At duomedia, we’ve always strongly believed that visuals add significant value to press releases. To validate our beliefs, we conducted a PR survey, and we had responses of over 125 journalists. In part 3 of our PR blog series, we take a look at the journalists’ opinions on press releases with visuals, the importance of advertising in a publication to get editorial coverage, and the future of press releases.
Attractive Images Do Make a Difference!
Images are extremely important in the world of press releases. According to the results of our survey, journalists are more likely to read the press release if there is an attractive image available. It’s easier for them to better visualize how it will appear in their publication. More than 90% of our respondents confirmed that press releases have more value to them if an image is available. 50% of the journalists insisted that they tend to pay more attention to press releases with images. In separate comments, several of them also indicate that providing video content to go with the press release is also a big benefit.
The quality of images is also important. 30% of the respondents stated they never discard a press release based on the quality of images. This leads us to believe that 70% might decide not to publish a press release based on poor image quality! Additionally, many of the journalists pointed out they didn’t like to have to access content via links. Of course, many high quality images are too large to send via email. That’s why we suggest downsizing pictures for purposes of the email, but providing a link to an image library so journalists can access higher resolution images, if needed.
As we mentioned in part 2 of this series, product launches are the favored content topic for press releases. Likewise, product images are popular, with almost 80% ranking those type of images the highest, followed by application images (72.8%) and technical images (49.6%). On the other hand, infographics, profile pictures, illustrations and animations are less popular.
Stay put for part 4 of our PR blog series, where we will discuss whether or not you should consider advertising, as well as the benefits advertising might generate for your company.