What You Need To Do And Know Before You Write Your Next Press Release

The two things you MUST do before you post your press release online

First, before you write your first press release - you must make sure you have a way to capture your visitors name and email address at your website. You will lose momentum if you bring lots of traffic with your press release or other publicity without preparing to capture the traffic for further conversation.

You need to offer some information of value in exchange for your website visitor‘s name and email address. Offer a report, white paper, a “cheat sheet” or previously recorded audio that delivers a portion of the information your customer or website visitor has come to your website to discover.

Second, many experts also recommend that you create specific landing pages where visitors will "land" as they click through from your press release to your website. Let's say your press release is announcing a new product, the link in your press release should take the traffic from the press release directly to a landing page regarding the new product, rather than the home page of your website. You don't want to make the site visitor that discovered your press release have to search your website for the new product being announced.

The Three Questions you must ask yourself when you write your news release.

1. Who is my target audience for this press release?

Don't write to "everybody." Write your press release to a specific segment of your market. Understanding your key words and key word phrases and who is searching will help you understand the audience for your press release.

2. What is it that I want to promote in THIS press release?

Don't make your message too broad. Your primary news should be about "a product," "a service" or "an event." Secondary and a smaller part of your message should be about your company.

3. What do I want these people to do? (this is your call to action)

This is NOT a sales pitch, but you should lead your customer to a natural next step if the message captured their attention. Your call to action should be a link back to a landing page relevant to the message of that press release. If you're promoting a particular product or service don't just send your reader back to you home page where they need to search for the product or service in your press release.

Finally, here are 5 very important tips for creating your powerful online press release:

1. Discover your keywords and keyword phrases that your target audience will use to find your press release when their looking for information using the search engines. Optimize your press release for at least the top three keywords and keyword phrases. Put keywords / phrases in your title and in the first paragraph to be picked up by the search engines. Do not use your company name in the title of your press release! Your prospects are looking for information or solutions to their problem - your title should compel them via the search engines to read your press release and visit your website. If you don’t write for a specific audience you won’t capture anybody’s attention. You need to “speak to someone” in your message - your message will lose it’s voice trying to speak to “everybody.”

2. Headline and sub head - Sub heads are a great place to put your key words. This is the most important part of the press release. If you can’t think of a great headline then write your press release to get the targeted content out of your head, then go back over your written content to develop a compelling headline. Be sure to put your keywords into your headline and your sub-head!

3. 2-8% of your copy should be keyword or keyword phrases - this is the formula for keeping the search engines happy and not offended by your press release, article, web page or blog post.

4. Links within the body copy - maybe 3 or 4 links per release. Link them to the specific section of your website where you want your press release visitors to visit.

5. Call to action - be sure to put the specific link to a relevant landing page on your website in this section.