Even though the media are more fragmented than ever, with many newspapers going out of business but online news sites flourishing, press releases can and should be a major component of your media strategy. Put your press releases online and draw not only the media, but also general readers, potential donors, and volunteers to your nonprofit website.
Write Press Releases Frequently
Take a page from the business public relations playbook, and write press releases frequently. In The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott suggests that an organization develop a press release strategy, and send press releases at every opportunity. Here is a list of possibilities for a nonprofit organization.Send a press release when you:
- have a new take on an old problem
- develop a new program
- serve a unique population or mission
- have interesting information to share (nonprofits should think about any studies they do, or surveys they perform)
- if your CEO or other prominent staff or board members speak at a conference
- win an award
- produce a product or a helpful publication
- get a big donation or grant
- reach a goal in a fundraising campaign
- send volunteers to help with a crisis
- have expertise on a topic in the news
You can probably think of a lot more possibilities. If not, check out the online press rooms of some large national nonprofits to see what they are writing press releases about.
Distribute Press Releases Widely
Use an online distribution system to send your press releases to a wide audience. This needn't cost a lot and, even if distributed to a limited geographic area, just having the press release on the distributor's website will boost your placement on the major search engines.Your press release is also likely to be sent out in the alerts that search engines such as Google send to anyone who signs up to receive news that contains keywords that are of interest to the reader. For instance, I receive Google news alerts on the words, "nonprofit" and "philanthropy."
Popular Press Release Distribution Services include:
- Business Wire
- Marketwire
- PrimeNewsWire
- PR Newswire
- AlterNet (focuses on environmental, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice)
- AScribe
Post the Press Releases in Your Online Press Room
Write and post press releases frequently. They will provide a reason for the search engines to crawl your site and index your press releases.Search engines love frequent updates. In the same way, a frequently updated blog on your website can encourage indexing by the search engines. Be sure to post the press releases in reverse chronological order, but, when you have enough, you can also provide groupings of press releases filed by keyword or topic.
Optimize Your Press Releases by Using Keywords and Keyword Phrases
Search optimization is a highly specialized area, but even the search amateurs among us can learn how to do basic optimization.Research your keywords to see which would work best for your press release. You can do this at the free version of WordTracker and at Google Adwords.
You will want to choose keyword phrases in your press releases that do not necessarily receive the most traffic. On the most popular keyword pages, it is very difficult to rank highly (preferably within the first couple of pages of results). Pick a keyword phrase that is a bit less popular and your press releases may rank more highly.
For instance, the phrase, "child abuse" (according to Google Adwords) received 2,740,000 searches in one month. But "child abuse prevention" received 49,500 searches. If you have a free brochure on how to prevent child abuse, you might do better using the latter phrase. You could also optimize for several phrases such as "prevent child abuse," "signs of child abuse," etc, all of which have lower numbers of searches. Think about the various ways someone who was looking for this information would search for it. What words or phrases would he or she put into the search box?
Place your keyword phrase in these key places in your online press release:
- Meta Tag (ask someone familiar with tech issues where this is if it is not obvious within your website system). Look at the top bar of your web browser on any web page to see where that Meta Tag shows up and how it is usually formatted.
- Meta Description
- Meta Keywords
- Title of the press release
- Subtitle of the press release
- First paragraph of the press release
- In the subheads that you use to break up the text of the press release.
- At the end of the press release
This is no time to give up on press releases or to think that you should just send them to a few reporters. These simple procedures involving your press release strategy will result in a surprising increase in Internet traffic to your website. You'll reach reporters, plus a whole lot of other people who can spread the word about your nonprofit.
Suggested Resources:
The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott.
Strategic Communications for Nonprofits: A Step-by-step Guide to Working with the Media, Second Edition, Kathy Bonk, Emily Tynes, Henry Griggs, Phil Sparks.
Search Engine Marketing, Inc., Mike Moran and Bill Hunt.
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