Study: Multimedia press releases garner 77 percent increase in views

Adding multimedia to your press releases, articles and blog posts will give you a remarkable bump in views.

It amazes me that only 55 percent of the PR folk recently polled by PRESSfeed about their online newsroom content say they use multimedia with news content. Seriously? Look at the graph again, please. A 77 percent increase in views.

A study of corporate websites and newsrooms shows that not many companies use multimedia with their press releases. The majority are text only.

Every media outlet has a website today. They all use images; 85 percent use video. And yet we still send text-only press releases and lament the fact that our earned media mentions are not what we’d like to see.

The top reasons given for not using multimedia are:

Perhaps you should look at it another way. Can you afford not to add multimedia to your news content?

It’s not enough to just have visual assets with your content. Yes, it will boost your views, but what you want is pickup, engagement and sharing. You need to make those images and videos tell a compelling story. Be creative. Make it so interesting, useful and entertaining that journalists and bloggers will want to use it. And their readers will want to share it.