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Make the Most of Your Release: Provide Supporting Content

If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the fourth of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).

Provide Supporting Content: Post your release, photos, videos, diagrams, and anything else that you can think a reporter might possibly want on your website where it’s easy to get.

Image Credit: Didn't Shrug by Bitterjug licensed via Creative Commons 2.0

Yes, post a copy of the release on your website. But that’s the beginning. You also want photos, videos, company founder bios, product demonstrations, testimonials, and anything else that you can imagine a reporter could ever want from your company. Put it where it’s easy to get. A reporter on a 30 minute deadline isn’t going to email you for a quote, she’ll just find another source. You want it as easy as possible for a reporter who’s come to your website from your release to find the answers to any questions that she wants quickly and easily.

Good information design is tricky, but you can provide an easy option for a curious reporter by adding a search function on your press room and making sure your content is easily searchable. You may find that organizing your press room in a blog engine will make all this easier.

Traditional media press releases aren’t excellent at providing this kind of supplementary matierial right there in the release, which makes reporters go hunt for it. Social media release are great at giving a blogger or reporter a host of supplementary materials right there, but generally a social media press release gets a tiny fraction of the circulation that a traditional media release does. You’ve gotta take the good with the bad, I suppose, and play to the strengths of each.

PitchEngine (http://www.pitchengine.com) is one great example of a social media news release service. Upload additional images, embed video links, include supporting links and documents, all right there in the link of the release. If you’re subscribed to Help a Reporter Out, you’ll be receiving a coupon from OvernightPR in the next few days that will let you try out a social media release on me, because I think that they’re such a useful, if under-utilized, tool.

Not a member of HARO? Then go and sign up, for heaven’s sake. You’re missing out (and on a lot more than just a discount with OvernightPR)!

Do keep in mind though that, just like a wire release, a social media release is a tool; you need to use it to get media coverage. It won’t get you noticed all by itself. Read my article on “Following Up on Your Press Release” for tips on how to do that.