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Would you like to receive more story requests from bloggers and journalists? Don't want to see more and more articles mentioning your brand? Your first step to building more online coverage is create an effective press site .
Why create a press site?
I haven't counted how many times I've wanted to reach out to a brand (usually it's a marketing tool I'd like to explore further) and struggled to find any clear instructions on how to do it. I also failed to track how many times I gave up trying to mention a brand on Twitter and couldn't find their Twitter address anywhere.
Those brands missed out on a good opportunity to be mentioned (perhaps even a missed opportunity in introducing a new brand advocate).
A well-constructed press page makes that opportunity a reality.
Basically, the main goals behind building a press site are:
- Attract “linked leads” (i.e. bloggers and journalists) by making your brand look interesting to them.
- Provide clear instructions on how they can be contacted (without confusing them).
- Gives you a little more control over the online emotions surrounding your brand (by showing favorable mentions).
Should you create a press site or a press site?
There are certain pros and cons to setting up a dedicated website to curate news and encourage relationships with the press.
The biggest benefit of having a separate website is the ability to take over multiple positions within Google for your branded queries. Google is trying to show diverse results per SERP, aim to show no more than two results from the same domain for a particular query in the top results. So having more sites gives you more control over your branded search SERPs.
Larger companies often have several domains that build an additional online context around the brand (and control more branded SERPs ):
Amazon stores all brand-specific information on a separate domain aboutamazon.com
Radix provide a perfect domain name for your brand's press room: .press:
Radix domain press ideas
On the other hand, building a separate website comes with a price: You need additional resources to build, design, and maintain a separate entity.
I leave it up to you to decide, but I personally lean towards a separate entity option.
1. Mentioned in the past
There are a few important reasons why you might want to manage your current press coverage:
- Linking to pages that refer to you will increase the ranking of those pages. This helps you highlight your positive mentions and thus, better control your company's online sentiment.
- With various stories surrounding the brand gives journalists more ideas of possible angles for their own articles.
- Publicizing your mentions will encourage more bloggers to refer you (hopefully you'll link to them from that section, too).
- The “As Introduced in” section gives you the power of social proof. Both your customers and journalists will trust your brand more when they see you in the news.
This section may contain all sorts of links that refer to your brand in one way or another, including:
- Your mentions in the newspaper.
- Interviews with your management.
- Articles that cite you or your management.
- Your CEO's keynote, etc.
It's also a good idea to organize your own press releases in this section.
Nextiva good job management news About their brand:
Great press site example from Nextiva. You can sort the list by year to find branded older/newer stories.
You can sort the list by year to find branded older/newer stories.
2. Contact Information
The best idea is to put a real person here, rather than a generic contact form. EPAM is a great example of do it well :
Great example of highlighting your press contact on your press page.
Knowing who to contact and being able to choose from a variety of options can encourage more links from your company leading to conversation starters.
3. Company information “behind the scenes”
Again, one of the main goals behind a good press site is to make your company more interesting to bloggers and journalists, encouraging them to think of it as part of the story.
The better way is to make your company more interesting to people than by humanizing it. Show your team, your photos, your conference trips, your charity events. You have a lot of uniqueness in your brand. Just show it.
4. Style / Content Guide
Providing bloggers and journalists with additional content to include in their articles can encourage them to create a more eye-catching backdrop.
Instagram is a prime example about providing complete instructions on how bloggers can use their logos and where to download high-resolution files. They also provide high resolution screenshots for download and use in the articles:
Instagram's Asset Collection is a great example of a style guide and content for press use
5. Your Social Media Channels
Finally, it's always a good idea to provide additional ways to communicate. Besides, link to your social media channels will allow bloggers and journalists to tag you in social media updates when your feature is live.
Besides, encouraging potential customers to follow you will tie them closer to your brand and potentially keep them engaged.
Optimize your page for organic visibility
Ultimately, ranking your press page (or website) for a variety of branded (and maybe even generic/unbranded) queries is key to generating more journalism.
Text Optimizer will help you create an effective copy for your Press, helping it to rank higher in Google. Text Optimizer will check your current brand ranking and use semantic analysis to extract related concepts for you to include them in your copy:
You should also think of a User acquisition strategy ensure those who have found themselves on our press site will continue to browse the site.
Alter offers some great user acquisition options, including exit intent popups that show up exactly when your website users are ready to leave. You can control which pages will display and what they will include:
Conclude
So many companies are being proactive with link acquisition and news tactics, but they forget the input aspect of them. Before investing in press email outreach, make sure you've set up a convincing landing page. That way, potential affiliates will know why and how to mention you when delivering news.
Setting up a press site (or a press site) is a one-time job, but it must be done to see your brand generate more and more organic mentions on the web.
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