How to Transform Your Promotional Press Release into a Highly Informative Blog Post
If you think about it, the traditional press release has all the raw materials to become a great blog article – it has plenty of details about your company, a list of achievements or accomplishments, and a basic storyline. But most press releases tend to be too promotional and too full of hype – and most blog readers probably don’t want to read just a corporate puff piece. So here are five steps too turn your press release into a blog article.
STEP 1: Make sure you’re using a press release that’s relevant to others
Many press releases – such as the announcement of a new hire or a new corporate partnership – really only matter to the company making the announcement. Even a new product announcement – no matter how exciting it might be to your team – is also not that relevant to most people.
As a result, you need to find the right press release that will be relevant to others. Customer case studies, surveys and trend reports are all great topics for blog posts because they appeal to a much larger audience.
STEP 2: Remove all the promotional hype
Unfortunately, most press releases are packed full of promotional hype. They claim that a product is “the first of its kind ever made.” Or that a new corporate partnership will be “a game-changer.” Your goal should be to remove all that promotional hype and replace it with information that’s actually useful to a reader.
For example, one type of popular blog post offers head-to-head comparisons of products, leaving it up to the reader to decide how great a product might be. Instead of making outrageous claims about how great your product is, you can show it using facts and details.
STEP 3: Use an attention-getting headline
Press releases usually come with very bland headlines that are meant to be highly descriptive. But on today’s Internet, that’s not what will get people to click on your article. You need to come up with an attention-getting headline.
That doesn’t mean you should be creating a pure “clickbait” headline, but you should take steps to whet the appetite of the blog reader. That’s why “listicles” (articles based around lists) are so popular. If you visit the most popular blogs in your industry, you’ll get a sense of what works, and what doesn’t.
STEP 4: Make the content actionable for the user
Chances are, people are reading your blog post because they want an answer to a question or a solution to a problem. So you need to re-frame your press release in terms of answering a question or delivering a solution.
STEP 5: Add photos, images and videos
You will need to add multimedia content to your press release in order to transform it into a relevant blog post. This multimedia content could be photos, stock images, or video clips. It could also be a data chart or some other visual element, such as an infographic. As a rule of thumb, every blog post today needs at least one accompanying visual image to make it stand out on the page.
The Conclusion
Turning a press release into a blog post is easier than it sounds. As long as you always keep in mind your potential blog audience, you’ll have a good idea of what to include and what to exclude. You need to focus less on the promotional and hype aspects, and more on the informational content that is actionable for the reader. That’s the best way to create the type of blog content that people will want to read.
In our next post, we will share with you a new comprehensive list of high authority guest blogging sites, where you can submit, or even instantly publish your guest posts for free.