How to get your press release noticed

I spent some time with marketing personnel from Business Wire and PR Newswire recently, and learned a few tips for getting your press release read and helping to brand your company.

First, most who read press releases read only the headline to determine if they want to read further, so your release's headline must pack as much information into it as possible. Second, always "build your brand" by putting your company name in the headline. Remember, the more times your name is bandied about as a solution to a problem or as the name to go to for a commodity or service, the stronger your bottom line.

Even though it looked a bit long when I wrote it, here's the most recent press release headline I wrote for one of my great clients, Proxix.

Skittish insurance industry skirts hurricane-prone coastal areas;
Proxix Solution’s CATUM tames storm-surge risk
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Another tip for getting more mileage from your press release involves "click-throughs." These are hyperlinks such as the Proxix link above where readers can click directly to your home page or a page on your website containing specific information.
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The White Paper we had just assisted Proxix with was a click-through in their press release so that anyone interested in their computer model can click through directly to their White Paper.
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Implementing just these two tips will get more mileage from your press release. I didn't promise it, but these two companies did, and they, after all, are the experts.