Ever wonder when the best time is to send a press release?
At a recent talk that Onclusive CEO Dan Beltramo and I gave at PRSA’s International Conference, we discussed the data surrounding news releases. Here are some useful tips to consider when sending your next news release based on the presentation.
Business Wire provided our data partner, Onclusive with 15,000 anonymized news releases, to try to uncover some facts about releases. Here are some things that we learned that might surprise you.
First, some definitions:
“Syndicate” A press release that is re-published by a third-party publication or website
“Social Media Engagement” Number of Twitter engagements (e.g., likes, comments, shares) with the news from the press release
“Follow-on Article” Editorial articles that are related to the original press release (earned media)
Now the data:
- The most frequent time that public relations news releases were sent was Tuesday, at 10 am ET, followed by Tuesday, at 9 am ET
- The most frequent times that syndicates were published was Sunday, 2 am ET and Sunday, 9 am ET
- The most frequent times for social media engagement (Twitter) were Sunday, 9 pm ET and Saturday, 5 pm ET
- The top times for follow-on articles was Saturday, 12 pm ET and Sunday 12 am ET
Did some of that information surprise you? It did us. While we could predict the most frequent times that releases were sent, we couldn’t necessarily predict when syndicates occurred, or social media engagement or even follow-on articles.
The role of Syndicates
Syndicates are created using BOTs and artificial intelligence. Syndicates are used by news aggregators such as Yahoo!, AP News and Apple News to spread news and information to their channels. These aggregators use BOTs to reduce friction in publication time. Just because your article is sent out on a syndicate does not mean it will not get picked up by an editor. However, syndicates are NOT earned media. The aggregators are sending syndicated articles out when there is less internet traffic. If you are looking for just broad distribution, you might consider timing your releases to when a syndicate is likely to trap and send your release.
The best time to send out a news release
At the conference, when we discussed why releases all went out at the same time, we concluded that we were all taught to not send a release out on Monday, only send a release out on Friday if you wanted it buried, so send it out mid-week. After considering the data, we changed our conclusions. Business Wire advises you to not be part of the herd. Send your release out when others are not, and it will be more likely to get attention from journalists and influencers. So maybe Monday isn’t as bad a day as we all have thought. And if you are in retail, maybe sending a release out on Friday isn’t that bad, because people are looking at Twitter on the weekend.
Tip: Once you have increased your reach, increase your engagement.
As a final piece of advice, use multimedia. Based on the data, a multimedia release can boost engagement by up to 12% and can increase follow-on articles up to 25%.
Need help with your next news release? Business Wire associates consult with you on best practices to optimize your next news release for increased engagement and to discuss multimedia options. Contact your account executive at info@businesswire.com or 888.381.9473.
