Follow These 7 Steps to Make your Press Release a Social Media Happening

Maximize PR Exposure in Cyberspace!

Here are some tips on how you can turn your next big story into a social media press release with more media hoopla than a Cirque du Soleil show gets coming to town.

Step 1: Start strong with an eye-catching title. The attention spans of readers and media mavens are notoriously short. A great sounding title will cause a larger number of them to read your story. Beware: the difference between a decent title and one that impresses involves more than just adjectives – it’s about creating buzz, as they say in PR parlance.

For instance, note the difference between the following two titles; namely, how the first one merely states the facts while the second one leaves you wanting to know more.

CRM Integration Project Helps ABC Construction Prepare for Future Growth

CRM Integration Project Readies International Construction Firm for Decade of Growth

You may need to think up many titles and play around with the word order before coming up with one that captures the essence of your story in a way that maximizes reader impact.

Step 2: Make your story live up to its title. That means you should employ language that engages readers, even entertains, rather than drones on dryly like a college textbook. Mind you, I don’t advocate becoming “liberal” with the truth. You are accountable for what you write and professional integrity evaporates quickly in the blazing heat of social media. Still, a well-written press release finds ways to embellish simple facts, raising the import of the release to a whole new level.

Step 3: Keep the release to around 400 words. Remember the KISS principle – “keep it simple stupid” – from your school days? You should be efficient, though not miserly, in your presentation of the key facts. An overly long press release will lose your readers’ interest and fail to attract more clicks.

Quick Tip. Don’t write in long paragraphs as this will cause a reader’s eyes to glaze over. Keep paragraphs to around 3-5 lines in length. The introductory paragraph should be a short restatement of your title / subtitle and last no more than 3 lines (in this humble writer’s opinion).

Step 4: Utilize a call-to-action at the end of the press release with a URL that points to a landing page where your offer can be viewed in more detail.  The call-to-action should be consistent with the overall message contained within the press release. For instance, if you are announcing a new software product that you think will benefit your customers, then insert a call-to-action for a webinar or whitepaper at the bottom of the press release.

Step 5: Press releases can provide a significant SEO (search engine optimization) boost to your website, which is why it’s critical that you include 2 key words that you have already optimized for your website. Don’t bother optimizing more than 2 key words or your release will sound like an SEO ad vehicle.

Quick Tip. Optimize the title, subtitle and first 100 words of the press release as those are given the most attention by search engine web crawlers.  Judiciously sprinkle your key words to obtain around a 5-7% key word ratio to overall word count. It’s sounds easy to do, but if you’re not careful the release could sound like a broken record.

Step 6: Distribute the press release online through PitchEngine or PRWeb to maximize your news’ social media velocity. PitchEngine is a free social media press release service but can be a little frustrating to set up, in part because it’s designed partly for professional PR users. PRWeb costs money and, unless you pay for a more expensive distribution option, takes around 48 hours to post.

Step 7: The final ingredient to a social media press release is, you guessed it, social media! Rattle the social media cage as much as possible when sharing your news.

In summary, don’t just issue a press release and post it on your website. Turn it into a social media love-fest about your must-read news! Most of all, follow through with a well-timed set of mini-releases to various social media to maximize your exposure.

For information on the benefits of social media press releases for VARs and tech companies, check out our Social Media Press Releases webpage on The Sage Closer website.