When it comes to getting your brand out there, growing your visibility, and establishing a reputation within your industry, then press releases can be a vital part of your marketing strategy. Aside from having newsworthy events to write about, presenting them as well as possible can make a big impact on your chances of getting published and getting shared.

Here, we’re going to look at some vital tips on how to make sure that your press releases are landing in the right way. From how you write them to how you format and organize them, the tips below will help ensure that they’re more likely to get the attention that you need.

Make Your Angle Easy to Follow

All too often will businesses try to send a press release for the sake of sending a press release. It’s an effective marketing tool, but only when you actually have some news to share. Start with your angle, decide if it’s truly newsworthy (such as a launch, a new business development, or the like) and write a strong headline that’s based entirely on that angle. It can help you stick to the most important information as you’re writing the rest of the release out.

Keep Building a Contact List

The first thing you should do is make sure that you’re sending your press releases to the right people. If you’re working with a PR company, it’s likely they will do this for you. However, if you’re doing it alone, whether you’re trying to market in the local area or to an industry-specific audience, you need to start by taking the time to find which contacts you should be sending any press releases to and saving their credentials. Be sure to use email marketing tools that allow you to see which emails bounce back so you can update old contacts as you go on, as well.

Check for the Obvious Errors

Anyone who writes for a living will tell you that typos and other errors never go away. You should hopefully see less of them as you go along but even when double-checking and reading through your work, it’s all too easy for them to slip through the gap. To that end, it’s a good idea to have an editor where possible. Where that’s not possible, however, then you should use grammar checking apps that can at least highlight the majority of issues to you and really take the time to read over your pieces carefully before sending.

Make It Easy to Share

When you’re working on a press release, you want to make sure that it’s very easy for your team to check on it and to offer their feedback. Whether it’s an editor or a member of the marketing department who needs to make sure you’re using the right language and tone for the business, rarely will you work on a press release alone. To that end, document linking software can be very useful in helping multiple people collaborate over a project in no time at all. You don’t want to be emailing multiple versions around, making it easy to get confused. One version, stored, shared, and edited online is usually the best strategy.

Make It Fit Your Style

You’re going to develop a house style for all manner of communication, including your press releases. Using document format automation software can help you quickly ensure that your press releases are fitted with your logo, your contact information, and any other vital information that is shared across all releases. Furthermore, it makes sure you can quickly sharpen up any piece and get it out the gate rather than having to take the time to do it by hand.

Don’t Make It Too Long – or Too Short

Press releases should present their information as matter-of-factly and snappily as possible. As such, though the word length is variable, you rarely want to go much longer than 600 words, whereas going shorter than 400 can deprive it of marketable value. Similarly, you don’t want the press release summary at the top or the title to be too long either. If paragraphs are getting much longer than 100 words, it’s time to start chopping things down. You can use readability checkers to make sure everything is snappy enough, too.

Press releases are more than a purely written means of marketing. They’re also about how effectively you can present information visually, and how professional you can make your business look at the same time. Hopefully, the tips above help you do just that.