Writing a great press release is only half the battle. Knowing how to send a press release correctly is key to succeeding in achieving media cut-through and coverage. Knowing how to prepare, publish and pitch to journalists and influencers is critical and fortunately, made easy with BUZZHub!

Tips for writing your release

Whilst there is a taught standard / expectation of what should be in a press release, you still need to focus your release on the audience of the outlets you are sending it to. This will help is resonate with the journalist and if they can see it fit into their story style, there is a much higher chance of achieving coverage.

That said, there are some basics that shouldn’t be overlooked, and your release should include:

• Headline
• Sub header / Summary
• Date
• Body
• Quote
• Company info
• Logo
• Contact information

BUZZHub’s release workflow helps ensure that you capture each of these in a standardised format and to reduce human error.

Further, make sure your release doesn't contain any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. Nothing will make a journalist stop reading quicker than a poorly written release and some may actually engage with you, but only to point out your errors.

Ensure your press release is newsworthy

Make sure your release is actually newsworthy in the eyes of journalists and their audience. Remember, what may make great internal company news, isn’t necessarily interesting for the public. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go out with such news, but you need to find an interesting newsworthy angle to generate interest and achieve cut-through.

Further, what is newsworthy for one outlet is not for another, so make sure your release it tailored to the outlets you are targeting.

BUZZHub allows you to have variants of your release, so that within a single campaign you can select a release that will likely resonate most.

Don’t be over brandy

No, this isn’t to take the fun out of your Christmas tipple. It is however a good idea to limit your brand mentions to two or three.

In today’s world, journalists are under more scrutiny to not publish releases that sound like adverts or brand biased. However, this creates a great opportunity to make introduce your brand in your releases as a thought leader or use other creative ways to get your brand mentioned without being dropped.

Ten Things to Check

• Who cares? If you can’t read your release and answer the question “who cares”, then you haven’t clearly defined and written the release for the right audience
• Action – What do you want people to do? If there isn’t a call to action, then you may be missing out on opportunities.
• Timeliness – Is it new? If it’s not, if your data has already been published, then its not news. You probably want to review your release and find a way to put a fresh angle on what you have.
• Change – Is something new or different, like new research or change in perception?
• Impact – Will this change the way people do things, impact or affect a demographic?
• Conflict – Does it make a change to the current way of thinking or will make people question a preconceived idea?
• Proximity – Is there an event or spokesperson close to the reporter
• Trends – Is this an event or thing that “will” be news
• Surprise – Does this release question the norm?
• Useful – Does the release hold educational value or information for public good.

Pitch the Media

Once you and your stakeholders are happy with the content of the release, you are ready to start pitching the media. Here are our top tips on pitching.

• Create a media list – for example in BUZZHub, you can create a curated group of media contacts that are likely to be interested in your release. Using curated groups will help build relationships as journalists will know you only contact them with relevant stories.
• Create a pitch – this is separate to your release and in some ways gives you a little more creative control than the release. The pitch allows you to highlight the key assets of the campaign which may be the talent, or it might be the research data. Use the pitch to draw attention to your release. BUZZHub allows you to create multiple pitch templates for each release so that you can include information relevant to each group of journalists or use them for follow-up emails. BUZZHub will also ensure each message has a 1:1 personalization, so each person feels the email was purposefully sent to them.
• Write an engaging subject line. It’s suggested to keep it brief but highlight the key offering to the journalist – this might be an interview opportunity or new data. However, remember to not overuse capital letters to avoid spam filters.
• Select your targets – BUZZHub help narrow down your pitch with advanced search options. These include selecting media contacts based on location, interests, outlet size and audience reach. BUZZHub also goes a few steps further with AI, for example it ensures you won’t pitch contacts who you’ve already achieved coverage from, and you can apply negative lists to your selection to remove people you know aren’t interested.

Publish your Assets

Make your media assets such as images and vision available to the media as part of your release so that the journalists can quickly access the assets and include in their publication.

Having a Media Room for your campaigns provides a central point for the media to find all of your published assets and can even help generate interest in additional campaigns when viewing assets for another.

BUZZHub gives you the ability to easy publish your assets to your own NewsWire / Media Room and include tracked links with your email pitch. You can also control when your assets appear on the NewsWire. This means that the journalist can directly download the content, and you know when and who to follow up.

Link your Talent

Another key asset to include in your email pitch is the talent available for interview. Include a basic headshot and profile so journalists can get a feel for the interview opportunity.

With BUZZHub you can easily select and include talent to appear in the email pitch. This comes from the Campaign Builder and Talent Directory, where you can manage the talent you keep on file.

Schedule and Send

BUZZHub allows you to configure a send time, a “sent-from” and a “reply-to” email address. This means that you can schedule your pitch to be sent out at the most appropriate time and if you are working in a team, you can have all email responses go to a group email, whilst looking like they came from an individual.

Once an email is in the queue you still have the ability to make changes to the queue before the message is sent.

The Follow-Up

One of the most effective ways to achieve coverage is to follow-up. Journalists receive hundreds of releases and will likely ignore ones they think are sent broadly. Following up with a journalist shows that you care about achieving coverage with them.

Firstly, it’s a good idea to look at any email analytics you have available, such as open / read rates so you can tell if journalists have read your first message.

BUZZHub has a set of tools that allow you to track journalist feedback, so that you don’t have awkward conversations with journalists who have already said no, and it has tools that allow you to easily send a follow up when you haven’ heard back.

It is suggested to alter your pitch in your follow-up because it may be your original pitch wasn’t as compelling and by adding something new or more targeted you may get a better result.

In Summary

• Ensure your press release is newsworthy.
• Research the journalists or media outlets that would be interested in covering your story.
• Create a pitch that highlights your best assets.
• Leverage the NewsWire / Media Room to avoid sending large attachments to provide tracked access to assets.
• Schedule the email of your press release for maximum impact and visibility.
• Follow up with journalists after sending your press release to increase your media cut through.