Sharing good news is always a great way to show off your achievements as a business and gain some publicity too. Whether your good news is something as simple as a new staff member joining the team or you have gone out of your way to raise money for a charity, sharing your news is an important way to keep your customers informed.
So what can you do to let everyone know?
Press releases are great for sharing your news around the world and encouraging local newspapers (or even national papers) to share your story. A press release can be about anything but you must make sure that it has a hook and a single, newsworthy story. Think carefully about this because you don’t want to spend a lot of time spinning out a story where there isn’t really one to tell. A press release should always have a clear marketing purpose.
Writing a great press release is all about knowing your audience and making sure you cover all the information quickly and succinctly. Following the who-what-where-when-how-why pattern is usually a good start, but you should feel free to mix these questions up to ensure the smooth flow of your article.
When you are distributing your press release, you need to make sure that it reaches as many people as possible. This is to maximize the chance of your story being picked up and covered. The more coverage you can get, the more likely your story is to be covered by other larger papers too. Finding the right press release distributor is a key factor and you can find a list of some of the best press release distributors of 2019 here.
Sometimes good news isn’t quite worthy of a press release but you do want to share it with your customers and followers. This is where your blog can really shine. Your blog is the perfect place to share fun news such as employee of the week awards, any minor celebrations such as birthdays, team building activities and fun afternoons or less formal formats such as a Q and A with the boss. There are loads of ideas to choose from!
Writing a blog post is much less strict and a good opportunity to play with different media too. Using pictures and picture galleries, video interviews and even things like GIFs can make your articles more fun to read and show a more relaxed and personal side to your brand. Being more creative will also draw more people to read your blog. People love to see what other people are up to, so let your blog speak for your more chilled office vibe.
So what about those cute stories that don’t quite require a full blog post? This is where social media really shines. You might not be able to write a full blog about the delicious breakfast the management surprised everyone with one morning but you can certainly share a picture of everyone tucking in. This kind of behind-the-scenes content humanizes your company and can even help to build trust with your audience as they feel they can get to know you and your team, not just see the same planned and edited stuff all the time.
Social media is also perfect for sharing press releases and blogs. Just as you would share any other kind of news, sharing the link encourages clicks and you never really know who might be watching. Smart use of tags will help bring more people to your content and you could even tease a cool story if you want to build up the drama and really get your money’s worth!
While you certainly won’t want to share every minute of every day with your customers and online audiences, you should give them enough information to see the very human team behind the product or service. Ultimately, people are fascinated by other people (this is why there are so many trashy celeb mags about!) so introducing your team through social media posts, blogs and even press releases is a great way to connect with your audience.
Once you get into the rhythm of sharing company news, writing press releases will come naturally and you will just know what a good blog looks like. For social media, a sense of spontaneity is essential so the basic rule is if you would share this picture if you were with friends, you should share it now.
