Press releases about research studies cross my desk every day. Here are a few of the basic tips I like to share with research marketers and PR agencies.
Keep the headline short. 10 words is the maximum. Anything longer is sheer vanity or an inability to communicate.
Start with the keywords that matter most to the audience. Unless you are promoting your latest study for Britney Spears or Al Gore, embrace this truth: your company name is not the most important word in the headline or lead paragraph. Don’t treat it as though it is, by placing it ahead of other keywords in the headline and first paragraph. People are looking for news about the topics you cover — not about your company. Find the right wordsmithing formula so that your keywords get picked up with highest priority and your company name gets picked up as well. Don’t try to cheat with a report title containing the keywords. That’s advertising in a flimsy disguise.
I do recommend leading with the company name in other types of releases — financials, business announcements, events.
A report catalogue description is not newsworthy; don’t publish it as a press release. This seems to elude decision makers at research companies. Think about it like this: Would you hold a telebriefing dedicated to reading the table of contents of one of your reports? Seriously, would you expect people to dial in or download the audio file, just to hear you read the table of contents or some other list of topics that are covered in a report? No, of course you wouldn’t. Nor should you use a press release in this way.
Use consistent names. Don’t switch back and forth between a full name and a nickname when quoting the research staff. Use the same, precise spelling on your website, biographies, report descriptions, promotions, press materials, and tags on all of these things.
Avoid those leading vendor traps. Here’s the deal: research companies live in glass houses. Any sweeping claim — “first study ever”, “only comprehensive study”, “only accurate study”, “industry bible” — should reflect some quality competitive research. Otherwise, such claims could backfire and undermine corporate credibility.
Use clean code. Make sure that all symbols are encoded properly. It’s still very easy to break your own RSS feed — and others’ — with a errant percentage sign or ampersand. That applies to company names as well as research findings.
Other tips, opinions are welcome!
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March 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Give info ! As you correctly advise, don’t publish a table of contents … more important : a press release should give enough information/figures/data to make people want to have it/ buy it/read it … it used to be that research companies published a press release in the form of an executive summary, with a graph and some really good figures/forecasts, etc. Today, a journalist gets the impression that he/she is only considered as one more advertisment body for the great work done by the researchers … with a hollow text and no substance !
Hopefully, this sill help to change that …
March 5th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Good tips, Barbara…allow me to add one: Be honest with yourself and those who will see the release. By that, I mean to focus on what is the real news value of what you’re issuing, not what you want it to be. Journalists ain’t dummies…and neither are the other folks who read your release.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Elisabeth and Steve, Thank you. The journalist perspective is vital, and getting to what’s important is the crux of the matter for journalists as well as everyone else accessing press releases.
One of the stumbling blocks for researchers is deciding what data can be published freely to the general public, and what must be held back as premium content available only to paying clients.
Last week, consultant Dennis Howlett suggested that for blogging analysts, the 80/20 rule applies — give away 80 percent of the research content, retain 20 percent. His rationale is that th 80% is available for free somewhere on the web anyway, or it should be. Consulting plus the remaining 20% makes up lost revenues.
Personally, I’m hard pressed to see how that kind of analyst business model would scale. However, I do believe he’s pointing in the right direction. For example, every non-sponsored research study contains at least one data set that justifies the purchase of the entire report (or book, service, event, etc.) Figure out the pieces of the story that make audiences want to buy that high-value data from you, and you’ll have a good shot at a compelling research press release.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
you are 100% right, Barbara ; I wouldn’t go that far as 80/20, but 20/80 could already be good enough. So the deal, for the research company, would be to decide who they want to purchase a given report and then just give away enough jucy pieces of info with a little graph for ex. If a research company can’t do that, the report is probably worth nothing, with just a compilation of infos scattered on the web and company profiles … However, it’s a pity when you see some of the press releases … wasting valuable time … especially when they are being copy-pasted in online newsletters, giving the fast reading subscribers a false impression of how good the news service is … That should also be a rule for journalist ethics.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I don’t know about 80/20, 20/80, or another other ratio, but we’ve found that the more we give away for free, the more we sell.
The level of detail our clients prefer isn’t going to fit into a 400 word PRNewswire release, and it’s also not going to interest many journalists. But PRs are good places to communicate strategic advice, summary data, and research recommendations, because that provides some value to the reader, and gives a news reporter something to write about. If you tense up, and hold back too much, you end up with a boring, self-serving release that won’t be worth the cost of putting it on the wire.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:27 am
May I add three more tips?
–Forget the long, pompous boilerplate packed with industry jargon. two or three sentences are fine.
–Forget the B.S. quote from the CEO that says “The ABC software company is please and proud to introduce our new cross-platform, turn-key, scaleable solution to…” If you’re going to quote the boss, offer a compelling, snappy quote that sounds like something the boss would actually say.
–Loads of mind-numbing acronyms. Lots of press releases resemble a bowls of alphabet soup.
I offer a press releasae writing tutorial that leads writers step-by-step through the entire process of writing press releases and distributing them online. It’s an email course, and you get one lesson each day for 12 weeks.
If you stick with it, by the time you’re done, you will be heads above most PR people. Sign up for the course at http://PublicityHound.net/89Ways
March 7th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Rachel, You (Freesky Research) issue exactly the kind of juicy executive summary — and indepth forecast and strategic market analysis — that Elisabeth was talking about. These used to be the norm. Today, they are more exception than norm. I can believe that this strategy works well for Freesky. It’s the kind of common sense marketing that “long tail” theory is built on top of.
Joan, Thanks for adding some perspective from mainstream PR best practices. Research press releases tend to run into trouble with strings of stats — percentages, CAGR, and numbers, numbers, numbers. A couple of tips on dealing with that would be helpful. They need the numbers to run through RSS, so simply relying on graphics or tables is not a solution.
March 27th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Barbara, what a great post! I saw it after our last press release, which incorporated most of those suggestions, but I take away some ideas for next ones.
I couldn’t agree more with Rachel (”we’ve found that the more we give away for free, the more we sell.”). In fact, despite having a great Scientific Advisory Board, what we’ve found gives us most credibility with reporters and clients is our rich, updated daily, niche-specific blog, and pretty dynamic website. That makes us the OBVIOUS content experts and reference in our sector, and provides unexpected opportunities, such as joining Scientific American Partner Network (very important for our brand).
April 28th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Alvaro, Thank you. I’ve been impressed with the SharpBrains press materials and your overall approach to leveraging knowledge for marketing and community building. In fact, I was just looking at your blog and site again, and found some inspiration for the next rev of Tekrati and Analyst Profiles. As always, about a dozen points of interest caught my eye — as Tekrati editor, Alzheimer’s caregiver, and owner of a human brain. Your ability to appeal to me on all 3 fronts is what is so powerful about your content strategy.
May 4th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Great advice! Thanks!
(may I add a couple things?)
It seems that if you have information to offer, that is in TRUE demand, then, well, many of the rules can be tossed.
So I guess I’m saying that real content is king.
Second, most of us need advice like yours to get the word out. Someone may have the cure for cancer, but if they start the article or release with “27 things you may want to know about cancer” instead of an attention grabbing headline, than all is lost.
thank you, and cheers!
Chris