Make the International Press Release More Effective with 7 Golden Rules

If you want to secure positive media coverage for your international press release, then use 7 golden rules while writing the content to make it more effective.

Press releases are an important marketing tool that nowadays businesses use to get web traffic and make announcements. They are an excellent way for businesses to control the narrative of what they are putting out in the market. Getting positive media coverage in return can help them create more brand awareness. But getting the top media sites to post about your business and brand is difficult and depends on how good the networking channel is. However, if you think only the distribution needs to be good then you are wrong as the content needs to be presentable as well. If you want your international press release to gain as much media coverage as possible then you need to present them with great-quality content.

Let’s see how you can improve your press release writing skills by following these 7 effective rules.

1. Make Sure Your Press Release has a Newsworthy and Relevant Angle:

The first thing you need to remember before writing your press release is that your target audience is not your customers right away. Your target audience is the media, journalists, and reporters. Now, these are extremely busy people who have to deal with hundreds of emails every day. Why would they pay attention to your story if it doesn’t interest them? So the first thing you need to do is find a newsworthy angle for your press release. Before writing, ask yourself these questions,

● Is the story relevant to my target audience?
● Would my target audience care about reading this story?

It is important to find a relevant and newsworthy angle for your story because you need to make your press release presentable for your target audience. Even in this digital age, the media still depend on press releases to create news stories about businesses and organizations. Press releases are on-time, short, precise, and deliver on-point information. This is why creating news stories from press releases is much easier. So use topics like hiring new company heads or executives, events, product launches, or crisis management.

2. Use an Attention-grabbing Headline:

A headline is the first thing that anyone reads when they are presented with content. Your intent should be to grab their attention with the headline. Because if the headline is not creative or attention-grabbing then the readers will not care enough to read the entire thing and end up ignoring that to move toward the next content. So make your headline creative and short which tells the readers what the story is about.

3. Keep it Brief:

Let’s be frank, would you be interested in reading a 1000-word essay to find something interesting and make a story out of it? You would have bored not even halfway through it and ended up abandoning it. So why are you still doing this with your press release and wondering why it is not getting the same attention you hoped it would get? When you’re writing a press release aims for a maximum of two pages but if it ends up having only one page, it’s even better. Remember journalists and reporters will not go through page after page to find information, especially in their busy schedules.

4. Convey the Important Facts in the First Paragraph:

Writing a press release includes a special format of 5Ws and 1H. Use the first 100 words in your first paragraph to write all the important details which will include the 5Ws and 1H. Mention things like who you are, what are you announcing, when and where it is taking place, why are you announcing it, and how things are unfolding. These are the key details that your content must have. These are also the key details the journalists and reporters are trying to find in your story, so give them what they want at the beginning. This way your story will have a better chance to get a feature in their publications and sites.

5. Include Good and Relevant Quotes:

A press release has a very formal tone, mainly because it is presented to the people of the media. So the entire writing may sound robotic from time to time, which is why you need to humanize it at every chance you get. What is the best way to do so? Add relevant quotes. Not only will it humanize the content, but also add some more credibility to it. Use quotes from executives, or people who are well-known and respected in your industry to make it more impactful.

6. Keep SEO in Mind:

Without SEO, there would be no digital marketing, internet reach, or web traffic. What was your intention in releasing a press release? Creating more brand awareness. What would be a better way to increase brand awareness than ranking your press release higher in search engine results? For that, you need to know how SEO works and use the keywords carefully. Do not stuff your content with too many keywords. Please keep it simple, and short and use industry-related, relevant keywords in the correct places. Use them in the headlines, the summary of your content, and in the first paragraph. This will improve your rankings on the search engine results and get more web traffic for your business’ website.

7. Use Multimedia:

There is a saying that goes like “Show Don’t Tell”, use this saying by using multimedia in your press release. A press release is already written in a formal tone, so to be honest, there are not many exciting things that will maintain the reader’s interest for a long time. Treat your content as a story and the number one rule of storytelling is not telling, but showing what you want to tell. Use multimedia like photos, videos, PDFs, and infographics to make your story even more compelling. But for journalists to use your multimedia, you need to use relevant and high-quality multimedia. The journalists will not use any blurry images and any reader online will not share them, so make sure they are high-quality.

Writing a press release can seem deceptively simple, it is short and uses typical formats. But that doesn’t mean its impact is bigger or will be the same every time. For that, you need to use some tricks, and don’t forget to add these golden rules!