Generating publicity is a marketing strategy that uses different forms of communication to gain attention and generate awareness, from unpaid media sources, towards a company’s products or services without having to buying space in a newspaper, ads online, or airtime on TV. One of the most common communication forms used to generate publicity is a Press Release, or PR for short. A Press Release is a public relations announcement issued to the media in an effort to let the public know about company’s development.
There are many types of a Press Release, such as general news, product launch release, event press release, and company’s internal press release, but each one of these press releases has to follow certain guidelines and rules to ensure that it will stand out from the hundreds of other press releases sent the media. Each press release should be formatted in a certain way, grammatically correct, and should be one or two pages at most. It should cover the answers to the questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how.
With the rise of the Internet, generating publicly in general, or press releases in particular, have not changed much due to the set of rules and standards that has to be followed to ensure the quality of each press release issued, and that it will be read by the media. That being said, there are some advantages and disadvantages to the Internet that may have affected how press releases are issued and distributed.
One of the things that the internet offers is the speed of delivery, reachability, and engagement, which can be both an advantage and disadvantage in regard to publicity or press releases. Before the internet, a press release was delivered to newspapers and other media outlets by hand or mail. Nowadays, with a press of a button a press release will be delivered right to the inbox of the media, and possibly the end customer as well. As a result of how convenient that is, the competition has risen, and the number of press releases sent out to the media has increase drastically making it very hard for a press release to stand out among the large number of others press releases, which in return has affected the media’s engagements with those press releases.
Another thing that the internet has brought was the different Social media platforms, which is also as a form of media that should be taken into consideration when issuing a press release. Nowadays, social media is considered one of most powerful media sources out there that can have a huge impact on the publicity of a company. Sometimes companies leverage the power of social media to gain additional publicity by sharing shorten version their press releases, along with some pictures, videos, or link to the full press release, on their official social media accounts and pages where the public can see, read, share, comment and interact with either positively or negatively.
Useful Links and References:
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/311266
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2017/08/21/generate-publicity-with-these-six-types-of-press-releases/#44e3b2ae3f44
- https://publicityhound.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-generating-online-publicity
- https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-publicity-2295550
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/press-release
- https://www.thechannelco.com/content/how-the-internet-has-changed-public-relations
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwynne/2011/12/12/should-you-post-press-releases-in-social-media/#2c9e5ba058aa
