Today, your news release is only one part of any successful PR effort. To see your campaign and activities really take flight you need to invest in creating engaging, shareable content.
Start by Providing Value
The best way to stand out from the hundreds of other news releases journalists scan through each day is to provide something of value. This can take the form of starting with a proprietary survey on a timely topic, having a thoughtful perspective on an issue in the news, or providing free educational (not promotional) content of interest to the journalist’s audience.
Many brands equate proprietary surveys with $100,000 spends and a multi-month process with a market research company. And, while that certainly is an option for brands with large budgets that are looking to create a statistically valid piece of research, any brand with a decent-sized email list and a free survey account can obtain valuable—and eminently shareable—insights that merit publication.
Similarly, newsjacking can be an excellent way to gain attention for your PR efforts, when done well. And by done well, I’m talking about a security firm sharing tips on securing your household IoT devices so they don’t contribute to the next distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, not “Three personal branding lessons you can learn from today’s dead celebrity.”
Supplement Your Campaign With Visual Assets
No matter how compelling your written content is, however, if no one stops to read it, you’re out of luck. That’s why creating color visuals—photographs, infographics, SlideShares, videos—is so important.
Research from Xerox on the effectiveness of using color in business documents found color increases readers’ attention spans and recall by 82 percent, and increases readership by 80 percent.
A few ways to easily and inexpensively add visuals to your PR campaigns include:
- Filming 15-30 sec smartphone video snippets with executives or customers quoted in your text materials.
- Designing social-friendly quote cards with visuals by using Canva or similar tools.
- Creating visual representations of your data by using Venngage or Piktochart.
And the best part is all of these pieces can have your brand watermark, and include calls-to-action that lead them back to your organization’s website, at which point their return-on-investment becomes trackable. And that return is all thanks to you, and your PR efforts.
Have a Comprehensive Distribution Plan
If your distribution plan is posting the news release and assets on your corporate channel and distributing it through a release service and calling it a day, you’re missing out on significant opportunities.
When planning your program, and deciding who to work with to create your content, you’ll want to keep distribution in mind.
- Is there an industry thought leader who would be willing to weigh in?
- Are some of your customers more active on social media than others?
When you create content that includes contributions from people who have a built-in audience, they’re very likely to share it with their networks, as long as it’s not a promotional puff piece.
You spend countless hours on crafting the right PR program to meet organizational objectives. But augmenting your traditional tactics with creating compelling content can take your programs so much further, and help you show that PR is a vital part of your business, and not just a nice-to-have luxury.
Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, an integrated marketing communications firm. She is the author of Spin Sucks, co-author of Marketing in the Round, and co-host of Inside PR. She also is the lead blogger at Spin Sucks and is the founder of Spin Sucks Pro.
[…] version of this first appeared on the PRSA blog, PRSay (I didn’t include my snarky comments […]
The visual supplement really helped my campaign on my website!
Being a current PR student, professors have constantly harped on making content that will allow you to stand out. However, one thing that was very interesting to me about this post was the idea of “newsjacking.” I have never really thought about promoting a business in this manor but, I do agree that it could be an innovative way to raise awareness about your brand. Furthermore, the idea of using infographics in your content is also an idea that has been introduced to me. With the massive amount of press releases that journalists scan through each day, creating something more eye catching and interesting might just help put you above the rest.