How to Send a Press Release [Tips & Solutions for 2024]

Press releases are crucial for boosting your brand awareness and helping public relations. But if nobody sees your release, you’ve wasted your time. The press release must be distributed effectively to get your story picked up by national magazines, newspapers, or blogs. This article presents a guide on how to send out a press release.

PR Distribution Services

PR distribution is the process of circulating or sending out a press release to journalists and members of the press.
The primary purpose of distributing a press release is for news to be covered in certain media publications, such as radio, newspapers, blogs, or podcasts. Consequently, your brand or product will be presented before a larger audience. Therefore, it’s essential to wisely choose a PR distribution service that will help you with the whole process of sending out a press release. Additionally, they should have an extensive list of media outlets and journalists.

Consider these four press release distribution tips when searching for PR companies:

1. After setting your goals and budget, start gathering information about PR agencies, such as reputation, costs, reviews, testimonials, clients, and social media presence.
2. Note the company’s job page to get an idea of the current tactics and objectives that they are focused on. For instance, are they looking to hire an expert in crisis management or developing a social media team?
3. Once you have chosen a PR agency, you need to write a press release email, which is the beginning of how to submit a press release:

• Make your press release email format authentic—don’t copy and paste parts from the press release format.
• Write your email from scratch and provide answers to the essential questions of Who? What? Where? When? and Why?
• Use bullet points to present the key details about your news briefly and catch readers’ attention.

Contacting Journalists via Email

If you’re looking to contact journalists and wondering how to email a press release to get media coverage, you need to find a relevant journalist who would be interested in your story. Consider these four steps in contacting and emailing a journalist:

Do Your Research

Search through a media contact database and find journalists, reporters, or bloggers who have common interests to you. (Use topic filters or location to narrow down the search.) Once you’ve created your list, dig deeper by using Google or Twitter to find more details, such as:

• What type of topics are they presently writing about?
• What are they interested in?
• Are they searching for a story like yours?

Find Journalists’ Email or Contact Information

Once you have formed your press list of journalists potentially interested in your story, you should find a way of submitting a press release. You can do this by email, phone, or social media—although the former is recommended the most.

Send Submission Email and Press Release

Before sending an email, double-check whether you’ve written your press release correctly. Why bother to find the best way to send a press release to a journalist if it is poorly written. Once you’re sure that everything is correct, write the email.

• In the first paragraph briefly introduce yourself and your company. In the second paragraph, explain why you’re sending a press release and when the story should be released.
• Then, in the conclusion of the body paragraph, point out what you need the journalist to do with your release and give a persuasive reason for them to follow through. Keep in mind that the journalists’ concern is to meet the needs of their audience—so you need to make sure that your reason will be valuable and vital to your audience.
• In closing, include contact information in the press release email format, so they can contact you if needed.

Follow-Up Email

If you don’t receive a response from the journalist after a few days, you should send a follow-up email—just in case they didn’t receive or see your release. But it should be short, concise, and straightforward.

• You shouldn’t send more than two follow-up emails. Sending more than two to your original PR pitch email will become counterproductive.

Key Takeaways

Tips for Preparing a Press Release

Before considering where to send a press release, think about how to prepare it. Of course, you first always need to proofread and double-check your release; otherwise, no one will consider it. (The right grammar checker apps can help in this regard.) Next, consider these five tips when composing your press release.

Start With a Newsworthy Topic

When you’re choosing a topic, think about getting attention and then how to get a press release published. Ask yourself:

• Why would my audience care about this topic?
• Is this relevant to my target audience?

Remember that a press release is an official statement given to the media and current and potential clients. So, your topic needs to be relevant, newsworthy, and SEO-friendly.

An Eye-Catching Headline

If you’re wondering how to get a press release published, begin with a remarkable headline. It needs to be catchy and informative. Be direct about why your press release is relevant and vital to your audience. Keep the headline accurate, include numbers, action words, as well as colorful adjectives.

Keep It Short (KISS)

All audiences want concise content. Your press release should give enough information to intrigue your readers. Only write one or two pages and stick to the point throughout the whole release. The best way to send a press release is to provide all the information needed for a journalist to write a story without repeating yourself.

Call to Action (CTA)

The purpose of a press release is for readers to take action. Most readers probably won’t read the whole press release, so you need to keep the CTA at the beginning of the text—somewhere between the first and third paragraph. For an effective CTA, you need to have:

• A stand-alone CTA, which draws attention from the rest of the text.
• Bold and Italics fonts for more attention to the CTA.
• A full URL link so the audience is aware of where they’re going.

Send Timely Press Release

Many factors can decide whether you’ll get your local press release covered by the media—timing is one. Thursday is the best day when it comes to press release open rates. And between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on a Thursday is the best time to send the release.

Top 3 PR Distribution Services

If you want to raise brand awareness, a PR distribution service is a perfect way to do it. Prepare your press release, and an agency will send it to selected journalists and websites. (There’s no need to worry about how to send out a press release.) Consider these top three services:

EIN Presswire

This service provides occasional free PR distribution promotions, and you can host EIN Presswire’s RSS feed on your website for free. And submitting a press release in any language is acceptable with this company.

This company offers an extensive network, where your content reaches millions through mobile apps, a world media directory, and microwires. Simply create a free account with EIN Presswire, pay for your plan, and begin issuing press releases.

24/7 Releases

This service is an excellent choice if you’re searching for a PR distribution service for a small business. It offers an FTP/XML Data Feed solution and excellent press release distribution services for startups. Additionally, it gives visibility through PR Newswire’s network, a Media Desk for journalists, printed media, and the Associated Press.

eReleases

eReleases = Journalists. This press release service works with professional journalists who will make your press release irresistible. This company subscribes to PR Newswire’s service and makes use of its extensive network.

If you’re wondering how to send a press release, eReleases boasts countless personal databases of journalists. Additionally, press releases issued through eReleases are sent to more than 4,700 sites and online services.

Conclusion

The process of good writing and sending out a press release is imperative if you want your news to end up in the right place and reap the benefits of your hard work. All you need to do is follow the given instruction and find the appropriate journalist or, even better, a PR distribution service.