Welcome back! In part one of this post, we learned how to drive traffic to your website through online press releases about recent company news and events. More specifically, we examined ways to tell whether what you plan to write about is newsworthy or not, and how to easily gather all of the important information that should make it into your actual press release.
Now that you have an outline of what you plan to write about, it's time to learn how to mold it into a proper press release! Once you have all the information, all you need to do to create your press release is fit the information into a template article that includes the following:
Title / Headline – your headline is obviously one of the most important parts of your press release. Make it informative, intriguing, and of course, keyword rich. The headline, like the header of a web page, is what will be crawled by search engines and most prominently displayed in the SERPs (search engine result pages).
Sub-Title / Sub-header – while this element isn't required, you may as well take advantage of this equally prominent space of your press release to incorporate even more keywords that reflect the story within.
Introduction / Lead - the lead paragraph of your press release should gracefully hit all the main points of the information you outlined in part two, namely the who, what, when, where, why, etc. Give your readers everything they need to know before the jump into the rest of your press release.
Body / Content – the preceding elements of your press release are crucial, but it is the body content of your press release that contains the most substance. Here, you should expand upon your lead, incorporating all of the information you gathered in part two. Sprinkle in enlightening quotes from first-hand participants to increase authenticity and authority.
Company Bio – at the end of your press release, you're entitled to include a short biography of who is providing the press release. If the press release is about your company, you may describe who you are and what your company does.
Ending – you should always culminate your press releases with three pound signs, i.e.: ###. This is the traditional mark to signify the end of a press release.
Contact Information – don't forget your contact information! Be sure to include your name, or company name, local address, email address, phone number, fax number, or any other information you see fit so that persons interested in learning more about the news story can follow up with you.
Submitting your press release to a reputable Online Distribution platform
A newsworthy, informative, well-written press release means nothing if it's not properly and amply distributed to readers. Two great online press release distribution services include
PRWeb and
Transworld News; both are fee-based services and require payment for distribution, but both ensure adequate distribution to popular news channels such as Google News.
There's just one last step before you actually submit your press release and drive traffic to your site...
Proofread! Proofread for people and for search engines. We all know how to proofread for people: make sure you writing is fluid, grammatically sound, and that there are no spelling mistakes or punctuation errors.
For tips on how to proof read for search engines, check out my post about
increasing your organic SEO with keywords – you can use the same advice for optimizing your web page content as for optimizing your press releases.