Do I Need a Press Release?

Most businesses that ask this question do not need a press release. A smaller number genuinely do, and for them it is the correct and cheapest tool available.

This page is about which group you are in. If what you actually want is the difference between the two formats, that is covered separately in press release vs feature article.

The short answer

You need a release when there is a specific, dated event that other people have a legitimate reason to know about, and you need a public record that it happened.

You do not need one when the goal is attention, credibility or coverage. Those are different products, and a release is a poor substitute for any of them.

The question to ask is not whether this would make good publicity. It is whether something needs to be officially on the record.

When a release is the right tool

• Funding, acquisition or a material corporate change. Investors, partners and staff need one authoritative version, and there are often obligations attached.
• A regulatory or compliance disclosure. Where a formal, dated, publicly retrievable statement is required of you.
• A senior appointment or departure. Particularly where silence invites speculation.
• A launch with a real date and real availability. Not a roadmap item.
• A crisis or a correction. When you need one accurate account that everyone can point to.
• An award, certification or result you can evidence. Where a journalist may need to check the claim later.

The common thread is that the record is the point. In each of these, a release does a job nothing else does as cleanly.

When you do not need one

Most of what gets released is not news to anyone outside the company.

• A website redesign, a rebrand or a new logo.
• A minor feature, an integration nobody asked about, or a roadmap announcement.
• A partnership with no stated commercial substance.
• A milestone that matters internally: an anniversary, a junior hire, a round-number user figure you would rather not evidence.
• An opinion. A release is not the format for a point of view.

Publishing releases about non-events has a real cost. It trains the people on your list to ignore you, so the one release that genuinely matters arrives in a folder they have learned to skip.

What a release cannot do

This is where most of the disappointment sits.

A release distributed over a wire appears across a network of sites, usually in a section labelled as press releases and attributed to your company. That is a factual, indexed, dated record. It is genuinely useful, and it is not the same thing as a publication deciding to write about you. Those pages are your own statement hosted elsewhere, not earned editorial.

A release will also not, by itself, produce journalist interest. Writers receive many and read few. It will not rank well for competitive search terms, because near-identical copies spread across many domains is the opposite of what search rewards. And it will not create demand, which is a broader point covered in when PR is the wrong spend.

What to do instead

If the honest answer is that you want coverage rather than a record, skip the release and do the other thing.

Write a short, specific pitch to named writers who cover your subject, offering a story rather than an announcement. The mechanics are in how to pitch a journalist by email.

Or publish the thinking yourself, on your own site, where you control it and nobody expects it to be independent. Or wait, and hold the release for a moment when there is something real to put in it.

Digital Networking Agency writes and distributes releases where a record is genuinely needed, and we will say when we think a release is the wrong purchase for what you are trying to achieve.

If you do send one

Keep it factual and short. A headline that states what happened, a first paragraph carrying the whole story, then detail in descending order of importance.

Include a date, a named contact who will answer the phone, and the specifics a journalist would need to verify the claim. Use one quote, from the person actually involved, saying something a human being might say.

Leave out adjectives, leave out anything you cannot evidence, and do not describe the company as leading, innovative or world-class. Each of those words makes the document less likely to be taken seriously by the people you sent it to.

Then send it to the people it is relevant to, rather than to everyone.

Frequently asked questions

Will a press release get me media coverage?

Occasionally, if the news is genuinely relevant to a writer's beat. Far more often it creates a public record and nothing else, which is fine as long as that is what you wanted.

Is paid wire distribution worth it?

For a formal announcement that needs to be findable and dated, often yes. If the goal is visibility or credibility, the same money usually goes further elsewhere.

How often should a company issue releases?

Only when something happens. There is no schedule worth keeping, and issuing them to a cadence is precisely how a distribution list learns to stop reading you.