In a recent blog post, I wrote about why press releases suck.
Lest you think this is an apology, I still think they suck.
But I forgot to mention a couple halfway decent reasons to use them beside those I’d written about earlier.
First, if what you want to tout is at least somewhat important to you or your company, but has a snowball’s chance in hell of attracting actual media coverage.
In such cases, you can simply post the news release to your website and/or social media accounts. At very least, those visiting your site or noodling around online might see it. You may also see a bit of SEO- and social media-related mojo.
For those willing to spend upwards of a thousand bucks or more, you might use one of several official news release wire services such as PR Newswire or Business Wire to broadcast your release to any number of media outlet types and geographies around the state, country or globe.
This doesn’t mean journalists will be more likely to write or broadcast stories about what you’re pitching. But releases issued via such for-pay platforms do often wind up getting republished in various websites, including reasonably legit ones. Plus, journalists to pay attention to these services, which at least try to make sure clients issue releases that aren’t outright bullshit. What’s more, that releases issued this way look to many folks like stories you’d see issued by actual newswires such as The Associated Press or Reuters can lend them potentially undeserved credibility.
The other main reason to issue a press release is, after you’ve already succeeded in scoring solid coverage in news media outlets, you want to try to wring every last possible bit of publicity from your pitch. Again, issuing a release now – whether through a news release wire service or otherwise – may result in no additional coverage. But such a mop-up operation may at least lead to the release landing on a few (or more) websites.