Looking to tailor your press release to get in front of digital publishers? Here are our tips.
Do you need a press release at all?
Firstly, consider whether you even need a press release to target this publisher. Does your digital PR campaign do what it says on the tin? Can it be easily explained in one sentence rather than drawing out a 400 word release? Is the contact less of a news site and more of a blog or informal content publisher? Is your campaign image-led and the visual makes it obvious exactly what it is? If yes, then chances are a simple email will suffice.
Group your releases
Chances are, won’t have time to make every release bespoke and tailored to each individual publisher. However, you can group your outreach contacts into niches and tailor your press releases to those. You may have a national press angle, a tech angle, and an education angle. You should have a release every time a hook aligns with a niche. At the very start of your campaign ideation, map out the publisher niches your campaign appeals to and what hooks are most of interest to these publishers. This will help guide your press release plan and ensure the most important information to those publishers is at the top of that release.
Tailor the headline
Even within the national press niche, you should be tailoring your press release headlines in line with the publisher. The way the Daily Mail writes its headlines is very different to how The Sun does. Look at how that journalist or publisher has covered similar stories in the past and aim to write a headline for the release that is similar in structure. The easier you can make it for a journalist to see it’s the kind of story they’d cover, the better your chances of pick up.
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