What’s the New Normal for PR Pros and Press Releases?

Cision’s 2021 State of the Press Release looks at the latest insights from around the industry

There’s been a lot of talk about the new normal in the last year – but what’s the new normal in public relations?Today, Cision released the 2021 State of the Press Release, an annual report industry best practices, trends and insights as they pertain to press releases, and gathered from an analysis of more than 100,000 press releases distributed over Cision PR Newswire. For this year’s report, Cision also surveyed PR pros across the U.S. to understand how press releases fit into their larger PR strategy.

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“There are a lot of ways to get your message out, but industry professionals agree press releases are still an incredibly powerful and valuable tool to connect to audiences,” says Nicole Guillot, Cision’s Chief Operating Officer. “Each year, the media landscape gets more competitive and the need to consider and implement insights like those in the State of the Press Release increases. This report arms PR pros with valuable insight into top industry trends and best practices, which they can apply as they refine their earned media strategies.”

This year’s report includes several key takeaways, including:

• The number of press releases focused on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) continued to trend upward this past year.
• 74% of surveyed PR pros say their press outreach was either on par or more frequent than before COVID.
• “Announce” was the most widely used action verb in press release headlines (but not necessarily the most viewed).

The analysis also looked at ideal send times, where people are reading press releases, the impact of multimedia, top challenges related to press releases and more.

This is Cision’s second State of the Press Release, and follows on the insights of Cision’s annual State of the Media Report, which was last published in April and revealed how PR professionals can better work with the media.

Cision’s State of the Press Release results were developed from data that was collected using multiple sources including Google Analytics, Visibility Reports, and Cision’s proprietary press release processing software.

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