When a company has news, the most common request we hear from clients is to distribute a press release announcing the newest product, customer or award win. But prepare yourself for a radical idea: A press release isn’t always the best way to communicate your company’s news.
My colleague, Holly, recently wrote about using targeted pitches to share news beyond using a press release. But there are other options as well, including using a news blog. A blog can save your company money when compared to costs distributing a news release over a wire service. Additionally, getting reporters to pay attention to your press release is challenging – most aren’t newsworthy, the market is inundated with them, and some can be overly technical and uninteresting. If you develop a blog, consistently write compelling content and amplify its existence, you’ll eventually build a solid audience of customers, influencers and employees.
In his post, “Are Blog Posts Better Than Press Releases?” Jeremy Porter provides guidance for companies exploring the option.
Below are some of the tips:
- Make It Official: Whether your company already sends press releases or is a startup and hasn’t established that method yet, it’s important to inform your contacts about the plan to communicate news via the blog and recommending they subscribe to the RSS feed. Jeremy also suggests offering different types of RSS subscriptions if the blog’s content will be varied.
- Plan Your News Calendar: A press release may be distributed for your company only a handful of times a year, but that’s not an effective cadence for a blog. It’s necessary to publish blogs more often and an editorial calendar is the best way to plan the posts. Your posts can cover many topics and formats including employee profiles, Q&A, trends and major industry news. A blog also offers more options for dynamic content like graphics, video and other multimedia.
- Build An Archive: Jeremy recommends publishing all of your company’s press releases from the past year on the blog, post-dated to coincide with the press releases’ distribution dates. This will function as the news archive and provide search engine optimization for post rankings.
- Solicit Reader Feedback: Blog posts offer engagement opportunities that press releases can’t match. Readers can leave comments to spark a discussion, provide feedback on your news and add perspective. Invite their commentary with your posts and eventually you’ll garner input.
- Track the Results: Once the blog is underway, you can begin gaining analytics about the reach, audience and interest in your posts. You can also see which organizations covered the post and linked back to it. This information allows you to share insights with your organization’s leaders and can help your PR team in prioritizing which outlets to follow up with on your company’s news.
Many organizations are pursuing this communications avenue, including the FBI, Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood and Google. Is this an idea your company explored in the past? Why kinds of success are you seeing or what might be holding you back?