Every year, we look forward to PRNewswire’s State of the Press Release report. It’s chock full of essential insights from thousands of media relations professionals, and also a way to learn about the latest press release trends. We can then craft even better press releases for our clients.
The report reminds us that the press release, a tool introduced in 1906, remains relevant today. It just evolves with technology, like AI, which now contributes to ideation and press release trends. We appreciate the report because it shows who is using press releases and how. For our agency, these insights are gold. They reveal how the industry is shifting and gives us a chance to compare what’s happening nationally with what our own clients are doing.
This year I decided to see how closely our experience stacked up. Were we helping our clients follow press release trends and best practices compared to the other organizatIons around the country?
Our sample of press release distributions at Big Ideas Writing is exceedingly small compared to PRNewswire’s 300,000+ annual releases. However, we were still curious enough to compile comparative information and track how closely aligned we were with current press release trends. So, although we are comparing apples to oranges in terms of volume, we are comparing apples to apples in terms of how the press releases are written and distributed.
We decided to compare three easily tracked areas that speak to press release trends– who is creating press releases, headline length, and the use of multimedia.
#1 Who Is Crafting Press Releases These Days?
According to PRNewswire, the majority of press releases are still written by in-house communications teams. However, there is a press release trend to use PR agencies and marketing consultants like Big Ideas Writing, or specialized freelancers or fractional writers to handle releases for niche industries or complex product stories.
To compare apples to apples here, we tallied how many press releases Big Ideas Writing created for clients (tallied as an agency or freelance-written release), versus those given to us for distribution (created in-house by our clients). Our results were the opposite of PRNewswire’s, which is largely due to our business model.
Big Ideas Writing serves the small and medium-sized businesses with occasional news. Our clients come to us because they simply don’t have the bandwidth or subject-matter expertise to craft a high-impact release internally. Instead, they rely on an outsourced writing partner like Big Ideas Writing for (among other things) help in drafting a release, following the most common press release trends, and distributing it nationally.
As their partner, we give clients access to a national distribution service they might not already have. In our drafting of their press releases, we can also:
- Apply AP style consistently
- Understand what journalists actually look for
- Suggest the best news angle
- Optimize a release for distribution platforms like PR Newswire/WebMax
- Consult on best multimedia to include with the release
- Include best practices for AI optimization
In contrast, PRNewswire serves many large, national companies that have their own in-house media departments. They may send news on a regular basis with dedicated personnel drafting the releases. Therefore, it makes sense that the statistics between BIW and PRNewsire should vary so much.
#2 What is the Optimum Character Count for a Headline?
One of our favorite insights every year is headline length — because it always reveals a tension between corporate storytelling and what actually works in the wild.
PRNewswire reports that the most effective press release headlines fall between 76 and100 characters. This was followed by character counts of 51 and 75 and then 101 and 125. In general, there is a trend towards longer headlines, and can you guess why? AI best practices. Longer headlines provide more information for LLMs to find and process.
We were eager to see how our character counts stacked up. For press releases that we distributed for clients with in-house press release writers, we often don’t have any control over the headline length. We can only make suggestions. However, we did write 55% of our distributed press releases ourself, so we consider our research results significant.
We found that, on average, our headlines aligned with the press release trends, being longer than the average PRNewswire headline. We were also glad to find that we were giving the LLMs information to use in their answers.
Here’s how our headlines stacked up against PRNewswire’s sample.
It’s nice to know those long headlines we wrote follow press release trends.
#3 Do you include multimedia with your press releases?
Should you always include multimedia in your press release distributions? The answer to this question is an unequivocal YES. That’s because AI tools can process images, videos, or anything else you can attach to a press release. They also help with your SEO.
We were surprised to see that overall, PRNewsire’s customers do not always include multimedia with their press releases. I would suspect that this is a budgetary decision. PRNewswire charges more for images and even logos so foregoing them can be a necessary sacrifice to release the news. If that’s ever your situation, don’t despair. Even without multimedia, it’s still worth doing a news release. It just might not draw as many eyeballs as it would if you included an image.
As you can see, including multimedia is definitely a press release trend. I’m glad we can offer a multimedia option for press releases distributed through Big Ideas Writing. We always distribute with at least one image or logo. Other options include:
- Videos
- Downloadable PDFs or documents
- Multiple images
- Infographics
For Big Ideas Writing distributions, 100% of them were released with a logo and/or image compared to 44% of the PRNewswire sample that said they “always” release with multimedia.
We enjoyed seeing how our year of press release distributions stacked up against some of the metrics and press release trends measured in the PRNewswire report. Now is the time to plan your strategy for next year. If you’d like help refining your press release strategy, or want expert crafting of your next big announcement, Big Ideas Writing is here to partner with you. Contact karen@bigideaswriting.com.
