Have you ever written a press release in order to get traffic to your website? No, why not? If you’re like many beginners you are just not sure how or what to do about creating your first news release. This is understandable. The good news is that there really is not a lot to it.
What Is it about Press release that make then so useful?
The Press. You are releasing content to actual news agencies and media websites. This is not your normal syndication channel or article directory kind of traffic. In fact, a well written release can easily hit thousands of high value news and media sites.
The media has greater expectations.
Don’t think that writing a simply one page article will do it for a press release. When writing these news releases you must give them a little bit extra. This is known as the “Hook”. The hook is basically your spin on the story that makes it newsworthy.
Let’s say you have a story you wish to release of a hilarious movie you made entitled “Funny Dog Driving Car”. You know people will enjoy the story, but a news agency needs that little something extra in order to really captivate the reader. You might change this to “Fido Eludes Capture As The Driver In A High Speed Car Chase”. The second title entices the reader to want to know more about what happened.
The “hook” is powerful.
The hook is a psychological method to capture the reader’s attention. The greater the attention grabber the more likely a news agency will be to publish the release to a wider syndication. The hook is important to the news agency because they need stuff to be “news-worthy” without having to make it that way themselves. The story (news hook) should be good enough to catch the journalists’ attention, and from there on your content will determine how successful your press release is in attracting new business.
If they loved the content you are releasing that would help your cause. But they have to want to see the content first before they can visit your website to access the material you are promoting during the release.
Since a press release goes out across the “news-wire”, your single release could easily get picked up by other large-scale news organizations and media sites around the world. This all could flood your pages with free web traffic on a grand scale.
