Press Releases are an excellent way to increase your brand awareness in mainstream media, build links through optimizing your distribution and also to get yourself listed in News Services such as Google News.
Generally what we see is a lack of strategy around integrating small business Press Releases and Optimization of the Public Relations and Media Relations functions.
Here is a nice simple outline for optimizing your press releases and media releases for your day to day Internet Marketing:
- We will leverage press release distribution for the purpose of creating brand awareness, building inbound links and increasing our search engine saturation.
- Distributing Press Releases will also increase our authority in all search engines and specifically in news search engines which will react favorably to a focused PR program.
Press Releases will be delivered in 2 tiers. We prefer this methodology since it breaks out our functions and creates a consistency of releases. Consistent Press Release distribution is extremely important. If the schedule below is too aggressive for your budget then slim it down to 1 major release per month and 2 SEO releases per month.
- Major Press Releases submitted to prweb.com at a premium level. We will reserve these for major site upgrades and major press worthy events. These should occur at a frequency of 2 per month.
- SEO Press Releases will be submitted to lower cost distribution sites and mainly be used to increase our online brand spread. These will be distributed with a higher frequency – 4 per month.
Press releases will be submitted to the distribution sites, however before this is done all press releases will be put in a media section on your website. The media center you create for your site must have the following:
- A complete media kit including logos, images and other media collateral.
- A listing of all media releases in an archive.
- A sign up for media which will subscribe them to a PR segment in your Email System.
- Additional video and content which may be of interest and be applicable.
The Press Release Process
When a Press Release is distributed the following best practices should be followed:
- Press Release initial draft.
- Send copy to Marketing for edits and editorial approval.
- Press Release is posted in the media section on the relevant website.
- Press Release is optimized by an SEO or someone on your marketing staff. This includes optimized key phrases and links into your website using those terms.
- The Release is distributed to the media list via email with links back to the onsite release. Now this assumes you have an email contact list which you maintain on your website. We strongly suggest that you create an additional list for your media and website contacts as well.
- The Release is then submitted to the distribution channel and linked back to the main domain, articles referenced and the complete release. When distributing a release utilize multimedia such as embedded video and images.
- The Release is then shared via all social media channels including Facebook and all current channels. Copy can be modified for the audience so it is not out of place and written directly for the audience being targeted.
This outlines the process required both for optimization and link building – as you can see you don’t need a multi-million dollar budget in order to build links and increase your brand saturation. In fact a program like this can be executed for as little as $200 per month.
The benefits definitely outweigh the cost and time you need to put into your website and your SEO optimized PR Strategy. If you’re still confused or have any additional questions/comments, feel free to contact one of our Internet Marketing Experts or comment below!