Did you know that

multimedia press releases

get up to

9.7x as many views

as those using text alone? Ragan knew it in 2011, when including images within your press release doubled the chance of it getting noticed; video quadrupled it. There’s little comparable data published more recently because including media in your press release in the year 2021 shouldn’t even be a question.

And yet, the majority of press releases go out as barebones text. Why?

With cameraphones and stock imagery abound, there’s no logical reason to exclude images, videos or other multimedia from your press releases, when including them will set you apart from all the other stories flooding journos’ inboxes.

If possible, embed a gallery within your press release, particularly if you’re launching a new product or presenting a story that looks great visually. This will give the reader an immediate idea of the story you’re telling without them having to read through reams of text, and arms them with a good selection of imagery to use in their coverage.

Embed quotes and tweets

Got a relevant tweet? Great – embed it. Someone raved about your business on YouTube? Stick it in. Got your latest product shot raking in likes on Instagram? In it goes.

Remember, your job is to make it as simple as possible for other people to tell your story.

By embedding evidence journalists can use you are saving them time while adding context and colour to your narrative.

If you use a specialized campaign client, the interface will often have an option to introduce html into the body of your story, making it possible to embed supported content, which varies from provider to provider but should include support for things like tweets and YouTube videos. (We simplified it a bit in Prezly so you can just copy-paste the URL of whatever you want to embed and the system does it automatically for you.) Worst case scenario, even with plain text you will be able to copy in a link.

Make your news social media friendly

Images and videos become extra powerful when it comes to sharing your press release on social media, since social networks will automatically generate a preview based on the content embedded within your press release. Having an attention-grabbing, vibrant image front and centre in your story is an easy way to increase your chances of engagement.

If you want to go a step further and optimize your images for use on social media platforms, there are a few more things you can do.

Include images in different resolutions and sizes

While these differ across platforms and you could spend several days cropping images to all the suggested sizes (overeager sharers might find this

social media cheatsheet

useful), it’s generally a good idea to include:

A landscape image (around 1200 x 628 pixels)

A square image (1080 x 1080 pixels; think Instagram)

If you’re operating in food or creative industries – interior design, cosmetics, fashion, DIY, kid-friendly projects, crafts and hobbies – it’s a good idea to include a long portrait image for easy sharing on Pinterest (236 pixels wide)

Prezly gives you total control on how you use images and other media to tell your story, giving you the tools to easily move, crop and resize your content right in the story editor.

A word of warning

Be very careful when including images, videos and really any attachments in your campaigns. Email clients can interpret bulky email attachments as spam and filter them out of the recipient inbox, rendering your carefully executed press release all but invisible.

Better practice is to host your media somewhere reliable and embed it in your email so that it takes up very little space. (Psst… If you’re using Prezly, we take care of all that for you, so all you have to do is insert the image/video/audio file/tweet – or whatever you like – hit send and we do the rest)

The press release examples below are a masterclass in how different industries can

use multimedia

to wow the beholder. Notice that each one uses a bold, vibrant hero image at the very top of the story, follows with less than 100 words of flavour text and then immediately rewards the reader with more visual stimuli. Each of these releases was created in Prezly, which makes it possible to embed galleries, videos and more in your campaigns without making emails too heavy for your contact’s inbox.