Website Marketing Basics: How To Write A Press Release

Posted by Salem Global on Sep 30, 2009

I just came back from a meeting with a personnel staffing organization. They are experts in resume writing. They really know what a company is looking for and how to best present a potential employee. A resume is your one shot at the title, if it doesn’t look good you have pretty much no chance at getting hired (unless of course you father owns the company).

Last year, this company was invited by Vibe Magazine to work on Jay-Z’s resume. The proper use of press releases would be to announce this to as many media outlets as possible and of course the world. However, PR is tricky. If you were to write an article, it would not be accepted as a press release. So therefore writing a press release has to be crafted in a very specific way. At SalemGlobal we mostly use PR Web. They allow us to distribute press releases to thousands of media outlets and websites. These press releases should follow the same format as any search engine optimized web page. Meaning your primary keywords should be at the top of the press release and anchor text should be used to link to important landing pages and your home page.

Press releases help one of our clients, a NJ homeless shelter and soup kitchen (www.EvasVillage.org), spread the word about their services. Two winters ago they wrote a press release announcing their open doors for the homeless during the winter. This news was so enticing that it was picked up by the weather channel.

In conclusion, you should be writing a minimum of one press release a month, prioritizing your keywords and linking to and from your press release. Next week we will talk about gearing up for the holiday season and how you should prepare for it from a marketing perspective.

If you have any questions or would like help writing press releases email me at raphis@salemglobal.com, call us at 212-993-5828 or visit www.SalemGlobal.com for more information.