To Press Release or Not - That Is The Question...

As a small business owner if you’re looking to leverage awareness around what you do - should you write and distribute a press release? My answer to this would be probably not.

A press release by its very nature is to announce news and unless you have a book coming out, or have won an award or something similar, it’s best to keep approaching Journalists separately with potential feature ideas.

At the heart of everything you do, please remember the rule of thumb that PR is about story telling not selling. In other words, how could your business or what you do be of interest to Journalists? Have you been on a journey to get to where you are today, ie thousands of pounds in debt to now earning multi-six figures? Do you work from a tipi tent at the bottom of your garden that has been designed especially for you, or have you converted your garage into a radio studio for instance?

These are things that will be of interest to readers and so are more likely to be covered by Journalists.

I would argue though, that unless you have commissioned new credible research with facts or have a genuinely interesting story that ties in well with the current news agenda, the likelihood is that a press release won’t work well either.

So when will a press release help you?

A well-written press release works really well for local and regional media in particular. If it is well crafted, then a Journalist who is time poor and up against it when it comes to resource, will just copy and paste it onto their website. Staying in touch with them to ensure you also secure any necessary credit/link to your business is also key too.

If you have anything to announce - a book is a great example, or if you’re staging a competition for someone to win a £10k wedding - this is definitely worth writing a press release for and distributing it.

At a national level, a well-crafted release should always answer the main questions in the top line if not top two lines. By this I mean, the What, the Why, the When, the Where and then followed up by the How.

Remember Journalists will be sent hundreds of releases every day, so yours has to stand out from other brands who will be much bigger than yours.

Think also about whether you have the time to write a press release and then sell it in. For someone who’s never written one before, it could take the most part of a day and then you have to approach your local media targets as well. If you don’t have a contacts database, you will also need to factor in the research time to find the right Journalists at each publication. All in, you’re probably looking at around two days.

If this sounds like time that could be spent better elsewhere either in or on your business, then I would recommend working with a professional to secure you the coverage that you’re looking for.

The one other thing to mention, and something that should always be a caveat with all PR - there are never any guarantees for coverage. But when you do secure something, aside from shouting about it far and wide, it can have a huge impact on your business.

Good luck and happy press release writing (or not) as the case may be… x