Do you own a small business or startup and worry that not many people know about your business or services? The solution is – press coverage. But unfortunately, when you are starting or have a small company, not many journalists or media outlets would like to write about your business either.
To get press coverage, you need to work for it. Here comes the role of press release distribution.
Press releases are vital to connecting with people looking for similar services or products you are providing. The news release isn’t like a blog post or sales ad. These help to generate brand awareness and extended outreach. But the key is to distribute it effectively to get your news picked by national or local media outlets or blogs.
What is the press release distribution?
Before we get any further with details on how to successfully distribute a USA press release, let’s first discover what we mean by press release distribution.
Here’s the fancy definition by Hubspot: “Press release distribution is the process of circulating or seeding out your press release to journalists and members of the press”.
In simple words, it’s the process of syndicating and pitching your story or highlight to bloggers, influencers, and publishers that will share your press release to their audience and result in promoting your news release.
How is press release distribution beneficial?
With so much hype around, many people do get curious, if the press release distribution is still relevant. The answer is yes. Press release distribution simply distributes a piece of important news to journalists, current, and potential customers. However, before we even reach the stage of distribution, we have to ensure that we have crafted a genuine piece to promote.
Getting your business some press coverage helps you to get in front of the public. That helps generate extended outreach, brand awareness, and gaining relevant traffic.
USA press release distribution also has these benefits:
It helps with SEO ranking
Hired someone new? Moving to a new space? Launched a new offer or product? Celebrating 5 years of business? The press release is simply great when you have something interesting to share with the world and get attention.
However, that’s not the only benefit you will be getting. The press release is also a white-hat marketing strategy to promote your content with related keywords over the internet and get noticed by search engines, blogs, journals, and social media. More shares or placements you get, the more backlinks you will be getting.
It increases brand awareness
The second benefit that makes press release distribution so important for small businesses and startups is that it helps you get media coverage and brand awareness.
It helps you reach out to people who might have never heard of you or your business before. It puts you in front of the audience aggressively searching online for products or services similar to what you are offering. Getting shares or mentions by journalists, editors, or bloggers will simply make you look more trustworthy and attractive in the eyes of current and prospective customers.
It increase sales and traffic
If you’ve launched a new product or introduced a discount offer on Black Friday or Christmas, why not tell influencers, bloggers, and potential customers. This would help you put right in front of consumers who are ready to make a purchase decision.
How do you distribute a press release?
Now you know how important a news release is, and you are ready to share your story with the world. All that’s left to craft the story for journalists and stakeholders and distribute it.
But journalists are busy people and they are getting many stories per day – so how do you ensure your news release is one of the published stories? And just as important, how can you make your news interesting for readers?
Here are five simple steps to follow:
Craft a newsworthy press release
Writing a news release isn’t similar to writing for the web or blog. You’ll need to be specific about people to whom you want to read and take action. If the story isn’t newsworthy it may end up looking like a sales ad and definitely not interesting for many people.
If you have the budget, you can hire a professional press release writer without getting worried about SEO, keyword stuffing, format, or subject line, etc. A perfectly written press release with amicable grammar and news angle is more likely to get you a decent number of responses.
Find the relevant journalists
Once you are ready with your news release, it’s time to find the contact information of the journalists or media outlets. This could be as simple as doing a search on Google and writing their contact information.
But just like anything else in the marketing world, it’s not always easy and might take weeks if not months to compile the list. You can always do the little digging yourself but if that doesn’t sound like a project you might want to invest your time in, you can purchase the media contact database from a reliable PR agency.
Write an irresistible pitch
This is perhaps the most important step. You’ll need to think from the journalist’s perspective. A journalist might be getting hundreds of press releases every week. So, why should he write about your story? If the email subject line isn’t interesting enough, your email might end up in the trash folder.
Try to be relevant and concise while crafting the pitch. Get straight to the story and why they should write about it. Rather than assuming if the journalist is interested in your story or not, you can ask directly. Avoid adding heavy images or videos in the attachment. No one likes to open attachments from strangers. Plus, it is always good to personalize these emails.
Why should you use a paid press release distribution service?
All of the above steps are time-consuming and might need lots of patience. Fortunately. You can increase the seeding out process through a PR agency. If you are a small business owner, want to save money or time, a press release distribution agency is your best friend.
These services allow you to send out your news release to writers, editors, journalists with guaranteed placements in no time. You don’t have to do any manual work or wait for the journalist’s response.
How much does it cost to distribute a press release?
It depends on the service you are using to send a press release. We believe that every business deserves to be heard and reach out to their target audience and it shouldn’t cost them a fortune just to send a press release. PR Distribution™ has flexible PR distribution pricing and packages that allow businesses to distribute their news release for a very minimal fee.
You can choose the number of placements as per your marketing requirements or budget. You also get complete analytics of click-through and open-through rates to make a more informed decision in the future.
Conclusion
Sending a press release in the right way is crucial to your business PR marketing strategy. If you don’t have the budget to hire a professional PR distribution service, do your research, follow the steps mentioned in this article and keep trying to pitch to journalists. Remember, having a newsworthy press release is the key to success.
