How Often Should You Publish Press Releases?

You may have one or several goals for your Press Release campaigns – and the clearer your goals, the easier it’ll be for you to plan and schedule the publishing of your Press Releases. In our experience, while not incredibly important, the frequency and timing of publishing your PRs does affect the how easily they will be found. It's not something to obsess over, and there’s no rule set in stone you must follow. However, the frequency of publishing PRs is something you can fairly easily take into account when planning your overall campaign. With a little thought and effort, a consistent approach may improve your results. The main thing is to choose your keywords wisely and get your Press Release campaigns published consistently. Provide valuable content that will be of interest to your audience. Do this and it's difficult to go wrong.

Goal #1: Improve SEO

Improved SEO performance is a primary goal for many using Press Releases. For those who don't make it a primary goal, it's a desirable side benefit. Press Releases attract multiple backlinks from household brand name news sites with strong domain authority and trust. Search engines like Google and Bing expect to see a good backlink profile that they can use for ranking the site authority in response to search queries. If the Contact Details are assigned correctly, it generates hundreds of unique authority citations for a local business as well, which is incredibly powerful.

For local businesses to build domain authority in their service area with Press Releases and SEO, they should be as consistent as possible and plan a 'once a month' publishing schedule. By publishing a single Press Release per month, you can build upon past successful campaigns and releases, while providing valuable new information to the audience. For most local businesses, a monthly schedule allows them to draw attention to seasonal sales events, important staff changes, etc while avoiding the risk of 'over-publishing' with weak and empty content. Consistently publishing even just once per month, you will get more notice, enjoy greater readership and an increase in brand awareness. Cumulatively this has positive effects on your overall standing and visibility in search engines like Google and Bing.

HOW OFTEN: Once Per Month, Per Location or Product

Goal #2: Increase Traffic and Sales

Your Press Releases themselves will be very visible in search engines like Google and Bing for carefully selected low-to-mid competition search terms. You can use it to even greater advantage by riding Trending Topics or catching Viral Traffic waves too. So you can run a more intensive PR campaign and publish several releases over the course of a few days. One example of this is for launches of new products or services (think of a new iPhone model). You will see new articles and news coming out just about every day leading through pre-launch, during the launch itself, then afterwards during post-launch. Another example would be a trending topic like the Olympics or a US Presidential Election. They are very popular in the moment, until time passes and something else becomes the hot topic. News surrounding Trending Topics usually gets shared at a much greater rate, so if you want your Press Release campaign to catch this viral effect, identify great keywords around significant events in your industry or the world at large. If your goal is to increase your traffic and sales significantly within a short period of time, link your Press Release and product, service or offer to the same trending topic somehow.

HOW OFTEN: Daily Is Possible If New Newsworthy Content Is Available

Goal #3: Announce Something Worth Announcing

Go with the flow as your business or online venture grows. Stories around new product developments, recent changes, new personnel, new missions, new projects, the completion of previous ones, new awards, new marketing efforts, promotions. There are many opportunities for topics to celebrate with your customers. You can publish the findings of case studies, surveys, and polls or share plans to relocate or expand to new areas. Celebrate the investment in innovative new services, technologies, and capabilities. For a local business, publishing newsworthy information once per month, per location, can be as important to the local community as it the business itself. Local communities are proud when local businesses are active and thriving – they want to know! For an eCommerce Business, you can dedicate a single PR each month to each of your best sellers – including news on features, milestones reached, product expansion plans, new uses for the product, great customer feedback, new variations.

Monthly is a good rule of thumb, to maintain a baseline level of activity. If you have two or three significant newsworthy events within a month, don't feel you have to wait. In either case, each newsworthy event should have its own press release to gain the best effect.

HOW OFTEN: Once Per Month, Per Location or Product (or whenever relevant!)

Goal #4: Stand Out Among The Rest

You might be wondering what the best time of day and week is, to publish your press release for maximum exposure, visibility and traffic. You’ve probably noticed Monday is usually flooded with news and perhaps the same goes for your inbox! Your Press Release may go more unnoticed as it battles for attention against a blast of new articles and announcements. Fridays are also not usually the best days for publishing. They tend to be slower due to the fact that people are busy planning preparing to enjoy the approaching weekend. The best days to get your Press Release out are generally between Tuesday and Thursday. What about best time of day? Ideally, try to have it published early enough in the morning when the news is more actively announced and people are browsing, and not so late in the evening everyone is about to go home to enjoy their free time and have dinner. As another good rule of thumb, 10-11 AM is about optimal (of course this will depend on your target audience).

WHEN TO PUBLISH: Generally 10-11 AM on Tuesday-Wednesday (depending on target audience)