What makes someone click on a headline and continue reading the story behind it?
Whether it’s a journalist reporting on a story or a consumer researching a product, your audience isn’t going to look beyond your headline unless it engages their imagination and offers something of value.
However, what happens when the story they start reading doesn’t match up with its headline?
The goal of every piece of marketing content, including press releases, is to engage audiences, wow them, get them to embrace your call-to-action and stay connected.
If you mislead or confuse someone with an unclear headline, you’ll lose that reader now and in the future.
Audiences will move on to one of the hundreds of other headlines passing their eyes that day. Even worse, they may remember being misled the next time you attempt to engage with them.
Your brand will lose your audience’s trust, and trust in your brand is everything.
This is especially true when distributing breaking company news to business editors, spot news desks, and the like. The news industry is incredibly competitive, and media outlets are rushing to publish market-moving news before anyone else. They need to know where a story originated. They need to know its source.
The source is the party making the announcement or issuing content. In the case of a press release handled by a public relations, marketing or investor relations agency on a company’s behalf, the source will be the firm’s client.
Having clear content source attribution is vital – your audience needs to quickly identify and trust the source of your press release.
Does every headline need source attribution?
Not necessarily. Your headline should be concise, and a headline promoting a blog post, white paper or other marketing content may benefit from including descriptive keywords in lieu of the source company’s name. The source could be mentioned in the subheadline or first paragraph.
Of course, if the source name is a keyword that a customer or news editor will search for, then it might make sense to include it in the headline.
Content that generally necessitates headline attribution includes market-moving news (like an earnings or dividend announcement) or commentary about another organization, legal issue or current event.
In these situations, it must be immediately clear that the news is coming from you and not someone else.
You can build on your headline’s credibility by considering these other attribution best practices:
- If the headline didn’t demand clear source attribution, be upfront about it “above the fold” – so within the first two paragraphs.
- Make sure all quotes are clearly attributed – first/last name, title, organization.
- A traditional boilerplate paragraph may not be necessary in a content marketing press release, but make sure you’re providing a link back to the content you’re promoting so that readers can verify and learn more about your message.
- Give the media options on how to follow up. Provide both a phone number and email address in your media contact since each member of the media has their own preference on how to reach out for more information.
PR Newswire is a strong advocate of delivering your message to the media, investors and public in the most trustworthy fashion possible. Every press release that comes through our editorial department is reviewed using a wide range of content quality guidelines, with source attribution among the most important.
Be engaging, be clever, and really take the time to craft content that will motivate your reader. But always be upfront about who is delivering that content to the news and website queues you’re striving to stand out in.
Discover how editorial expertise, a strong distribution network, and accurate press release measurement will help your brand reach your target audiences. Download Ten Questions to Ask Your Press Release Service before Sending Your Release for tips on finding your perfect press release partner.
Author Glenn Frates is Regional Vice President, Customer Content Services at PR Newswire. You can follow him on Twitter @glennfrates.
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