Top 5 Tips for Using Images, Videos, Logos in Your Press Release

Imagine for a moment a world without images, photos, videos, without visual content. Ugh! Emptiness. How could a human live like that?

After all, graphic imagery surrounds us everywhere. Photos and drawings bring rational information to life. They can teach us much about the world and each other. Moreover, they are memorized much easier than words. In fact, according to the Social Science Research Network, 65 percent of human beings are visual learners.

The workhorse of visual PR is images. Including photographs in your press releases will improve outcomes all around because they are simple to utilize, inexpensive to get and have been shown to increase views.

When it comes to press releases, long gone are the days when a press release came to a journalist in the form of a piece of paper from fax. Nevertheless, for some reason, the inclusion of images in press releases has not been as widespread as it could be. But a bright image is a guarantee of capturing the reader’s attention, and you should capitalize on this by including images with your press release.

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It does not matter if you are introducing a new product, providing a description of a website or an application, opening a restaurant, or sharing some news, texts need an additional beacon that attracts attention. But be careful, faceless collage pictures from photo banks do not help your text stand out from other news. In fact, they likely will turn off journalists. So, what should you pay attention to when choosing images for your press release?

Photos and Images are Good at Grabbing the Attention

Photos and drawings bring rational information to life. Moreover, they are memorized much easier than words and are stored in memory.

In a press release, you should always use exclusive illustrations that no one has seen before or an original presentation of a familiar image. After all, people are by nature curious and strive to study everything unusual that falls into their field of vision. People are constantly looking for novelty, surprise and variety. And something well-known and predictable can easily be dismissed.

Images in your release also should be of high quality: sharp, with normal exposure and sharp edges, preferably without using filters and without, for example, fish-eye effects, unless this was due to artistic necessity. For a press release, a wide-angle panorama of a factory or port taken from a long distance is not suitable. Your image will land on a media page or an Internet resource about 450×600 pixels in size, and the reader is unlikely to peer into the horizon between the green field and the blue sky, trying to discern what  industry is being represented.

If the key objective of the release is a product, then a banner with its image and name will help to immediately display the product.

A word about photoshopped pictures: do not use them! A press release is not a post on a social network and requires the correctness of the data. The Internet is full of examples of the spread of fake images, all of which have damaged the reputation of companies, media or the agency that published them.

Copyright: Press Release with Images

Make sure you are not violating copyright laws with the images you are sharing for publication. Large print media and news agencies prefer to use images from their archives or purchase illustrations from databases of commercial photo stocks. In addition to the guaranteed quality and confirmed reality of the event and characters portrayed, such images are safe from the point of view of copyright law. If you specially organized a photo session to receive a photo for a press release, then securing permission with those people whose image will appear in the photographs must be settled in advance. Be especially careful when approaching this issue when using famous people and professional photo models.

A customer can buy full rights to photos from a shoot they paid for. They can use these photos for personal use, but the copyright to publish the images will remain with the photographer and he can use them at his discretion. You may need to get a signed waiver from the photographer giving you and media outlets rights to publish the images (both in print and online).

The issues of possibly altering the material must be settled with the photographer in advance. For example, what extent will the photographer allow the images to be retouched and edited?

It is necessary to monitor the observance of copyright not only between the customer and the photographer but also with the participation of a third party: the media. They get the right to use the photos under certain conditions. Usually, the photos are sent to the media with a note that they can publish them for free.

The copyright for the use of a photograph can be transferred for a certain period (several years) or indefinitely.

Avoid Attaching Files

Avoid sending images as attachments as much as possible. High-quality images or videos take up a lot of memory space and the large size of your email or its suspicious content will immediately bring your message into a recipient’s spam folder. But you can not sacrifice quality in this case. Find out how to compress a video quickly in this tutorial.

If you need to add high-resolution files, a series of pictures or videos to a press release, be sure to use links to where these can be downloaded. Materials can be uploaded to Google Drive or file-hosting services (such as Dropbox or WeTransfer). And then just share the link for your image content in your email!

Consider the Type of the Edition

In each edition, each editor has different requirements for illustrations and these requirements may change every day. Therefore, it is worth sending several variants of illustrations to the media at once. For example, some photographs may be traditional while others may be unusual. In one drawing your hero is in a work environment and in the other he is on vacation. One illustration is horizontal and the other is vertical, etc. Even the direction of gaze or facial expressions of the hero of the photo can influence the decision of the editor to print it or not.

Individual Approach: Press Release with Images

Or maybe you do not need a picture for your press release at all. You should not use any image in pursuit of trends if it does not fit the topic of your press release. In this situation, we propose to limit yourself by using a high-quality logo because:

• this will continue to grab the attention of a journalist.
• this will be what they can include when they publish your press release.
• this will draw people’s attention to the post.

Most importantly, think about how the image or video fits in with what you are writing about. Today, for a photograph to be interesting and fresh it is necessary to find original options. Journalists who have seen thousands of pictures will pay more attention to more unique options.

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Expert Сomments on Adding Images to Press Releases

Chip Carter, CEO, Producer & Host Where The Food Comes From

I spent 15 years as a syndicated columnist with The Chicago Tribune covering video games and entertainment, I was a columnist for The Washington Post for a couple of years, and I spent a few writing and producing video for AOL and Huffington Post (some of those overlapped, I’m not 107…)

Now I produce and host a primetime TV show called Where The Food Comes From and publish a website and other media of the same name, along with a few other things. We’re in Season 3 and we started the company 5 years ago, so I been doing all this awhile.

If you want a view from 30 years on the other side, receiving dozens to hundreds of releases everyday, I’m your guy.

Number One — and it’s such a HUGE Number One:

LET ME SEE A DANGED PHOTO IN THE BODY OF THE RELEASE!!!!!

Helps me instantly ascertain my level of interest. If you want to sprinkle two or three or four in there, please do — build me a story, give me ideas, I might just pick up your layout and drop it in intact if you’re convincing enough. And here’s a MAJOR tip — get it up high in the first part of the copy, preferably where it’s visible when I open but not the only thing I see. You’re getting right into my world then.

If you can’t do that, then…

FOR GOSH SAKE’S MAKE SURE YOU’VE CLEARLY LABELLED WHERE MY ART ASSETS ARE!!!

And if you don’t have any art assets, back up and wait until you have some before you send it. It’s 2022 y’all!

And above all:

Don’t even for a second make me think you don’t even give a crap about what you’re submitting by sending a press release with no images, or making it difficult to find the images, or making my life difficult in any other way… because you’re immediately going in the shitcan because I have 150 others from people not named you who just cared a little bit more. 

Dan Close, founder and CEO at We Buy Houses in Kentucky

Tips on adding Images in the press release:

Email attachments should be avoided at all costs. The size of the message or its questionable content will immediately send you to the spam bin by any email client because high-quality photographs or videos take up a lot of memory. But in this instance, you must not compromise on quality. In this article, you will learn how to quickly compress a movie.

Use links from file-sharing services if you need to include large files, a collection of images or a video in a press release. Materials can be uploaded to file-sharing sites like Dropbox, WeTransfer, and Google Drive, among others. Then you simply email your news release recipient the link!

Tyler Garns, founder and CEO at Box Out Marketing

Communication relies on visuals because images and videos catch more attention than text. If you want your message to get through, you should support it with pictures or videos. You should always use an illustration that no one has seen before because people constantly look for a surprise, and something well-known and predictable can be easily dismissed. However, let’s not forget that a press release must be newsworthy and should not read like an ad or marketing piece. Also, ensure that you are not violating copyright laws if you put images on your press release. The value of a press release depends on the information associated with it. It transmits information in a text, and images give it room for imagination.

Ronald Williams, a digital marketing consultant, and the founder of Best People Finder

Building content that can bring the expected return is not such a simple task. When organizing a press release, one must obey some fundamental factors to make the release relevant and attractive. For this, other than providing text and centering that text on content that is of interest to the public, you should consider including images.

Images, if relevant, add vitality to press releases and help attract the attention of journalists. We have experienced that the best place to insert an image in a press release is right after the first paragraph with proper sizing and the right attribution. In addition, it must show relevance to the content and must add value to the content that eventually will indulge the PR folks to pay attention to the press release.

Zachary Colman, CEO of Creatitive

By nature, a human’s attention span doesn’t last very long. It is why visual aids are a must in storytelling. A press release can be more effective if it includes photos or videos to capture your audience. But how should one do it?

Your images should reflect what you are writing about. The image should support the actual content, not overpower it. If a press release is about an innovative product, your image should present what you write about that product. Also, it’s best to check if you are not violating any copyright law when sharing images. Ensure that you are legally allowed to use the image to promote your product and event, to avoid legal problems in the future. Last, high-resolution images (300 DPI or higher) are necessary to make them pleasing and attractive to the viewers. Remember that using images can add value to your press release. However, use images only when necessary and relevant to your press release.

Chris Trembath, CMO at Dynamic Gift Australia.

Images are a great addition to a certain style of press release. If an image improves the quality of the press release and adds to it, then I recommend you add one or more to enhance the visual aspect of it. However, don’t just add images for fun. Only add images when they are needed.

I add images in two ways:

(1) Between the headline and opening of the press release. Keep it small and don’t have it push the text too far down the page.

(2) In an album and just share the link. You don’t have to include images in your press release itself, but you can upload them to a Google folder or Dropbox before sharing the link in the text of your press release. If you have multiple photos to share or want to share high-quality images with the media, this is a good option.

These are the best ways to share images with a press release and are the only two options I consider.

Conclusion: Press Release with Images

The value of a press release lies in the information and multimedia associated with it. We transmit information in the form of literate, “clean” text. And multimedia gives a little more room for imagination.

You have to admit that text without visual accompaniment will be attractive to very few people. After all, our brain works in such a way that it will immediately pay special attention to pictures. It is obvious: the original images and videos in the materials attract us much more than the text, no matter how brilliantly it was written. For example, look at the stats for the popularity of Pinterest, TikTok and Instagram. And what is their main feature?

Having considered everything mentioned in this article, you can use our tips for writing a competent press release or order it from PRNEWS.io.