Should You Tweet Your Press Release?

How to write a proper press release tweet

When a company is asking whether or not they should tweet their press releases, you might think, “well duh”. Or to put it more professionally, “most certainly!”

I’m sure there are reasons not to tweet a press release and it surely has something to do with “netiquette”, but the reality is that you’re on Twitter to market your company. Yes, most importantly you’re there to help customers and be a part of the Twitter community, but at the end of the day, it’s a long tail approach to your online marketing strategy.

So yes, tweet those darn press releases.

There are however, some guidelines to follow. For example, you can either be upfront about the press release, or you can try to mask the press release.

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Being upfront about your press release

With this method, you’re making sure that the reader knows that the link they’re about to click is going to a press release. This can be off-putting and have lower click-through rates, but at least you’re not tricking the reader. A tweet like this would say:

Company X releases great new eBook about panda bears and elephants (press release) http://www.bit.ly/shortlink

Ok, so you’re probably not releasing an eBook about panda bears, but maybe someone is, and this example is going to be super helpful to them.

In any case, this method offers transparency, but also tends to have a lower follow-through. This should be expected.

The truth: Your real main reason for tweeting a press release is to get it indexed in Google and for it to drive inbound links back to your site.

Otherwise, you might as well publish the press release on your own site and point traffic there. Which, by the way, is the only acceptable way to mask a press release, which I’ll talk about now.

Don’t mask your press release

This method sounds sly, and it can be. This is the same idea as creating an editorial post solely for the purpose of giving away a free report, except that makes sense, because you’re driving traffic to the right place.

This on the other hand, is a press release. Even if it links to a free report, you’re still dishing up a press release. What you don’t want to do is hype anything up, or do too much just in an effort to get someone to a press release. Let’s be real, that’s like creating an elaborate invitation to a two-dollar wedding.

1. To mask a press release, and I don’t recommend this method is to rewrite the headline and remove the indication that you’re leading to a press release.

We’ve released great new eBook about panda bears and elephants! http://www.bit.ly/shortlink

Why wouldn’t you use this? Because there is NO reason for you to link to your press release. You could just as easily link to the page with the information, instead of offering a barrier between the reader and the end goal. Remember, the press release’s goal is to get them to the landing page. In this case, you’d just point them to the landing page.