News syndication is the process of distributing or sharing news across different media to an audience in one concise article. It's a powerful way to get news about your company, products, and services in front of more people.
And for entrepreneurs and business owners, a press release might be the best way to get your name out there at a minimal cost. In fact, according to Entrepreneur and Copyblogger Media founder Brian Clark, “A well-written press release is one of the most effective ways you can communicate with journalists.”
The idea behind a press release is simple: it's just an announcement about something new happening in your business (usually made on behalf of your company). You write something, and then you distribute the news to websites, blogs, magazines, and newspapers that are interested in covering your story.
Since the Internet is pretty much covered (and most other media these days), you'll be turning to the two forms of syndication that reign supreme in terms of online advertising: social media and newsfeeds.
Social media
Social media encompasses all platforms where users have the ability to share information with their friends or networks. The most popular social networks are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Your goal is to get into people's feeds where they read updates from friends and colleagues they want to keep up with.
Newsfeeds
Newsfeeds are basically the same thing as social media, except the “network” is a larger group of people you're not necessarily connected to with your personal social media accounts. Newsfeeds include news aggregators like Google News and Flipboard, which pull articles from a bunch of different websites and present them in a single place for you to read. Your goal is to get your press release onto these news aggregators so your announcement will come up if someone searches for an article on your company or product.
Getting your press release accepted by these platforms is certainly easier said than done. That's because they have tight restrictions on what they'll allow in their feeds and which material they'll cover at all. And it's not just about how your press release is written—there's a lot of other factors these platforms and publications consider before they decide if they want to cover your story.
However, the reason you care about any of this is that when you submit a press release to social media or newsfeeds, it gives you a much better chance that more people will read about what's going on with your business. And the more people that read what you have to say, the greater the opportunity for someone to visit your website and even purchase something from you.
News syndication and press release writing help companies get noticed in general, which generates more website traffic and potential business leads over time. You only have to look at the number of online press releases businesses post to see how much these platforms are used.
One of the main reasons companies submit press releases is because they want their name to be found by journalists in search results. The more press releases they publish, the higher their chances are that journalists will find them and write stories about them. If a journalist has a story idea, it's often because someone has submitted their work as a press release and then an interested party reached out to that journalist with questions about covering the story. A good web developer can make a website that captures leads from Press Releases, Contact Us forms etc.
