A talk that Andy Barr of 10 Yetis digital delivered at a Meltwater Breakfast Briefing on what the modern press release should look like. Delivered on 10th October 2018 at Courthouse Hotel in Shoreditch. The talk features tips on the modern day press release as well as general tips on how to increase the chance of your press release email pitch being opened.

1. #OutsideInsight
What your 2019 press release
should look like.
Andy Barr, 41, Capricorn
Let’s Don our way through this!
#OutsideInsight

2. #OutsideInsight
Who even are we?
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3. #OutsideInsight
We need some context
 We research journo trends every year (get us!)
 Spoke to 200+ UK journalists this year
 Across national (mainly), regional, trade, B2B, freelance
 We build a picture of their working day
 What they like and loathe
#OutsideInsight

4. #OutsideInsight
Stat me up
 ¼ of UK journalists need to write 7 stories per day (including nibs)
 68% of media use Twitter to find stories (down from 73% last year)
 74% use Twitter to research a story they are working on
 Wires are dead (apart from PA). Lack of trust is cited as the main reason
 84% of journos asked said they have used Wiki to research a story (eek!)
 Press office still number one port of call for more information
#OutsideInsight

5. #OutsideInsight
Even more stats
 Only 14% of journalists use a company blog when researching a story
 32% said biggest pressure was harassment from PRs #COLD
 51% said that PRs are not getting better! #EvenColder
 “Typros” and missing contact details the biggest issues (PR101 people!)
 Big image files were a massive bugbear - use thumbnails duh!
 100% referenced Dropbox as as potential solution
 30% of newsrooms can now detect mail-merges and are blocked at Firewall level (ooft)
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6. #OutsideInsight
But, you know what…
100% of journalists said press
releases were the Number One
way of finding stories
#Hallelujah
That deserved the bigger font right?
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7. #OutsideInsight
The press release is not dead!
Only fools and SEO people think it is.
We just need to tweak the format!
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8. #OutsideInsight
The modern release needs… (the basics)
 To be proofed AF!
 Contact information clearly shown
 Embargo free (unless a listed company, obvs!)
 Sent in the main body of an email.
 Some people use PDF attachments still even though it is not 1986
 Plain text, no fancy HTML, you will hit spam filters
 No journo mentioned the old rule of a spike if the brand was in the first two
paras
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9. #OutsideInsight
What can be sprinkled on top?
 Video!
 Video video video
 Media desperate for rich content
 We have done launch release “videos” where the video has been embedded on the
news site
 Transcribe the video for the email to media (great content for your
press section too)
 Lift out the quotes from your spokespeople
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10. #OutsideInsight
What else Barr?!
 Branded quote images as thumbnails
 Like this…
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11. #OutsideInsight
More!
 Host content on your press page – link to this in your email/release
 Optimise (to help with search rankings) to try and attract links
 Images
 Spokespeople bios
 Videos
 Case studies available? SHOUT ABOUT THIS
 Media are desperate for case studies
 I mean, really desperate
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12. #OutsideInsight
And finally
 Remember infographics from back in 1990?
 Yeah, don’t use them any more!
 Break up the infographic into squares
 Thumbnail it into your releases
 Infographic squares are a brilliant way to break up stat heavy releases
 IGNORE ALL OF THIS FOR CRISIS COMMS
 Keep it simple
 A session for another day!
 Finally, don’t let the SEO people bastardise your amazing release
 (lols, love ‘em)
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13. #OutsideInsight
One sneaky last slide on secret tips
 Shannon Peerless (Head of PR, 10Yetis) research on increasing open and read rates
of release pitch emails (@Shazzayeti)
 Putting media title’s name in subject line increased open rate by nearly 40%
 Putting “exclusive” in the subject line sped up response time from 2hr average to 35
mins
 Calling ahead to talk a story through, works. Every journo opened the email when a
pre-call was made (and it got read more as well, an average of 4 times)
 Putting the word “pitch” in the subject line increased open rate but not as much as
“Exclusive”
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14. #OutsideInsight
Q & A Time
Come at me bro
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