NEWS RELEASES AND IMPROVE ROI REVENUE-GENERATING HOW TO OPTIMIZE STRATEGY. CHAPTER 3 Go Beyond Distribution to True Engagement

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1 REVENUE-GENERATING NEWS RELEASES HOW TO OPTIMIZE STRATEGY AND IMPROVE ROI CHAPTER 3 Go Beyond Distribution to True Engagement 1

2 CUT THROUGH THE NOISE The media landscape gets more crowded by the minute. According to Yankelovich Research, the average person is bombarded with anywhere from 3,000 to 20,000 marketing messages in the average day. Reporters often receive hundreds of news releases a week. So how can you make sure your news release stands out? The key is to create content that truly engages people that s relevant to them, grabs their attention, and inspires them to take action. You also need to deliver your news release where your audiences look for information. According to Pew Research, half of Facebook and Twitter users get their news from these sites, and an ECCO survey revealed that 80% of journalists use social media to research stories. Social media gives your business the opportunity to join the conversation and get people involved with your news and your brand in a way that helps your message really resonate. 2

3 CREATE USEFUL, NEWSWORTHY CONTENT The more relevant, fresh, and useful your content is, the more likely it is to be picked up by reporters, shared in social media, and acted on by consumers. Original, high-quality content increases credibility and improves brand perception. Sharing this type of content turns your company into a valued source of meaningful JUST LOOK AT THE NUMBERS: 61% 70% of consumers show more confidence in companies that create valuable content and are more likely to do business with those companies. information, making it more likely that people will trust your company, want to do business with you, and recommend you to others. of consumers want to learn about companies through content instead of ads. Source: Yahoo! Small Business Advisor 3

4 THE NEWSWORTHINESS CHECKLIST: EVALUATE YOUR CONTENT ADD MULTIMEDIA Multimedia elements such as photos and videos add a whole new dimension to your news release. They bring more clarity and context to your story, and make your news more interesting, interactive and engaging for your audience. Consider the facts: Before distributing news releases, review your content to make sure it s informative and valuable to your audience and not simply marketing copy. Ask yourself these questions: Is the content new? Does it matter to people outside of your company? Is it likely to get noticed? Would you read about it in the paper or online? Would you tell a friend about it? Would it work better as a different kind of communication? If you can t honestly answer yes to the first five questions and no to the last, then you may want to revise your news release to make it more informative and relevant to your target audience. People process visuals 60,000 39% times faster than text. Source: 3M Corporation 67% 6 BILLION of customers care more about a product image than description or review text. Source: MDV Blog 2012 Photo posts get more interaction. Source: Facebook hours of video are watched on YouTube every month. Source: YouTube, 2013 EXAMPLES OF BUSINESS NEWS New product announcement Significant change/upgrade to an existing product Change to brand or corporate identity New website Events Key personnel changes Corporate philanthropy New partners Significant new customer Milestones GETTING STARTED Adding multimedia elements such as videos, infographics and slide shows can greatly improve the performance of your news releases, increasing views and shares, encouraging engagement, and bringing more people to your website in turn, driving overall interest in your company. Create an inventory of the multimedia assets you already have, including photos, videos, presentations and infographics, and look for ways to incorporate them into your new releases. 4

5 FIVE WAYS TO MAKE THE MOST OF MULTIMEDIA IN NEWS RELEASES 1. ADD AN IMAGE Bring your story to life with a photo, chart or illustration that relates to your topic. Make sure images are at least 300 dpi and add a photo caption. 2. EMBED A VIDEO Choose a video that is short, succinct, and share-worthy. It could be a product demo, an interview, or a customer testimonial. 3. TURN QUOTES INTO SOUND BITES Embed an audio file or short video to make key quotes even more memorable. 4. BRING STATS TO LIFE WITH INFOGRAPHICS Numbers often have an important story to tell. Turning your stats into an infographic can be more powerful than presenting just the stats themselves. 5. DIVERSIFY MULTIMEDIA ELEMENTS TO MULTIPLY VIEWS Don t limit yourself to only photos. Adding different kinds of multimedia elements embedded videos, links to YouTube, audio files, etc. in the same news release drives more views and more engagement. REMEMBER TO MEASURE Track your results to see which content works best and use that information to plan for future multimedia needs, improving the performance of releases as you go forward. 5

6 SOCIALIZE YOUR NEWS RELEASES Sharing news releases on social media helps you reach a broader target audience, generates more views and visibility, extends the life of your news, and makes it stickier. You ll move away from simply distributing messages to becoming part of the conversation. 50% of small businesses have acquired new customers from social media. Source: Mediabistro FIVE TIPS FOR DRIVING ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA-FRIENDLY NEW RELEASES 1. Include links to your social networks in your releases to make it easier for your audience to engage with your company online. 2. Share your news releases on your blog and social networks increasing the chances that your audience will see and take action on your news. 3. Choose a news release distribution partner that can embed social sharing functionality into your releases making it easy for readers to share your news with their own networks. 4. Link to videos and other multimedia posted to YouTube, Flickr, and additional sharing sites giving your audience the chance to comment and share your content with others. 5. Include tweetable quotes to encourage people to talk about you on Twitter. Remember to keep your titles Twitter-friendly too under 140 words makes them ideal for tweeting and retweeting. IT S A TWO-WAY STREET True engagement is a conversation. If someone asks a question on Facebook or tweets a comment, make sure to answer. 6

7 USING CONTENT TO START CONVERSATIONS & CREATE BRAND ADVOCATES BY KEVIN Director of Content at Empower MediaMarketing and author of The Bad Pitch Blog Your content can serve as a catalyst, connecting your business with your customers. Just consider what American Express and LinkedIn are doing with content. Many of us have spent time in OPEN Forum or LinkedIn s Pulse reading topics that interest us and adding our comments to the conversations after each article. How do small and mid-size businesses create content that will engage customers? Here are some tips to consider: 1) GET OVER YOURSELF Have you ever found yourself at an event and in a conversation with another attendee who is only interested in talking about himself? Consider how interesting your content will be to your customers if you commit this same mistake. Your content should not be about your business or it will resemble marketing copy. 2) KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS So how do you promote your business without talking about it? Focus on your customers topics of interest that are relevant to your business. A hardware store, for example, might serve up seasonal maintenance tips and do-it-yourself help to get reader attention. 3) GET ANALYTICAL Google Analytics is a perfect place to find inspiration. Which areas of your site are getting the most traffic? Finding which topics are driving the most traffic on your site is a great way to start focusing in on specific story ideas. 4) SEARCH FOR IT Your site s search logs will show you if customers are searching for topics on your site that you don t currently write about. Consider that each search is a question they re asking. Without relevant content for them to find, you re leaving the question unanswered. 5) TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS Think about the conversations you have with your customers. What topics or questions are they always asking? An accountant that gets the same questions about a specific tax deduction should write about this topic. It helps her clients with a topic that is clearly of interest and it and saves her time. If you already have a list of frequently asked questions, consider if each question should become its own article. 6) FIND A NICHE A natural instinct is to look at what your competitor is doing for ideas. Consider instead untapped topics you can explore for your customers. Setting yourself apart with unique content is critical to standing out from the crowd. 7) STAY UP TO DATE There s an old saying that to make the news you need to know the news. You can become a source for your customers. But you need to make sure your point of view is as timely as possible. Setting up Google News Alerts on the key topics you want to write about for your customers is one way to make sure you re always framing your point of view in the most relevant way possible. 8) DON T FORCE IT If it s baseball season and teams are vying for their spot in the World Series, and your business has nothing to do with sports, much less baseball, don t try and force a connection. The calendar and current events can definitely help us consider timely topics of interest for customers. But remember that, in addition to knowing what to write about, you must know what topics to avoid completely. Relevance, again, is key. These tips will get you started and remember, this is a learning process. Each piece of content you publish can teach you something you can apply to the next. Don t be afraid to test and learn. 7

8 CONNECT WITH INFLUENCERS TO DRIVE EVEN MORE ENGAGEMENT An influencer is someone who is well connected, considered a trusted source of information, and has the ability to inspire people to act. The media are of course influencers, but the Internet in general and social media in particular have greatly expanded the pool of influencers. Bloggers, Twitter personalities, really anyone with an active social media presence can potentially be an important influencer. An influencer may have a positive opinion of your product, service, or brand and pass along that enthusiasm to their followers, but it s also important to keep watch for influencers who make negative comments that may have an adverse effect on your business. Influencers are important for your business because they can: Talk about your business across their social networks, creating engagement and broadening the impact of your message Make recommendations to their followers, which are trusted nearly as much as personal referrals Link back to your news release or your website, which positively affects SEO Inspire followers to take action, including making purchases 83% of consumers say online reviews influence their purchasing decisions. Source: Opinion Research Corp. 8

9 TURN INFLUENCERS INTO BRAND ADVOCATES In the simplest terms, a brand advocate is someone who is a fan of your business and actively tells other people about it. 92% of consumers trust brand advocates. When you can reach out to influencers, build solid, trusting relationships with them and turn them into brand advocates, you ll see real benefits for your business. News releases can be an effective way to connect with influencers media, bloggers, investors, customers and potential customers who are critical to building your brand and your business. Here are some tips to keep in mind that can help you engage with influencers and turn them into brand advocates: Identify the right people: It s not just the number of followers that matters. You want to target people who are relevant to your business and influential among your customers and potential customers. Provide shareable content: Influencers gain and keep influence by posting compelling, useful content. Help them out! Send a multimedia release that embeds or links to videos, podcasts, free reports, and anything you think will be of interest. Remember that engagement is a two-way street: Read what your influencers post and comment. Tweet about your influencers and link to them on your website. Share their content with your networks. Join the conversation and become part of the community. Offer sneak peeks: It s important for influencers to be in the know. Give them exclusive access to news. Offer them samples of new products before they re available to the public. Set goals and measure: As always with your news release program, you need to decide what you want to accomplish and choose metrics that can help you assess the success of your efforts. Invest in long-term relationships: To be truly successful, influencer outreach can t be one-anddone. Take time to cultivate relationships with your influencers. The investment will deliver real rewards for your business. Source: Nielsen 9

10 THE FIRST STEP TO SUCCESSFUL ENGAGEMENT: WORK WITH THE RIGHT PARTNER If you want your news release to stand out from the crowd and foster engagement, you need a partner that delivers the right combination of tools, market intelligence and support. Marketwired is that partner, and Marketwired Resonate, is the solution. Marketwired Resonate weds a powerful distribution system with social analytics powered by Sysomos, today s leading social intelligence engine. With oneclick multimedia and social media capabilities as well as in-depth performance metrics that show you who read, shared and interacted with your news releases, you re armed with insight that can help you identify key influencers and connect with your audiences. To help ensure success, the Marketwired team acts as an extension of your staff. From initial set-up to ongoing strategic and editorial support, communications professionals are available around the clock to make sure your message comes through loud and clear, even under the most demanding deadlines. 10

11 FOUR WAYS MARKETWIRED RESONATE HELPS YOU CREATE ENGAGEMENT 1. CREATE COMPELLING CONTENT WITH INSIGHTS FROM REPORTING By tracking which of your news releases and messages were viewed, shared, and interacted with the most, you can understand what topics create the most engagement, giving you a roadmap for future content development. 2. ADD MULTIMEDIA THE SIMPLE WAY Easily add photos, videos, and other multimedia elements to make your messages more impactful as many as you want at no extra cost. Then store them in the built-in media library for future use. 3. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA With just a few clicks you can simultaneously distribute your news releases to your social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+), as well as to traditional channels and your integrated newsroom. 4. FIND YOUR INFLUENCERS When you see who shared your news and how influential they are, you can decide which influencers to target and start building valuable relationships with them a great benefit of Marketwired Resonate s indepth reporting. ABOUT MARKETWIRED Marketwired is a social communications leader offering best-in-class news distribution and reporting, as well as state-of-the-art social media monitoring and analytics. We open up new opportunities for our clients helping them tune into the conversations that count, find insights that matter, and influence the right people. CONNECT WITH US: WEBSITE marketwired.com US BLOG blog.marketwired.com CANADA UK +44 (0)