Photo credit: tosaytheleast (Flickr)
When you’re talking about Optimized Press Releases (OPRs), you’re talking about news. Something, somewhere is happening. A new product is launching; your company’s just promoted a new CEO; analog TV is going bye-bye (that last one was good for what, like, 10 years?).
People crave information. Whether it’s good, bad or ugly, everyone wants to stay informed. In the world of OPRs, the information that’s perceived as most newsworthy gets seen by the most people (headline impressions), and the more pertinent the information is to them, theoretically the more it will be read (full page reads).
Last month, a client tasked us with gaining more exposure in a specific part of the country for an OPR they would be releasing. They even offered to pay our OPR service an extra $1,000 to ensure their message was reaching a larger audience in that area.
Upon first hearing their objective, we thought, “No problem. How hard can it be to geotarget an OPR?”
Apparently, it’s very hard.
Most of the services we looked into could extend the reach of the OPR into newspapers, trade journals and even radio or TV in a particular area, but none could actually help us with our need for an immediate online solution. (To be fair, some could, but would cost a considerable amount more than $1,000). So we began looking into other options for increasing headline impressions and full page reads.
After several brainstorming, “how do we make this happen” sessions, we made two decisions:
- The right kind of headline could increase our reach. A strong, newsworthy headline could increase our viewership overall and make up the difference of not being able to geotarget a region.
- Using a new kind of OPR service in addition to our regular service could also extend our reach. Our Social Content Manager, Katie, made us aware of a free social press release service called Pitchengine, which shares its OPRs via Google News and apps like Facebook, Twitter and the like.
With our strategy firmly in place, our Copy Editor, Dustin, set about crafting several potential headlines and a few days later, the client chose the one they wanted to go with. We uploaded the OPR to our usual PR service, as well as Pitchengine, and waited for the results to come in.
I don’t think any of us were expecting the response we saw.
When Katie handed me the report, I was shocked—am still shocked—at what a difference a headline can make. The OPR:
- Received over 30,000 more headline impressions than any of the client’s previous OPRs (111,394 impressions compared to the next highest at 79,000).
- Was read in full 1,707 times via our usual PR service and 192 times via PitchEngine for a total of 1,899 reads, making it one of the most widely read OPRs for the client in the last year.
- Ranked 24th out of 42.6 million competing sites for one of the main keyword phrases.
- Also hit the first page of Google search for one of the main keyword phrases thanks to Pitchengine.
In the end, we may not have been able to target a specific area with the OPR, but we were able to grow our audience enough to make up the difference. And using Pitchengine gave us free access to nearly 200 additional people that probably would’ve never seen the release.
Most importantly, the client was pleased with the result, and when all’s said and done, that’s our priority. Also, we were able to give them back their $1,000.
Whether it’s an OPR, the subject line in an email, or a tweet, have you considered the power of your headlines? Share your best with us!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Nice post! I wish more people would realize the importance of headlines, not only in OPRs, but, like you said, in e-mails, Twitter, even PPC campaigns. People are caring less and less about flowery language and typical “sale-sy” wordage…they want the info right up front. Or, surprise them! Catch them off guard, upend their expectations. Wish we had more opportunities to experiment with these sorts of tactics…I think there is a lot of un-mined potential!