Originally published July 16, 2022 , updated on July 26, 2024
While many marketers perceive press release content writing services as dead, the truth is the writing and distribution service offerings are still relevant for online B2B marketing.
Social media marketing takes up a large chunk of PR budgets, but press release copywriting services complement the efforts while providing superb content necessary for search engine optimisation (SEO).
News pieces should form part of your marketing strategy because PR and SEO work together to reach your company’s marketing goals.
Read on to learn why a solid marketing strategy makes provision for press releases as part of the PR drive. Also, learn how the approach ties in with SEO for improvement in traffic, leads, and engagement.
How Your Marketing Works Better With PR and SEO
In the past, PR was the foundation for relationship building with the public and investor companies. SEO handled the technical aspects of marketing. Now they’re often so integrated that it’s difficult to separate the functions. Both aim for optimal results:
- Develop brand awareness
- Build trust and topic authority
- Generate targeted leads
- Manage reputation
- Improve market visibility
SEO uses social media connections, third party relationships, and authority to create valuable links for better search engine placement.
When you align the strategies and goals, website traffic and brand visibility improve.
Your brand becomes a familiar name in your industry with successful PR campaigns. The target audience is more likely to engage with your brand if they know it. PR enables trust development. And SEO gets the information in front of the audience at the right time.
What Is a Press Release, and How Does It Tie In With PR and SEO?
It’s a newsworthy piece of interest to the media and your target audience. It must be timely, interesting, relevant, and objective. The article answers questions related to “what, where, when, who, why and how” as with any news article.
It announces an exciting event, important update, product launch, change, results of a study, business growth, merger, or achievement to the public.
Companies often hire press release writers to craft these news pieces for distribution and placement on their own websites. This adds valuable content, raises awareness, and builds links. Formats range from text-based content to video and audio announcements.
Why Press Release Content Writing Services Should Be Part of Your Strategy
With a better understanding of the press release, you might wonder why these information formats are relevant to your content marketing strategy. Read on to discover the purpose and value of PR and SEO.
Develop Credibility
Well-written, researched, and timely news pieces published on your website help to build PR credibility. Your B2B target audience wants to stay in the loop of important events, developments and changes in your products, brand, services and company’s market share.
With journalists also using the information from these announcements, the information pieces gain credibility with the target audience, thereby allowing you to improve your company’s public image.
Publishing quality news information pieces on a regular basis helps to build trust with journalists. This gives you valuable media exposure for important announcements. Once you’ve developed a relationship with media agencies and houses, they’ll be more likely to accept press releases from your firm in the future.
Develop Valuable PR Content for Social Media and Your Website
As news pieces, press releases often contain statistics, CEO and executive quotes, and graphs. Your copywriting service provider can use selected parts to include in blog posts for an in-depth discussion of the topic. They can use the graphs or infographics in social media posts at, for instance, LinkedIn or in slide shares with reference to the press releases.
A separate ‘news & media’ section on your website makes it easier for interested parties to find the latest updates about your company.
A Vehicle for Important Announcements
Press release copywriting services aimed at the creation of newsworthy pieces spark interest in topics related to your industry and company.
You can use these information pieces to announce upcoming events like conferences besides:
- Product launches
- Awards and recognitions for your firm’s contributions or achievements
- Involvement in social projects
- Financial performance to attract investments
- Change in ownership or executive management
- New releases
The main difference between these and regular marketing articles lies in newsworthiness. Conventional marketing content creates awareness, builds brand credibility, and drives traffic. News pieces cover interesting and time-sensitive topics that people want to know about and are likely to share and which journalists will want to reference in their articles.
Create a Timeline for Your Brand Story
You can create a storyline using a professional press release writing and distribution service for drafting and posting articles that announce important changes, releases, and milestones of your firm and industry.
B2B buyers or investors can follow your company’s growth and industry contributions by looking at the news articles published over time. If your company hasn’t released a press statement in the past two years, it can be indicative of stagnation. Staying in the news, even on your own website and social media pages, keeps your firm, products, and services relevant.
Press Release Writing Is Valuable for SEO
Consistent addition of newsworthy and useful content optimised for SEO builds credibility with search engines. Quality content is essential if you wish to create natural inbound links, which help with ranking. Since first-page placement for keywords related to your products, services, and niche means an increase in organic traffic, you’ll want SEO optimised content.
But beware—poor quality press release writing and distribution services focused on mass posting of articles at low ranking distribution sites will harm your brand’s reputation and search placement.
Connect With Readers Through Social Media
Social media now forms an integral part of content marketing and PR strategies. The conventional offline printed media is fast making space for online channels in communicating news. For most business owners, social media platforms are the preferred PR vehicles.
But these platforms have also made it possible to maximise the reach and value of press releases. Before social media, businesses had to go through a lengthy process of contacting news agencies and pitching their stories.
Because of the characteristics of social media, business owners can use their announcements and news as part of their SEO strategy to help investors and B2B clients discover their company and its services online. These information pieces become historical records of the company’s achievements.
With ethical distribution services still available, it’s possible to get a message to the target audience quickly, regardless of location. These content pieces are factual and unfiltered. This allows your company to share fact-based rather than opinion-rich information directly with your audience through social media channels.
Instant Distribution to Thousands Through Emails and Social Shares
Using email newsletters, your firm can include news and announcements, as well as links to your latest press releases. With the email distribution to your targeted audience, the message can instantly reach thousands of interested readers. These have immense reach potential.
Copywriting Practices to Avoid
In the past, marketers churned out sub-standard news pieces, which were more advertising than news with no value to readers. They made use of mass distribution services to flood platforms with heavily optimised spam content. The idea was to create backlinks for websites to drive up ranking. But Google’s algorithm updates took care of the problem.
Websites are penalised for using PR platforms solely to create inbound links. Using press releases for mass backlinks is unethical and goes against sound PR and SEO practices. If used in this manner, press releases have no value for PR, and the latter has little value for SEO.
Instead, a timely release of newsworthy information and statements on your website will get noticed by journalists and the media. You can also forward these statements to news publishers. If accepted, you can expect excellent media exposure.
If you’re unfamiliar with good news reporting and statement practices, hire experienced press release writers to craft newsworthy content that readers will want to discuss and share. You can expect that they will craft their own articles and refer to your content piece if the content draws the attention of journalists. These types of links and mentions are valuable and should be the aim of your PR drive.
Key Features
Like any news story, it should have a captivating headline. For online publishing, make sure the headline is SEO ready. Use a headline analyser tool to check the title’s SEO value.
With news agencies, publications, and journalists bombarded with potential news pieces, you need to make sure your headline grabs their attention.
Write the information in the inverted pyramid format, with the most important information first. The article should tell the reader what the topic focus is, who is involved, where it has happened or will happen, when, how, and why.
Concise writing is essential. News agencies and business executives are busy and want the facts, not advertising material. The general length ranges from 350 to 500 words, including the headline. If a journalist notices it, they will expand on the topic.
When and Why to Make Use of Press Release Copywriting Services
Make use of professional press release content writing services if you don’t have an in-house team familiar with the type of writing and reporting for the following reasons:
Access to Distribution Services
Establishing trust with media houses, news agencies, and journalists takes effort, commitment, and time. The content agency has already established relationships with these parties and has access to distribution services and channels. The team of experts handles the content seeding task so your team can focus on business growth.
Hire Press Release Writers Familiar With Style Requirements
Don’t fall for the one-size-fits-all trap. Specific format and stylistic requirements differ from one publisher to another. Publishers share certain format requirements. But finding out which requirements to meet for a particular industry or publisher takes time. Also, your writers have to adapt each piece to match the different requirements. The content writing company’s writers and SEO team are familiar with the various format requirements.
Objective and Newsworthy Press Release Writing and Distribution Services
True, you want articles written to reflect your brand’s perspective, but you don’t want a sales pitch. By making use of a content agency, you can get the objectivity you need. The writers understand that each piece must spark interest, be newsworthy, and be objective enough to build trust. They stay clear of the sales pitch and spam while optimising the pieces to get noticed by search engines and third parties.
What’s the Next Step?
The next step is to create the PR content plan. These news-focused articles work well for announcing important events like corporate takeovers, your company’s involvement with the community, product development, and industry events. Plan the statement to coincide with these events. You can use these to raise awareness before events and notify your target audience of events that have just happened.
An example is when you plan to exhibit and deliver a keynote address at an important event for your industry. You can announce your company’s planned participation and share about the invention or product improvements you’ll demonstrate at the event. Afterwards, you publish another statement about the event’s success and highlights.
Before You Hire Press Release Writers
Make sure the agency you choose offers content copywriting services tailored to your needs. Have a look at their portfolio of work, their industry expertise, and their past successes.
Final Thoughts: Hire the Right Writers
PR and SEO work superbly together to drive brand awareness, build authority, and increase leads. Press releases are one of the most important but overlooked PR tools to create value for your readers. Choose Goodman Lantern to help you leverage the power of timely published news and announcements on your website and for distribution through the right channels. Reach out to discuss your needs for press release content writing services.
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