Six Things a Brand Needs to Know When Creating a Press Page
I’m regularly asked by clients about what they should put on their media enquiries or press page. And it’s a great question too. Because quite frankly, people don’t often realise just how important this page actually is. Take a read of the below to find out my six tips for a brand to keep in mind when creating their press page.
I’m regularly asked by clients about what they should put on their media enquiries or press page. And it’s a great question too. Because quite frankly, people don’t often realise just how important this page actually is. Ultimately if a journalist wants to contact the media department of a brand for comment on a story and they can’t find the right details, then it’s likely that the brand will be crossed off the list as a potential commentator. A journalist simply doesn’t have time to fish out the right contact details and scrabble around for company bios.
But don’t just take my word for it, take a read of what Georgina Fuller, a well-known freelance journalist, has to say about the matter…
With this in mind, here are six ways you can make a journalist’s life easier and provide them with all the key details they need.
- Include the right contact information. Make the contact details for whoever is in charge of handing your media requests very clear. Include phone numbers, email addresses and social links where possible. Sounds simple right, but you would be surprised at the number of brands who fail to do this on their websites.
- Display your ‘about us’ or company information in an easily digestible and human format. You want press visitors to be able to quickly and easily grasp what it is that your company does without any confusion or need for further clarification. Make sure this ‘about us’ copy gives the journalist all they need to know to write about you. Avoid all jargon and what I would call ‘consultancy speak’ and instead try to make this descriptor simple and catchy. If in doubt, do the mum test. If your mum doesn’t understand what your company bio means, then you should probably rethink the content.
- Make media assets easy to find and simple to download. Include headshot photography of all key spokespeople, as well as product photography and most importantly ensure these assets can easily be downloaded and used by journalists. I would also suggest the same process for the brand’s logo just in case someone needs to use that. Ditto for screen shots if you are a tech platform for example.
- Include a simple visual or infographic of all your key company facts and historical information. This one from Etsy is a great example. Simple, but effective.
- Signpost to downloadable rich content such as how to documents, jargon busters, explainer videos and infographics. This will give the journalist as much information as possible on what you do and make their job easier. Ensure all written content can be copied and pasted. Because of this I tend personally to advise clients to avoid downloadable PDFs and instead stick to word documents. Saying that however, some very detailed press packs like this one from Pernod Ricard work best as a downloadable PDF document, so there may be a case for creating a more detailed pack on occasion.
- Allow media to view all your press releases and news in one place. Ensure simple signposting and try to make the layout easy for people to find what they are looking for quickly (either tagging releases by topic or date, or ideally doing both). Likewise make it easy for journalists to download the releases or copy and paste the content for their stories. Again, I can’t stress how time poor journalists can often be, so make their life easier.
Hope these tips are helpful. And if you do want to see what some great press pages look like then take a look at this list I collated below.