How To Write A News Release For The Digital World
Once upon a time, writing a news release demanded knowledge of the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why (and sometimes how). Covering each W in true journalistic fashion was the key to best practice. While mastering the five Ws is still necessary, social media, Internet search engines, smartphones and the 24-hour news cycle have created a whole new set of tactics to consider in preparing your corporate news for dissemination.
In this issue of IR focus, we review digital world best practices for news release origination and presentation.
Multimedia and Today’s News Release
News releases today aren’t just good pieces of writing. Although writing remains a vital ingredient, companies around the world are realizing that news releases can, and in many cases should also, incorporate communications of the unwritten kind.
That is to say, they can incorporate multimedia. What’s the reason? Multimedia embedded in a standard news release can elevate audience understanding of the news being released (and the meaning or context behind the announcement) and help to generate ‘earned links’, a term that describes the amount of traffic your news release earns on the Internet with social media users, who may also be shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers and journalists.
Multimedia-enabled releases are not yet the norm for public company announcements to shareholders and, for reasons explained later, are far from common in the context of announcements of material changes or earnings releases, but many companies are beginning to seize the communications opportunity afforded by the inclusion of embedded photos, infographics and videos.
For example, when Avalon Rare Metals Inc. (TSX and NYSE MKT: AVL) wanted to draw attention both to its corporate strategy and sustainability in exploration, it promoted the presence of two corporate videos through a press release with embedded links, and posted these videos to YouTube for maximum attention. When Target Corporation announced recent changes in its leadership team, it included a colour photo of Mark Schindele, its incoming Canadian President.
Multimedia insertions cost more to disseminate and require greater set-up time, but when weighed against the goal of improving audience understanding, are worth considering, remembering the adage: “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
That said, care needs to be taken to distinguish general communication releases from those that are mandated by securities laws, where hyperlinking should be restricted. Here’s why. A news release announcing a material change must be filed on SEDAR. A common practice for material change reports is to attach a copy of the associated news release. The problem is that all material change reports will be automatically incorporated by reference into the short-form prospectus of that issuer (including existing shelf prospectuses). Making certain that news releases issued and filed for regulatory purposes contain all of their content within their four corners alone will ensure that hyperlinked web pages are not also incorporated by reference. This also applies to releases disclosing information regarding historical or prospective financial performance or conditions, such as earnings releases.
SEO for News Releases
A number of stories on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) have concluded that news release writers should include ‘keywords’ as a means of improving SEO rankings. Keywords are words that your intended audience might type into a browser to find information on the topic you are writing about, or information on a topic with which your company wishes to be associated. For example, a telecommunications provider might include keywords such as smartphone in its press release, in order to garner greater attention. This can work if the news release actually relates to the smartphone. But if the reference is tenuous, it won’t yield desired results, due to recent advancements in search engine algorithms, which recognize both keywords and phrases and reward mentions based on natural engagement with and social media sentiment regarding your content.
In other words, content creators should remain focused on writing for people and not algorithms. That’s not to say SEO should be dismissed as part of news release development; it just means keyword inclusion needs to be done skilfully to foster reader engagement.
Choices of what links to include are also important. Virtually all companies link their press releases to their corporate websites. Rather than just dropping readers onto the corporate home page, where they need to fend for themselves in finding related information, best practice is now to link to specific web pages. For example, if your company announces its quarterly dividend, it’s better to link to a dividend page on your website than to your home page.
Presentation for Smartphones
In the old days, the opening paragraph of a news release – or ‘lead’ as it is called in journalism – was recognized as being vital to audience engagement.
In the digital world, the lead has retained its importance. If anything, it has been elevated because many press releases are now viewed first (and sometimes only) on mobile devices, where the attention span of most viewers does not extend beyond a couple of sentences.
Remembering this will help you to: a) always cut to the chase in the lead paragraph and keep it to 50 words or less, including your company’s ticker symbol, b) eliminate the excessive use of defined terms in the lead (those annotated with quotation marks) and c) use active verbs (a key to good writing for all forums). Twitter and its 140-character framework have quantified what it means to be short in the context of today’s news release headlines and leads.
Due to the popularity of mobile devices, news releases must also be scanable. Most newswire providers automatically optimize releases for smartphone applications but they can’t do anything if your original content ignored readability. How do you make your release scanable? Include bullet points and sub-heads and keep paragraphs short.
Excessively lengthy releases are also sure to lose presumed digital readers – whether they are browsing on a laptop or smartphone. Frankly, even if the content is read in hard copy form, lengthy releases can bury key details. In perception surveys, analysts regularly state that one of their greatest concerns is missing a key detail in a quarterly earnings release because it is lost in a sea of text.
While the advent of the digital world has introduced new considerations for public company news release writers, many best practices have not changed. A good news release still contains a concise corporate description and key contact details, including phone numbers and email addresses.
Incorporating News Releases in Communications Strategy
In today’s highly connected world, news releases can move markets and are often posted, verbatim, on numerous third-party websites even though the issuer did not request such placement. The Internet has also given the news release a digital life that may exceed that of its writer, meaning your content will find new audiences for years to come.
For these reasons, news releases should be written carefully and considered in the context of broader communications goals. If your goal is to improve audience understanding of the news, then multimedia tools may be for you. If your goal is to gain attention for your company, then you may wish to increase the frequency of announcing news, link your releases to relevant owned or third-party content and select the broadest possible points of distribution. Your newswire provider can help you to make the right selection with respect to distribution but you may also wish to consider tweeting your news releases (assuming this form of communication is authorized under your corporate disclosure policy), emailing them to influential followers and setting up RSS feeds from your corporate website so that your audience can subscribe to receive releases as soon as they are issued.
News releases, of course, do not convey only good news. And because search engines are agnostic, and Internet content presumably lives forever, good news and bad news releases will both be available to future readers in perpetuity.
This is troubling to many corporate executives, but should not be cause to soft-peddle bad news. Public companies would do well to adopt a similar set of tactics when the news is not positive. In other words, place the news in the lead paragraph, remembering that to bury bad news in a sea of content is to open your management team to ridicule. Provide context for the news (e.g. what actions are being taken to address the problem), which may also be addressed in the lead, and make sure that everyone who would normally receive your good news press releases also receives your bad news releases through the same digital channels. Evenhanded distribution is a must, even though it may be painful. Multimedia may also be useful in providing context when releasing bad news.
The digital world is having its way with the news release, shaping its creation and presentation. And yet surprisingly, the Internet and social media are reinforcing some of the best practices of yesteryear, causing writers to stay focused on the five Ws and on the fundamentals of clear, creative and balanced content that improves audience comprehension.