When Should You Use Press Releases to Market Your Business?
The proliferation of web based press release distribution services in the past decade has seen the use of these media announcements become a standard part of many companies’ internet marketing strategies. They are used by many businesses to announce everything from a new CEO to a sale on one of their products, and often they are being generated just for the effect that they have on SEO. With so many people using these announcements to promote even the most trivial things, the value of issuing press releases to promote your business has been largely overshadowed in the rush to advertise on social media. Even so there are still ways that press releases can be used to great effect to promote your business.
The Marketer that Cried Wolf
One of the traps that many people fall into is to use press releases to announce everything that their business does. While this isn’t against the rules of most distribution services, many of which allow releases to contain links to websites, it does have the negative effect of dulling the interest of your targeted audience. If you constantly release a stream of PR with little value to readers then they will be less inclined to read your releases when they announce something really interesting or important. The key to successfully using press releases is to use them for the appropriate kinds of announcements about your business.
More appropriate use of press releases would be to announce changes in your key staff, to publicize events that your business is hosting or deals that have been signed that would interest others in your industry. The origins of the press release are in journalism and the best sort of content for them is current affairs items. Press releases should tell a story, and if your item doesn’t have something that substantial to say, then it might be better to post it on Facebook or Twitter. Another factor in using press releases is that they really should stick to the facts and so they are not the place to post your hyped-up sales pitches.
Maximizing the Value of Press Releases
When they are used well press releases can be a cost effective way to promote your business and support its other advertising activities. If you are starting a new marketing campaign that has a range of new special offers, along with upcoming events and promotional activities, then you have a story that you can use press releases to sell. Including links to your website, especially to your subscriber opt-in pages to help build your e-mail marketing list, is only one benefit of using press releases.
Because press release distribution sites are constantly being updated with fresh content added by their users, the search engines visit them regularly and value the links from them more highly than those of other sites, like some business directories or review sites. They remain in the sites’ archives and contribute valuable back links to your corporate website that contribute in a minor way to your site’s SEO. When your releases consistently contain valuable information they also have a positive influence on your internet reputation, and many people will give credence to a press release because they perceive the media as a reliable source of information.
If you are not using press releases as a part of your internet marketing plan, you can talk to InfintechDesigns.com about how to get started. Writing a good press release is a skill that needs to be developed, and outsourcing your media releases may be the best way to take advantage of this opportunity to market your business to the news media.
5 Online Free Press Release Distribution Services
http://www.prlog.org/
http://www.openpr.com/
http://www.widepr.com/
http://pressexposure.com/
http://www.information-online.com/
