

Press Release at The Cornerstone of Being Online
Business environment under global pandemic is under distress. It affects international transactions that many are on the brink of the edge for survivability. Public have heard of the hard-hit sector such as offline retails under the categories of leisure and non-essential consumptions. Travel and being away from home as personal quests require extra precautions.
Some means of communication as the means for social interactions are viable and shifts of trends towards online platforms and it is online contents have been accessed in higher frequency as percentages than previous periods, as it is always insightful to look at the statistics from, We Are Social and Hootsuite.
Press release as one way of straight communication to the public needs to evolve around the digital data and in what format it is consumed. Most of the contents are still formulated within textual approaches coupled with one or more images, and the development of the content flow tend to follow the rigid rules of how the press release is supposed to be ever since PR is a profession and career.
Changing in Approaches to Press Release in Digital Millennium
Press release is facing challenges and competition from other type of contents. Often the formality of the content may not be a strict norm anymore. Public as the content consumers have the choices to see it where they can explore from search engines. Once upon before the digital era, press release is a piece of content you will expect to see from newspaper. It is a fixed and non-transferrable format.
Now, with the widespread use of digital media and platforms to disseminate content, the digital technology as the medium opens up the whole possibility on how the content can be distributed easily yet it involves many aspects and factors that also belong to other contents.
Because press release is not something that the general audience will consume on consistent basis like game and entertainment contents or certain of apps, it makes sense to focus on where it should be published and to be found. It comes to 2 platforms, i.e. online news portals and search engines. Online news portals are important qualifier for how the content is well regarded by audiences. Therefore, online news portals carry its own authority and credibility to cement upon the press release.
It stands apart from the source of the press release. News media is regarded as one of the pillars for democracy, voice of the public, check and balance in good governance. And there is possibly other strategic importance depending on the subjective perspective.
Conforming Press Release to Information Technology
One key aspect to understand here is the role of machine learning and other technology behind the search engines which takes into so many inputs and feedback it can collect and analyse as the factors to rank certain piece of content including press release.
It is still relevant to rank the press release on the search engine as of this is written. Take a look at Alexa.com for website ranking. Google.com is number #1 website to be visited with daily time on site is 15:42 minutes as per early January 2021. Globally and by country to country, it plays a role for publicly available piece of contents that may not be found anywhere else. This is where distribution factor finds its purpose at scale.
Landing on Google search results will also land the press release for getting instant attention with special feature of “Top Stories”. It can last from 24 hours to three days. It belongs to certain and credible media only. The press release will be available as link not only on All category results, but also on News results.


The goal of press release is distribution across a number of media. By doing so, there is high possibility the title and body of the content will bear the same hallmark which similarity. If it is too identical, there is issue of “duplication” for the search engine to rank the press release. It is solved by showing a few of the press release and it is suggested to click on deeper link to similar contents.
Creator of the press release, whomever is behind the creative process, needs to understand that it is about time to conform to how everything is arranged by search engines and many of these may fall under the expertise of search engine optimization. Humanistic approaches will take central role to make it unique and appealing to human readers and endeavour to make it adaptive to algorithmic factors as supporting elements.
The important decision here is the determination to create press release that is uniquely crafted for particular media. This will provide the basic uniqueness necessary for prominence on search results. Getting the prominence with press release is crucial as this piece of content often times does not get the brand or company back link to the official website. Nonetheless, it is a good spend as to value it has compared to posting on other types of websites.
It helps with dominance of the search results by own contents over contents by external parties when such search appears for brand or corporate name. The road to such achievement does not happen in overnight. Search engine is expected to highlight unique and diversified contents. Therefore, it is the best interest of the stake holder of the brand or corporate entity to produce unique content by press release.
In addition to determination, good quality press release comes from resourcefulness, creativity and deep dig into topic or matters that can serve the public. A digital press release has the potential to reap benefits for organisations global to small enterprises. It lies in the capability to lay out complex information into attractive and easily digestible descriptive format. This may involve more multimedia rich approach into the future.
The Makeup of Digital Press Releases
Press release is intended for republication as the initial purpose. However, it should be remembered that each media has their own policies on how the press release will be served to their readers as the loyal audience. Having that in mind, it is suggested to provide room for editorial review and make changes necessary that bring up the importance of attractiveness and digestibility of the content.
As the original piece of information, press release shall carry high quality in terms of not just the overall length, it provides easy options to reproduce engaging presentation through some levels such as photo of the event, officials, statistics or infographics, and even a video. This piece of content can also get the traction for search engine with SEO (Search engine optimization) expertise. Uniqueness falls under the category for sure. Adaptation of the SEO practices such as keyword targeting and placement and semantics will provide additional opportunity to rank for certain keyword relevant to the business.
To be able to provide all these elements in or with the press release, it can provide suitable mix for the journalist or media to get properly presented in their own right. They have to be able to see it as newsworthy and relevant to their audience.
Being newsworthy may also means that this content of the press release as it is published on big news media may also get the interest of certain news media to publish the same. However, this tends to be less SEO-friendly for the media itself when it just makes large portion of the republication. It brings up to the awareness and attention of the readers of the media at the very least.
Talking about the relevancy to the respective audience, big and small media will have more sections to place the press release under. It is mostly relevant to place in the business or economics section, technology, finance or investment ad lifestyle. But there are more specific ones such automotive, health, logistics, engineering, agriculture and property. At certain circumstance, the press release can not appear in certain media, it is due to the absence of the section where the press release shall be under. The alternative is to reach out other media which has such section.
To reach wide expanse of news media is another point to weigh in when it is about the press release distribution. Individual PR or digital marketing agency will be the factor on how well the contact with news media will bring in the coverage. This will make a different in the process as there are tens even thousands of media outlets not just in Indonesia but the same may also be the fact in other countries.
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