Tips to Maximize the ROI of Your Press Releases

For more than 26 years, I lived convergence, using outside marketing platforms along with the PR tools of my then-employer, Business Wire, to influence a pretty sophisticated public relations audience.

While commercial newswires help seed content for search discovery, media fragmentation and our mobile lifestyle mean your press releases need to work harder and smarter to make the impact you desire.

Reporters aren't often inside newsrooms or even employed full-time at your target media, so your direct pitching becomes critical.

As for your press release, well, it's loaded with amazing content that you've spent a ton of time and resources to develop. It deserves to win a receptive, measurable audience.

Enter social media for press releases. It's no secret that long-form press releases usually falter on social: too much text, too few visuals, and no calls-to-action to effectively be used in paid and organic social PR programs.

Audience Convergence

Marketing, advertising and social teams often dominate a company’s social presence. But the impact that social media has on a company’s reputation and bottom line is of critical importance to PR. And PR’s unique story-telling skills are the perfect fit for social media.

By partnering with marketing, you can quickly add visuals, videos, multimedia to your critical organic narrative. Walmart uses a mix of PR and marketing content to beautifully to draw in, measure and provide insights back on KPIs that resonate across the organization.

Social Network Newswires

However, since social networks are, at heart, ad networks, you’re not going to get much organic interaction without a paid boost. Just as PR uses paid distribution (newswires) to reach media and syndicate online, you’ll want to turn to paid social to target, reach and measure new mobile-social audiences.

Reimagining PR Content For A Mobile Social World

That’s where NewsDriver comes into the picture. We help your PR voice on social media - identifying highly targeted audiences, reimagining your press releases for these platforms, and using paid social to generate readership and engagement.

And we measure it all, tracking impressions and reads, audience demographics, geographic performance and other KPIs that align with both public relations and marketing.

Let’s keep the conversation going - share your thoughts and opinions below, visit our site, hit me up on twitter @becktold, or send us an email.