Business News Tops June’s Most Popular Press Releases
Traditional business news – in a pivot from last month’s focus on consumer content – generated the most interest and activity on prnewswire.com in June. Here’s a deeper look at five stories that received the top clicks on our site last month.
1. Elliott Sends Letter and Presentation to the Board of Southwest Airlines
Airline news is always a hot topic, and the announcement that an activist investment firm had staked $1.9 billion in Southwest and had some distinct opinions on the airline’s future generated the most headline clicks in June and dominated news headlines on its distribution day.
What works: Elliott utilizes four concise subheadlines to instantly convey the most pertinent details, incorporating eye-catching numbers and a link for more information on the company’s position. This is a helpful strategy for all audiences – journalists on deadline, Southwest investors and other stakeholders.
Elliott also provides a synopsis of its formal letter, featuring key takeaways with numbers, lists and strategic bolding, before providing the full text. This is a best practice for content like this, to aid every reader by providing the key points in an easily digestible format rather than just dropping five pages of dense text and leaving audiences to do the heavy lifting.
2. Fortune Announces 2024 Fortune 500
Source: PRNewsfoto/FORTUNE Media
The 70th annual reveal of the largest corporations in the U.S. was another top attention-getter last month.
What works: Befitting the content, Fortune peppers important data throughout the first three paragraphs, providing information and context that financial journalists and analysts can easily spot while skimming and then use to lead their coverage.
Fortune also offers a textbook example of how to strategically place links to drive desired click behavior and reader engagement. By reserving general links for the boilerplate and placing calls to action directly after a graph full of numbers and a numbered list, Fortune greatly increases the chances of mindful reader clicks.
3. Oracle and Google Cloud Announce a Groundbreaking Multicloud Partnership
A partnership between two tech titans came in at No. 3 in June.
What works: While we advise companies to avoid marketing buzzwords like “groundbreaking” in headlines, based on feedback from journalists, it must be acknowledged that, well, this is Google Cloud and Oracle – the headline will get attention anyway. For the non-Googles out there, look to the subheadlines and first sentence in this joint release for what to incorporate into your headlines – the target audience and the “so what.” How specifically does the partnership, the product or the data you’re announcing make an impact and who does it impact? That’s your lede, every time.
Formatting for optimal readability is another textbook best practice demonstrated here. Your readers – all of them – are just as busy as you are, skimming and multitasking. Using multiple lists with strategic bolding and headers and simply diversifying the length of your paragraphs leads to a better reading experience and absorption of information.
4. TXSE Group Inc. Announces Plans to Create the Texas Stock Exchange
Source: PRNewsfoto/TXSE Group Inc.
After a brief tech interlude, more financial news continued the top stories for June.
What works: An announcement about a potential new Texas-based stock exchange, going up against the established New York exchanges, is going to naturally generate intense interest. Regardless, like the Oracle and Google Cloud release above, TXSE immediately addresses what makes its plans stand out from the subheadline through the first paragraph.
It then follows up with detailed information on its financial backers and capital position, addressing questions it knows audiences will have about its confidence in succeeding where previous smaller regional stock exchanges have not, as well as its specific goals. Including those newsworthy details is critical before launching into the standard executive quote and graphs of historical context to round out the rest of the release.
5. The Princeton Review Has Released its “Best Value Colleges” for 2024: Rankings Name Schools in Seven Categories
Rounding our Top 5 is a high-profile annual college ranking from The Princeton Review.
What works: The Princeton Review carefully crafts a headline within a headline for ideal online discoverability. There’s a full headline within the first 60 characters conveying the main message, ensuring that people searching for “Best Value Colleges” or similar terms will instantly be able to spot the content and know it’s relevant.
Additionally, The Princeton Review posts a clear call to action link just before the strategically bolded first list, and subsequent lists are concise and contain plenty of data, a perfect combo for maximum engagement.
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Sarah Roberts is Director of Customer Content Services. In a previous life, she was a newspaper reporter in the Midwest before permanently retiring her snow shovel and moving to the Land of Enchantment. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, exploring the craft beer scene and petting all the dogs.
