A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Multimedia – be it photographs, infographics or videos – is becoming more and more crucial to the impact of your press release. In 2015, 68 of the 100 most viewed press releases distributed by PR Newswire included multimedia. This is quickly becoming standard practice and is a trend you can’t afford to ignore – so don’t get left behind!
Hold the audience’s interest
Most people would agree that their eye is always drawn to a picture in favour of a block of text – so follow your instinct and send out a press release that you’d be inspired to read yourself if it landed in your inbox.
If you can, think about including a graphic that requires the reader’s engagement. An infographic or a series of images showing a process or telling a story will offer far more intrigue than a simple logo. The same theory applies to group photos of staff; rather than a formal line up, why not use a photo of the team looking at a piece of relevant technology? This will draw the reader’s attention to the image while they try to figure out what’s going on.
Get more views
It has been shown that the inclusion of multimedia in press releases increases the number of views substantially. Out of 35,000 press releases issued in 2015, PR Newswire found that those including images received on average 1.4x more views than text-only releases, while video releases doubled this performance to 2.8x more views.
Make a greater impact
As well as helping your audience connect with the message more quickly, visuals will enable more effective social media sharing of your story. Multimedia can be pulled straight from press releases onto Twitter and LinkedIn, etc. and are therefore more likely to be shared and re-shared. And don’t forget that you will also be providing visual appeal and raw material for influencers such as journalists and bloggers to work with, thereby extending your reach further.
So, learn the art of visual storytelling, and get creative with your multimedia – you won’t regret it!
A picture is worth a thousand words
By HikingArtist (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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