Who Is Your News Release For, Anyway?
Even in an age where there are so many touchpoints for the editors and industry analysts that cover your industry and your company, news releases are still important. So it is equally important that you do them right.
Whether you write your releases internally or have your PR agency do it for you, there are a few things the author of those releases needs to keep in mind before even thinking about sitting down at the keyboard.
One of the most important elements is the audience. Anytime you communicate, over any medium, you need to understand the audience and communicate in the ways that will best resonate with them.
It seems obvious that the audience for your news release would consist of the editors and industry analysts who will directly receive it. But they’re only a subset of the audience. You really want to reach beyond them, to the people who will read the publications who cover you or work with the analysts who know what you’re doing.
That news release is going to be sitting on your website, probably for years. It will be leveraged through newsletters or other direct mailings. You will promote it via social media. Hopefully, that news release will make an impression on hundreds or thousands of people before it assumes its place in your website archives.
So your audience is far broader than the usual targets. What does that mean for how you approach it and write your news release?
For one, make its importance understandable to a broad audience. Not everyone who will see that release is a technology or financial services expert who will understand every acronym and bit of industry jargon you throw in. Broaden its appeal to people who will understand first the “what” – what your news means in terms of helping them run their organization better – and then the “how.”
The business benefits will always trump the mechanics involved. There may be a few people around who will still flock to something for its technological novelty, but they’re a tiny minority of buyers. The rest want a real solution, and they’re less interested in the details than in the business value of what you’re offering.
For the sake of space, that’s our “build a better news release” tip for today. We’ll talk about news releases more in future posts.