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April 03, 2017

Press releases and content marketing: Let's dive right into things. These two strategies of brand building have two features in common. They have both been in existence forever and neither of them are going away anytime soon. They will always exist in some form or another.

Given that these two strategies of marketing will be around for a while, you should incorporate both into your branding strategy or, as mentioned in many of our previous articles, you will be left behind. There is no better time to start than right now.

We would like to talk about links. People call us frequently asking how many links they may include in their press release and when their press release is distributed, are the links that are included "do follow" links. Nobody will deny the fact that links can be valuable, however we need to understand that there are two aspects of links to consider: where the links come from and how they are used. For a link to be of value, it needs to come from a respected third party source. Extreme examples would be major newspapers like The Wall Street Journal or the New York Times referencing your business or web site, or an article from a well-known blogger or reviewer who has had an established reputation for many years. These are considered earned links from credible sources. Try to identify which sources would be considered most credible and pertinent to your business, industry or profession and make sure you get your information to them.

When you use content marketing, your strategy should be to become the expert in whatever business or industry you are in. Earn the trust of your audience by demonstrating facts. Prove you are the expert. Your strategy should include information that will clearly help people in whatever way they may be having difficulties. Examples include showing them different ways of using a product that was just released. Similarly, you may have a blog where you have posted many valuable articles and information. You can certainly make references to this information in your next press release.

Rome was not built overnight and neither is a strong content marketing strategy. Over time, as you continue to post useful, credible information that people can trust, you will start to form a following. When you post information to your Social Media, you should also include links back to your valuable content as well as that of other expert sources. People will start to follow you, because they want to be kept up to date with the latest valuable information. Don't forget to use "# Tags" in your posts because these will help attract journalists out there who are combing social media for research purposes.

If you are using a press release service to distribute your news, ensure that your press release is kept on the shorter side, and kept on point. Don't hesitate to use whitespace and include images to strengthen your press release. If you want to make sure your readers have access to more complete or in-depth information in addition to the press release content, put in a link to a longer document that has the extra information. This could be a link to your blog post that has more details than what may be found in your press release.

Pitching the media is never easy. We've covered this topic a number of times, in variations which may be found in our press release tips knowledge base. If you are making certain claims within your press release, be sure to include citations from strong credible sources to strengthen your storyline.

Once you have started to increase your visibility through your content marketing efforts, you may be pleasantly surprised shortly after you submit your next press release to receive a call or email from a journalist at a recognized paper wanting to further your story and get more information from you. Hopefully, once the journalist has written and published the story, he or she will send you the link to the story in that publication. Congrats! You have just earned yourself a link to a credible source that is likely more valuable than an ad.

Keep repeating this process and you may begin to notice a "snowball" effect.