How to share your press release via Twitter

You’ve just finished your PressDoc and now it is time to share it with the world. But how do you make your press release interesting for your Twitter followers? How can you make yourself noticeable? A lot of PressDoc users know that PressDoc automatically tweets your press release (at @PressDocfeed). But how can you do this effectively?

The POST model (Li and Bernoff, 2007) can be used to look at this. The POST model uses a four-step approach for social strategy.

• P stands for people. Before you send out a message you need to know who your target groups are, what their behavior is and what is relevant to them.
• O stands for Objective. You need to pick objectives that fit with the target groups.
• S stands for Strategy. Strategy here means figuring out the steps that you have to take to achieve the objectives.
• T stands for Technology. After deciding the right target groups, objectives and strategy you have to choose the right technology (for example social media).

For each public relations message a company has to decide for which target group it is relevant, what the objective is, how it will change the opinion of the target group and which technology has to be used to reach the target group.

The next part of this article describes how Twitter can be used effectively to send out press releases with PressDoc.

The following rules are important to consider:

How to leverage attention for your PressDoc

• Ofcourse you’ll need a Twitter account to share your PressDoc via Twitter. You can choose to tweet from your personal account and/or set up a Twitter account for your company. In both cases it is important that it is clear to your followers that it is your company’s account or your personal account. It’s important to know who’s sending out the press release.

• Make sure you have followers. What’s the use of sending out a press release if you don’t have any followers? Start following people and companies that are relevant. Start tweeting about interesting subjects and join discussions on Twitter. Warning! This may cause people from your target group to follow you.

• Expand your network. Nowadays it’s easy to link Twitter to other social media. Link your Twitter account to LinkedIn for example (if your target group is active here). This will get you a relevant audience for your PR.

The headline says it all

• You’re headline has to be accurate. Don’t write misleading headlines and take the risk to lose your credibility.
• Try answering as many of the who, what, when, why and how questions in your headline, this way people will know what your press release is about.
• A creative example: #Hub140 – @HubSpot Acquires Social Media Marketing Company @oneforty. They tweeted their press release in series of tweets with their Twitter account names, “tweet this” links and hashtags. It’s a whole different but very creative way of a press release via Twitter. But it worked, in less than 24 hours the release generated more than 800 tweets and 20 news stories.
• Keep your headline limited to 100 characters, this way you leave space for the URL to your Pressdoc and you give followers the chance to retweet you.
• Oh, and speak the language of your followers, no one wants to retweet complicated jargon.

Dos

• Limit your headline to 100 characters, this gives your followers space to retweet you. They’ll share it with their network, which might include your target group as well.
• Be creative, original and brief.
• Put yourself in your followers’ place and think about what you find interesting in a headline.
• If you’re not sure whether your headline is good enough, send them to your friend or coworker and ask them what they think the press release is about.

Don’ts

• It is okay to use appropriate hashtags, but don’t hashtag your whole headline. Your followers may not understand that this is a press release.
• Don’t use jargon, you want your followers to understand you, so speak their language.
• Don’t start your headline with a Twitter accountname (for example “@PressDoc is now releasing…”). Twitter will see this as a mention and only people who follow you can see this.
• Don’t start your headline with a D only, this will send a direct message and only the receiver will get this. (And yes, this has happened!)
• Don’t trick people by misleading them in your headline. You will risk losing your credibility.
• Prevent overkill. Once you’ve started sharing your press release on Twitter you don’t need to spam your followers. If you want to remind your followers about your earlier press release, remind them irregularly with different messages so they don’t see it as spam. Your followers may find a daily or hourly reminder annoying and this can cause them to unfollow you. If you choose to send out personal tweets to your followers, make sure it is interesting for them. Every tweet you send has to be relevant for your target audience and has to fit with your objectives.

Now you know how you can leverage attention for your press release, how to set up a headline which reaches your target group and how to build a network of your target group. With an interesting press release, a killer headline and the right network you’re halfway there.

Feel free to share your experience with sharing your PressDoc via Twitter with us in the comments below!