How to Write a Digital Press Release
An effective, well-written and informative press release can be an excellent way to publicise company news, engage with your audience, or present a product or interesting idea to the world, with an almost exponential number of possible readers!
The challenge is that a digital press release is a different beast from a piece of content you’re writing solely for a journalist or news platform to publish because you want your content to speak to a broad range of potential viewers.
Brand News has collated some of our top tips for a digital press release that hits all the right notes and can generate excellent returns in terms of brand visibility, web traffic and domain authority.
Four Essential Requirements for a Digital Press Release
Let’s start by running through the absolute must-haves – the components of a digital press release you cannot leave out, sidestep or forget!
1. Newsworthy Content
Now, it’s not every day you have something to shout about that is genuinely headline news, but that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage a press release to your advantage, regardless of what it is you’d like to say!
However, you cannot expect a brilliant response if your press release is bland, or doesn’t say anything we don’t all already know.
The trick is to find the angle. Press releases must be original, so it’s not a sales pitch or a product page.
You might be selling a new product, but if you can make that announcement topical, relevant to real-world pain points, or timely to coincide with other events, you’ll be on to a winner.
What issues are you resolving, how will your product help your customers, what statistics or trends have you spotted that make your product so important, or what conventions are you challenging?
2. Target Your Press Release to Your Reader
As we’ve mentioned, a digital press release isn’t written solely for a journalist but is tailored to the reader you want to read your content and take action.
For example, if you’re publishing a digital press release across different news sites with varying demographics, you might tweak the title (but keep the bulk of the content the same).
If we were talking about an app, we might highlight the business benefits in a trade e-magazine, the entertainment aspects in a general news site, and focus on the safety settings or cost savings in a family-orientated email bulletin.
The language should always be concise, so you’re making your point without belabouring it – think about two pages as a maximum, with short paragraphs and plenty of subtitles, so your press release is easy to scan through and understand.
3. Answer the Six W's
The six w’s are the questions that a press release needs to answer:
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- Who is our announcement for, involved in the event or affected by the news?
- What is happening? What have you done that you’d like your customers to know about?
- Where is this taking place, where is the product available, where are you based, and where do you ship to?
- When does the offer expire, or when does the event occur?
- Why is this important? Why should your reader be interested?
- How have you achieved this? How will it affect your customers, improve their lives or change things?
Once you have covered all of these points, you can be confident that your press release will answer any questions a reader might have.
4. Back Up Your Content With Facts
If you have an opportunity to support what you’re saying with facts, figures, official reports, case studies or statistics, be sure to do so!
Verifying a statement, or explaining its importance by quoting evidence is an excellent method of enhancing your authority.
For example, if you’re launching a new app, a customer will be more likely to click through if you quote that 20% of iPhone users have a problem your app can solve.
Another illustration could be citing the number of cyber attacks or phishing attempts made per day through a particular operating system and explaining the benefits of your app to protect customer data.
Any points you include must be relevant, credible, and fact-checked since a digital press release circulated on high-readership news sites cannot be corrected if you have made a mistake.
Formatting a Digital Press Release
Once you have crafted an excellent piece of text, it’s important to format this correctly, not just so that it will slot into a press release template, but so it will be easy to read, digest and browse.
Most readers don’t study every line of text, particularly if they’re scrolling on a mobile, so the better the information architecture, the better you communicate your message.
There isn’t a universal structure that will apply to every press release, but most follow a format something like this:
- A short, interesting headline to summarise the topic.
- The first paragraph expands on the headline in a couple of sentences.
- Paragraph two adds context, showing why the information is important or relevant.
- In the third paragraph, you add more details – answering those W questions.
- Here you add quotes, excerpts, facts or opinions.
- The final paragraph is your CTA – who to contact for more information, where to buy the product, how to register for the event and so on.
The spelling and grammar should be word-perfect in whichever format you choose and conform to the high standards you’d expect from an authoritative news platform.
Business press releases also tend to include a boilerplate, as a short snippet of text that describes your business, what you do, and what the company is all about. This paragraph is like a background piece that helps an audience understand who has written the content if the reader is not familiar with your brand.
Features of a Successful Digital Press Release
You should always add backlinks to your digital press release content!
Backlinks to respected, well-known media sites are one of the fundamental reasons a digital press release is such a good marketing opportunity. You want at least two or three links to ensure your press release helps your landing pages climb up those all-important search engine rankings.
Links also work as a CTA, so a reader interested in your news can follow a natural progression to read more about your product, idea, innovation or event; without needing to search for your company.
As a few other guidelines for the best results:
Stick to one story. Each press release should have a clear focus and avoid going off track or trying to stuff additional announcements into one piece of content.
Write in the third person. A press release is more formal than a blog post and should be written for a wider readership, so 'ABC Ltd launches a new product' rather than 'We have released a new product'.
Include a quotation. That might be from a company representative, an expert in your field, or a customer. New outlets cannot change a quote (even if they tinker or cut out other sections!), so this is where you endorse your story or give an opinion to add weight to what you're saying.
We hope this guide helps you to craft a clear, compelling and informative press release and covers all of the important points you should cover in your digital content.
Please contact the Brand News team if you need any further support with writing your press release, finding the right angle, or structuring a digital press release for maximum effect.
Please contact the Brand News team if you need any further support with writing your press release, finding the right angle, or structuring a digital press release for maximum effect.
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