Why Do I Need a Press Release?

Many people hear the term “press release” and it immediately conjures up thoughts of a newspaper reporter pulling a piece of paper from a fax machine and running to their editor. While press releases are still used as a means of submitting your newsworthy announcement to journalists, the Internet has changed the definition of what a press release can be.

Now a press release can be anything you want it to be. No longer do you need to have something “newsworthy” to put out a release. Why? Because journalists are no longer the middlemen between you and the general public.

Thanks to sites like Google News and Yahoo News, you can submit a release to any number of distributors and it will be shown to thousands of readers (and possible customers). And should the media decide to do a story on you, well that’s just an added bonus.

In addition to being able to communicate with the public directly, a press release (or series of releases) can also play huge role in a Web site’s SEO and traffic.

We’ll be looking into this more in coming weeks, as we publish the results of a press release case study. Which by the way, could be about your site. See the post below this one for information on our press release contest.

In the meantime, I’d urge each of you to take a look at David Meerman Scott’s e-book, “The New Rules of PR” (warning: the link leads to a .pdf). The e-book does an excellent job of expanding on the idea of what a press release on the Web can be.