press release on social media with a link and a teaser. You can publish it on your business Facebook page under the Media tab. You can also create a social media press release, which is a release that integrates social media share functions and gets your readers engaged with you on social media. It also makes it easier for them to share your release on their own social media pages.
These three mistakes are easy to make. They’re also easy to avoid. Create a solid press release marketing strategy and a plan to back it up. Don’t neglect the power that social media provides and miss out on this opportunity.
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