An Easy Guide for Sharing Your Press Release with the World

A well-crafted press release is a powerful tool for getting your brand’s story seen and a fundamental element of any effective PR strategy. A compelling press release can effectively spread your news, reaching target audiences including customers, shareholders, investors and journalists.

But in a noisy, fast-paced digital world, how do you make sure your press release stands out and reaches your intended audience? By presenting your information in a clear, concise and newsworthy format, you increase your chances of securing valuable media coverage, building brand awareness, and ultimately, driving results.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps of building a successful press release—and sharing your story with the world. 

First, Answer These Key Questions

Creating press releases is hard work. But where do you start?

Answer these questions before you begin writing to ensure you’re starting with the right framework:

1. Who is the intended audience? Is your press release intended for the media? Consumers? Analysts? Investors? Craft your message in alignment with what you know about your audience’s goals and interests.
2. What are your communication goals? Is your team interested in building brand awareness, securing earned media coverage, boosting website traffic or a different objective? These goals will drive content creation.
3. What is your budget? You’ll need to establish your budget for distribution, including options such as adding photos, regional translations, paid placements, etc.

Craft a Strong, Compelling Press Release

From headline to contact information, press releases require certain essentials to make them distribution-ready. Optimizing the content for AI search and making it as easy as possible for journalists to use also requires the right formatting.

To help amplify your news and improve audience impact, here are a few guidelines to follow as you put together your next press release.

• Grab readers’ attention with a compelling headline: This is the most valuable real estate in the release, so use it wisely.
  • Keep it under 100 characters when possible for maximum visibility.
  • Adhere to AP style – it’s the preferred standard in newsrooms.
  • Use natural keywords to boost searchability online.
• Focus on quality content: Content that is purposeful, well-written and connects with a target audience will be rewarded by search engines and AI assistants, and shared by readers.
• Lead with your hook: You have the headline, subheadline and a portion of the first paragraph to convince readers to invest time in reading your news. Your lead paragraph should quickly answer the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why.
• Format for readability: Avoid keyword stuffing and jargon. Use short sentences and paragraphs, bullet points, section headers, and bolding as needed to break up the text. This allows readers, journalists and LLM crawlers to easily pick out the most important details.
• Stand out with multimedia: Visual and audio elements drive audience engagement. According to PR Newswire data, press releases with one photo average 2x more engagement than text-only press releases, while including multiple images can generate 6x the engagement of a text-only release. Download our Multimedia Content Guide for PR Success to learn the do’s and don’ts.
• Establish thought leadership with quotes: Help journalists by including quotes from a spokesperson that they can reference or include in their coverage. A compelling quote can add context and a human element to the story.
• Include a call to action: A strong call-to-action will guide readers to take a suggested next step. Include it high up in the release content— preferably in the first or second paragraph. Hint: Consider the goals you set in Step 1 to determine what the call to action should be.
• Use hyperlinks wisely: Limit links in a press release to only the most relevant and necessary (think 3-5). Excessive links can get overwhelming and result in fewer clicks.
• Include your boilerplate and contact information: Close every press release with a standard company boilerplate. Keep it brief, avoid jargon or acronyms, and include links to your website and social media accounts to help drive traffic. Your media contact should be a credible spokesperson for your company that is readily available to answer media requests.
• Consider translations/localization: Return to your answers from the questions above and remember what your audience needs. When appropriate, consider localizing your message for each unique market and translating your message to connect with the audience through additional languages. 

Integrate Best Practices Into Every Release with PR Newswire Amplify™

Writing a high-impact release doesn’t have to feel like a manual checklist. Our AI-powered platform, PR Newswire Amplify™, is designed to streamline the process by baking the essential press release elements mentioned above directly into your content so you don’t have to guess if you’re adhering to best practices (and it will let you know if anything is missing).

Our secure customer dashboard goes beyond drafting support, helping you maximize the visibility and impact of your message.  Whether you want to generate a new release from scratch or refine an existing draft, it’s designed to help you reach the right audiences, secure media coverage and drive meaningful engagement.

Once you’re logged in, the automated Create tool acts as your built-in editorial partner:

• Turn Tips into Text with AI: Instantly generate an on-brand press release draft with compelling headline options, a lead that covers the "5 Ws," a strong CTA, and your company boilerplate and media contact.
• Enhance Content with the Press Release Score: Gain real-time insights into your draft’s structure, keyword density and engagement potential, with actionable suggestions for improvement before you hit send.
• Optimize for AI Search: Receive specific recommendations to make your content more discoverable by AI search engines and increase its chances of being referenced in AI-generated results.
• Generate Consistent Multichannel Content: Using your press release as the foundation, Amplify can help you build a more robust, comprehensive campaign by instantly transforming your announcement into a suite of brand-aligned content, including blog posts, media pitches, snapshot videos and eye-catching info-bites.

Once the press release is ready for distribution, Amplify will seamlessly guide you through the distribution process, ensuring your story reaches the specific markets and audiences that matter most.

Ready to write, enhance, and distribute press releases faster? Log in to PR Newswire Amplify™ now.

Send Your Press Release – But Don’t Stop There

By using a trusted distribution service like PR Newswire, you can have confidence that your press release will not only go to journalists to increase earned media opportunities, but it will also be posted to trusted websites for maximum online discoverability.

But simply distributing your press release isn’t all there is to it—the most successful PR campaigns utilize a holistic Multichannel Amplification™ strategy. By optimizing your message for multiple channels, you can increase brand awareness, expand your story’s reach and boost campaign ROI.

Consider these multichannel options that go beyond the traditional wire distribution:

• Multimedia: Our data shows that press releases with multiple multimedia assets (photos, logos, videos, etc.) can generate up to six times the engagement of text-only announcements.
• Branded landing page: Work with the expert designers and project managers in PR Newswire’s Content Services division to transform your press release and multimedia into a Multichannel News Release, a visually compelling, branded landing page that garners 10K guaranteed views.
• Paid placement: Turn your press release into sponsored content to leverage the credibility of trusted publishers to amplify your message. Our Guaranteed Paid Placement solution enables PR professionals to reach audiences where they already are, in the format they prefer with an authentic look and feel that matches the publisher’s website.
• Social sharing: With SocialBoost—exclusively available through PR Newswire and powered by SoSha—you control the message and make sharing easier by providing pre-drafted, optimized social post copy for the press release. Save time with SocialBoost’s AI features that generate optimized posts for each social network.

Do you want to achieve maximum visibility and coverage for your story? PR Newswire Amplify™ is powered by smart technology that amplifies your reach across all channels.

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