Layer Your Press Release Content to Reach Audiences at Every Level of Interest
One of the difficulties of writing a social media press release or a press release designed to reach a wide audience is that you have a variety of segments to address in one piece of content. You want journalists and media representatives to value the information and perhaps capture their interest.
You want your peers and fellow business associates, and even your competition, to take notice of the content. It’s also nice when your peers share the information in your press release on social media and comment on it or reprint the release on their blogs or websites. You also want your target audience to take notice and perhaps take some particular type of action.
Maybe you want them to visit a sales page or follow you on social media. Unless you write a different press release for each audience, appealing to a variety of interests can be difficult. Let’s take a look at some tips that you can use to layer your content and thus appeal to a variety of audiences.
The 5W’s
First and foremost, because a press release is designed to announce news, you must stick to the journalistic approach of answering the 5w’s, which are who, what, where, when, and why. You’ll appeal to media representatives when you’re able to succinctly answer these questions. Don’t skip this step. While your target customer may not care about some of this information, journalists do.
Your Peers
You can appeal to your peers and other industry representatives who may reprint your release by including quotes about the industry. This is particularly effective when you’re announcing new research, results, or statistics. It can also be helpful when you’re launching a new product or service and cite industry data to support the need for your new product or service. When you make the information relevant to industry peers, they’re more likely to share, comment on, and reprint the material.
Your Target Customers
As you’re sharing information about your news you can back it up with a compelling story. Use quotes and personal experiences to help give the piece a bit of personality as well as a consumer driven direction. For example, if you’re announcing a new product, consider sharing a success story about a beta customer who benefitted from the product. Quotes are another tool to help add interest and personality to a press release.
Appealing to Everyone
You can’t go wrong by adding relevant visual interest to the press release. Incorporate video links, images, photos, memes, infographics and other supporting images to help add interest, value, and personality to your piece. All levels of your audience will appreciate this visual content. Journalists like it because it gives them more information to work with. Your peers are more likely to share content with images. And your target customers appreciate it because it increases trust and likeability – two buying triggers.
