Our 2020 State of the Media Report was our biggest ever (not to mention that it launched during the most unique circumstances we've dealt with to date) and it got us thinking: What is the State of the Press Release in 2020?
We decided to dive into the data to find out both how the global pandemic changed things as well as to put together some general press release best practices (and compare things to our 2020 State of the Media results were it could give us more insights).
How COVID-19 changed the press release:
- We saw a huge increase in COVID-19 related press releases, with the largest spike in COVID-copy in April 2020 with 47% of releases mentioning COVID
- 40% of total press releases put out by Cision PR Newswire March-May mentioned COVID-19
- Large jumps in some subjects vs. huge declines in others compared to the same categories in 2019; travel press releases were down 36% while infectious disease control saw a massive jump, up 3,140%
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) releases up 54%
Press release best practices:
- To maximize press release visibility, it’s recommended to distribute during the middle of the week
- To avoid high volume times- and therefore getting lost in the mix- send at an off-time like 10:13 or 10:47
- If you’re not a public company disseminating material news, avoid market-open and market-close
- The average length of a press release is 686 words
There are other insights, such as where (on what devices) people read press releases which can help inform length of a release, what kind of multimedia you might want to include, and more:
