You are a company about to launch a new product or service, and you are looking to garner national attention. What is the best way to get coverage?
Developing a news release to announce the news remains a powerful public relations tool for generating media coverage. After retaining a PR professional to write the release for you, the next step is to determine distribution. Getting the release in the hands of local and regional media is a given. But what about reaching national media?
Depending on the type of news and your target audiences, consider utilizing a wire service, such as PR Newswire or Business Wire. For a minimal additional cost, wire services supplement the distribution to your current media list.
I recently utilized PR Newswire for two clients. Both announcements were highly successful.
- One release was for a start-up company looking to highlight a case study that appeared in an industry journal. In addition to the coverage generated from media outreach and pitches, the wire distribution helped reached an additional audience of 11.4 million.
- The second announcement was for a small company looking to generate national media coverage for the first time. This announcement reached an audience of nearly 90 million.
Utilizing a wire service for release distribution is not appropriate for all news releases. But it is a highly effective tool if you want to generate national coverage for an announcement. Releases can be directed to general media, business press and to trade media segmented by industry.
The keys to a successful wire release are that the announcement be well written, concise and newsworthy. And these releases often are published verbatim.
If you have a story that you think is worthy of some national attention, contact Cook Communications LLC today. We can help you package the story in a news release, conduct direct media outreach and set up a wire service distribution.