Presspage Blog

PR plan template: 3 frameworks | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 07:23:01 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Different PR moments need different plans. Annual strategy, campaign PR planning, and crisis response each require their own framework.
Annual PR plans turn business priorities into clear objectives, audiences, messaging, activity, and measurement.
Campaign briefs keep short-term work focused, with one objective, defined audiences, clear owners, deadlines, and success metrics.
Crisis plans should remove decisions from the crisis itself, with approval chains, holding statements, stakeholder priorities, and first-hour actions prepared in advance.
Execution should be built into the plan. Your newsroom gives approved messaging, campaign content, and crisis updates a clear place to go when it’s time to publish.

How to create a press kit in 2026 | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:12:49 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

A PDF is a snapshot, not a source. The moment your leadership, stats, or logo change, every copy already sent out becomes wrong and unrecoverable.
One URL beats a thousand attachments. Journalists and AI systems both need a single, current place to check facts, not a version buried in someone's downloads folder.
Structure serves people first, machines second. Clear categories and plain HTML text make a press kit usable for reporters and incidentally make it legible to AI too.

Static press kits are never going to age well.

The PDF you created three campaigns ago is probably still sitting in somebody’s downloads folder, complete with an old executive bio, an outdated product statistic and a logo from before the rebrand.

You don’t remember sending it, and they don’t remember saving it, but that won’t stop it from resurfacing when a journalist is on deadline and looking for quick answers.

Before you know it, your story is out there based on facts that belong in the archive. Hardly the polished first impression you were going for.

Learning how to create a press kit in 2026 means building something that can keep up with your organization. It should be easy to update, simple to share, and ready whenever a journalist or AI-powered search tool needs reliable information about your brand. In other words, it belongs in your online newsroom, not trapped in a static document.

This guide walks you through the practical side of the process: Where your digital press kit should live, how to organize the assets you already have, and how to turn them into a resource your stakeholders can find, trust, and use without chasing your team for help.

NEW TO PRESS KITS?

Start with our guide on what a press kit is and what yours should include, then come back here for the step-by-step build process.

Read the blog >>>

What is a press kit in 2026?

A press kit, also known as a media kit, is a central resource of approved company information and downloadable media assets.

In 2026, it should exist digitally as part of your newsroom. Instead of emailing attachments or rebuilding a PDF for every campaign, you give journalists one URL where they can always find the most current information about your organization.

Making your press kit available digitally becomes especially important when you consider that today’s journalists are working under serious time pressure. Cision’s 2026 State of the Media Report found that 66% of journalists use PR-provided content, including pitches, press releases, and media kits, as a source of story ideas. At the same time, 72% said fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are relevant.

While your press kit can’t fix an irrelevant pitch, it can make it much easier for journalists to act on a relevant one.

What should a press kit include?

The exact contents will depend on your company, industry, and reason for contacting the media.

An airline may need route information, fleet imagery, and destination assets, while a healthcare organization may choose to include expert bios, research credentials, and clear background on specialist topics.

In any case, most press kits should feature:

A short company overview: A clear explanation of who you are, what you do, and where you operate.
An approved boilerplate: The standard company description used at the end of press releases.
A fact sheet: Key dates, figures, locations, products, and other useful facts.
Brand assets: Logos in several formats, with clear usage guidance.
Spokesperson information: Short biographies, job titles, areas of expertise, and downloadable headshots.
Images and video: Relevant, high-quality assets with useful filenames, captions, and credits.
Recent company news: Current press releases or links to the most important announcements.
Media contact details: A named contact, email address, telephone number, and relevant working hours.
Usage information: Any copyright, attribution, or licensing requirements journalists need to know.

Remember to keep it focused. Only include information that helps somebody understand your organization, verify a fact, or produce a story.

How to create a press kit step by step

Now that you know what belongs in your press kit, the next step is bringing it all together in one place journalists - and AI systems - can find quickly and easily return to.

The following steps cover the full process, from choosing where your press kit lives and auditing your existing assets to structuring, testing, and sharing the finished resource.

1. Decide where it lives

You can’t build a press kit if you don’t have somewhere to put it.

You could consider creating a PDF, storing everything in a shared drive, or building a standalone page on your corporate website. Each option technically works, but all three will create extra work in the long run.

PDFs become outdated quickly, shared folders often have confusing permissions, and corporate website pages can leave PR teams dependent on IT whenever something changes.

An online newsroom is a more practical home for a digital press kit because your press releases, company information, media assets, and press contacts can all live in the same environment.

Look for a newsroom software that gives your team:

Direct control over publishing and updates
Support for images, video, and downloadable files
Clear categories, tags, and search functions
Mobile-friendly pages
Stable URLs that will not change every campaign
Multilingual publishing, where relevant

The goal is to create one reliable source of approved information. Presspage’s digital newsroom software, for example, brings press releases, press kits, and brand assets together in one central location, while GEO-friendly features help make that content easier for search engines and AI systems to find. PR teams can also manage routine publishing themselves, without relying on marketing or IT.

NEED MORE INFO ON GEO NEWSROOMS?

Read our in-depth guide and learn how to optimize yours for SEO, GEO, and AI discovery in 2026.

Read the blog >>>

2. Audit what you already have

Chances are, you already have more press kit material to work with than you think. The only problem is that it might be scattered across email threads, old decks, website pages, and somebody’s desktop.

Before creating anything new, take inventory of everything.

For each item, record who owns it, when it was last updated, and whether it has been approved for external use.

Remember to be strict. If a headshot is seven years old, it might be time to take a new one. And a logo pulled from a PowerPoint can never be a production-ready brand asset.

This process will show you what can be reused, what needs to be updated, and where the genuine gaps are.

3. Structure it for journalists first, AI second

Before you start uploading files, decide how the digital press kit should be organized.

Journalists are still the primary audience for your press kit. What they need should determine the navigation, labels, and hierarchy. An easy trick is to think about the questions they are most likely to arrive with, then make the answers easy to reach.

Say an automotive brand is launching a new model. A journalist should be able to find the technical specifications, approved vehicle imagery, and the right spokesperson bio with ease. Those elements should sit in clearly labelled sections and link naturally to one another, rather than being scattered across unrelated pages.

That same structure also helps AI systems understand your company. When names, facts, and assets sit on clearly labelled pages and tell a consistent story, there is far less chance of your brand becoming collateral damage when a model confidently serves up the wrong information.

Start by mapping out the main categories your digital press kit needs. Depending on your organization, these might include:

Company information
Leadership and spokespeople
Products or services
Locations and markets
Research and reports
Brand assets
Images and video
Media contacts

As you plan the structure:

Give important topics their own clean URLs
Use descriptive page titles and headings
Keep names, dates, and job titles consistent
Link related company information, press releases, and assets
Make key facts available as HTML text, as this is more easily perusable by search engines and AI systems
Avoid hiding important information inside images or downloads

This is the practical core of GEO. You are making information easy to find, extract, understand, and attribute for journalists and AI systems alike.

4. Write a boilerplate and company background once

This is where perfectly normal companies start describing themselves like they have just invented electricity.

All your company background needs to do is give journalists a clear, factual explanation of who you are and what you do. Skip the sensationalism.

Create two versions:

A short boilerplate: Around 75 to 120 words for press releases and quick reference.
A longer company background: Around 250 to 400 words covering your history, operations, markets, and relevant context.

Your boilerplate should answer four basic questions:

What does the organization do?
Who does it serve?
Where does it operate?
What important scale, history, or ownership information should a journalist know?

Make every claim specific enough to verify. And once approved, don’t just call it done and dusted. Set a recurring review date and update it when the company changes.

AN EXAMPLE FROM ENERGY PR

Northline Energy develops and operates renewable energy systems for commercial and industrial sites across the UK and Ireland. Founded in 2018, the company helps manufacturers, logistics businesses and large property owners reduce energy costs through on-site solar, battery storage, and energy management technology. Northline manages projects from initial feasibility and financing through to installation, monitoring, and long-term maintenance. The privately owned company has delivered more than 120 projects with a combined installed capacity of 85 MW. Its headquarters are in Manchester, with regional teams in Birmingham, Dublin and Glasgow.

5. Get spokesperson bios and headshots production-ready

If you want to do journalists a solid, make sure they don’t have to play corporate Guess Who before they can line up an interview.

A strong spokesperson page tells them who knows what, why that person is worth speaking to, and how to get the conversation booked.

For each person, include:

Full name and current job title
A short professional biography
Their main areas of expertise
Relevant languages
High-resolution and web-resolution headshots
Photographer credits or usage restrictions
A way to arrange interviews

Keep biographies concise and relevant to the person’s current role. A journalist researching cybersecurity policy does not need a complete account of your CTO’s first graduate job.

Headshots should be recent, professionally produced, and available in useful formats. Include both portrait and landscape options where possible, especially for senior spokespeople.

6. Populate and organize your digital press kit

You have the structure and assets in place. Now comes the satisfying part: putting everything where it belongs.

Upload each piece of content to the right section of your newsroom and make sure journalists can understand what they are looking at before they click or download anything.

As you populate your press kit:

Group assets into clear categories, such as company information, leadership, products, locations, and brand assets
Add captions, dates, photographer credits, and usage information
Offer useful file formats and resolutions where possible
Link spokesperson profiles, background information, and related press releases
Check that every asset is the latest approved version
Add a clear media contact to every relevant section

This is also the moment to remove duplicates and retire anything that should no longer be circulating.

7. Create one shareable URL and use it everywhere

Once your press kit is live, make sure the right people know how to find it.

Create one permanent, easy-to-understand URL, such as:

company.com/newsroom/press-kit

Feature that URL consistently everywhere, and avoid creating a different media kit URL for every pitch unless the story genuinely needs a focused collection of assets. For product launches, events, or major reports, you can create a dedicated media collection while keeping the main company press kit as the default source.

8. Test it as a journalist would

Don’t sign off on your digital press kit from inside the content management system.

Open the public version in an incognito browser and pretend you are researching the company for the first time. Better still, ask someone outside the comms team to test it.

Give them five minutes to find:

The latest company description
A spokesperson’s correct job title
A high-resolution logo
A usable executive headshot
A key company statistic
The right media contact
Supporting images for a recent announcement

Then check the technical details:

Do all downloads work?
Can files be opened without an account?
Does the page work on mobile?
Are contact details easy to spot?
Are image credits included?
Are outdated assets still appearing in search?
Do links lead to the expected pages?
Can visitors tell when information was updated?

Muck Rack found that 86% of journalists said at least some of their coverage began with a PR pitch. It also found that journalists quickly discard outreach that falls outside their beat.

Once a pitch is relevant, your press kit should remove the remaining friction.

Examples of great digital press kits in 2026

The difference between a press kit that gets used and one that gets ignored often comes down to the details. Clear filters, sensible categories, and download options may not sound glamorous, but they save journalists time.

Here are three press kit examples that get those details right.

Edelweiss: Replacing PDF-heavy publishing

Edelweiss organizes its media library around the subjects journalists are most likely to search for, including its fleet, cabins, crew, management, and inflight products. Assets are available in high- and low-resolution formats, while the newsroom can be viewed in four languages.

What to learn from it: Your press kit should connect with your wider newsroom workflow. When publishing, distribution, translation, and media assets sit together, updates become faster and more consistent.

Genesis: Organizing content around products and stories

Genesis makes a large product portfolio easier to navigate by giving individual vehicle models and concepts their own categories. Journalists can also filter broader content by topics such as technology, motorsport, corporate news, and lifestyle, then download individual files or prepare a complete media kit.

What to learn from it: Organize content around the subjects journalists cover. Product-led brands can create clear routes into each model, collection, campaign or area of expertise.

Gebrüder Weiss: Making a large media library usable

Gebrüder Weiss separates its core downloads into practical categories, including people, solutions, logos, and publications. Its wider newsroom also uses featured topics to connect media with subjects such as sustainability, air and sea freight, digital services, and the future of mobility.

What to learn from it: A large asset library needs strong organization. Useful filters, consistent naming, and flexible downloads help journalists find the right material without asking your team to send it manually.

FAQ: How to create a press kit

What is the difference between a press kit and a media kit?

The terms press kit and media kit are generally used interchangeably. Both describe a collection of approved information and assets created for journalists, editors, producers, and other media professionals.

Some companies use “media kit” for advertising information and audience demographics. Context usually makes the intended meaning clear.

Should a press kit be a PDF?

A PDF can be included as a downloadable summary, but it should not be the only version of your press kit.

An online press kit is easier to update, search, share, and connect to related content. It also reduces the chance that journalists will use an old version saved on their computer.

How long should a press kit be?

There is no fixed length because a digital press kit is a collection of resources rather than a single document.

Keep individual sections concise. A journalist should be able to understand the company quickly, then choose whether to explore more detailed information or download supporting assets.

How often should you update a press kit?

Review your press kit at least once every quarter. You should also update it whenever there is a change to your leadership team, company facts, product portfolio, visual identity, or media contacts.

Time-sensitive assets should include a clear publication or update date.

Do small businesses need a press kit?

A small business can benefit from a press kit as soon as it starts approaching journalists, podcasters, event organizers, or industry publications.

The first version can be simple. Start with an overview, founder biography, logo, a few strong images, and clear contact information. Add more resources as your media activity grows.

Can you create a press kit with Presspage?

Yes. Presspage’s brand newsroom software gives PR teams a central place to build, publish and, maintain a digital press kit alongside their wider company news.

You can bring together approved company information, spokesperson profiles, press releases, images, videos, and downloadable brand assets under one shareable URL. Your team can update the content directly, without waiting on IT, while clear page structures and GEO-friendly functionality help journalists, search engines, and AI systems find and understand the right information.

The takeaway

Building a press kit is mostly an exercise in removing obstacles.

Journalists should not need to email three people to confirm a company fact or have to pull a blurry logo from your LinkedIn.

Instead, build your press kit in a place your PR team can control, organize it around the information journalists actually need, and keep the content current under one single URL.

The result is a resource that supports every pitch you send, strengthens the accuracy of your company information online, and gives both journalists and AI systems a reliable source to work from.

Want to see how Presspage’s PR software helps teams centralize their company press kits and news in one searchable, shareable newsroom?

Crisis communications software features | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:46:53 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Crisis communications software and crisis management software solve different problems. One helps you resolve the incident, the other helps you control the public story.
When a crisis breaks, PR teams need to publish verified information fast, keep it updated, and give journalists and stakeholders one credible place to find it.
The features that matter most for PR are a crisis newsroom, dark sites, live news feeds, access controls, shared media inquiry management, and crisis reporting.

Some of the worst-handled crises in recent memory probably looked pretty alright on an internal dashboard. Systems came back online fast, alerts went out on schedule, and someone in the room called it a win.

But what the dashboard completely missed was the four-hour window where journalists had to piece the story together from an old press release and a Reddit thread. The company never got to share its perspective - because publicly - it said nothing.

They fixed the operational crisis but ignored the public one, leaving PR teams to clean up the mess long after the systems came back online.

And yet, when most organizations go looking for crisis communications software, they end up buying another operations tool that tracks incidents, notifies employees, and manages internal workflows. Useful, yes. But not quite what PR teams need when the story is moving fast and the company needs full control of its comms.

According to Edelman, 53% of consumers assume a brand is hiding something if it fails to respond promptly. The irony is that many organizations aren't hiding anything. They just don't have the infrastructure to clear their name fast enough.

This article is about that infrastructure. We’ll cover the features that let PR teams publish verified information quickly, give journalists somewhere credible to go, and keep control of the narrative before someone else writes it for them.

Crisis communication: a definition

Most people define crisis communication as the process of communicating during a crisis.

Technically, they're right, but practically, that’s not very helpful.

For PR teams, crisis communication is the discipline of making sure stakeholders can find accurate, verified information when uncertainty is at its highest. That includes journalists, customers, employees, investors, regulators, and, increasingly, AI-powered search systems.

Crisis communication should be treated as a proactive exercise. It requires the channels, processes, and infrastructure to publish updates quickly, maintain a single source of truth, and keep information current as a situation develops. For PR teams, an owned newsroom is often the strongest crisis communication best practice, as it is visible, credible, easy to update, and built around the way journalists already look for information.

Crisis communications software vs. crisis management software

These two shouldn’t be treated as one and the same.

Crisis management software helps the organization manage the incident, while crisis communications software supports PR teams in communicating what is happening so that they can be part of the public story.

	Crisis communications software	Crisis management software
Primary goal	Communicate the incident clearly and credibly	Manage and resolve the incident
Primary users	PR, communications, media relations	IT, security, operations, legal
Focus	External communication	Internal coordination
Key functions	Newsrooms, updates, media inquiries, public information	Incident tracking, alerts, workflows, escalation paths
Audience	Journalists, customers, investors, regulators, the public	Employees and internal stakeholders
Success looks like	Stakeholders can find trusted information	The problem is resolved

Both are important. But if your job is to protect your organization’s reputation, support journalists, and keep stakeholders informed, crisis communications software supports that in ways that operational tools were never designed to solve.

What PR teams need when a crisis breaks

When a crisis breaks, it’s PR’s job to get accurate information out, keep it updated, and make it easy to find.

To make that happen, you need to be able to do three things:

A way to publish verified information immediately
A single source of truth that journalists, stakeholders, and AI search can find and trust
The ability to update that information as the situation evolves

According to PRSA, brands that respond within two hours see 61% better sentiment recovery than those that delay. Speed is of the essence, sure, but without credibility, it sometimes adds to the chaos.

The features that matter for PR teams

So what does that actually look like in software?

For PR teams, the most important features are the ones that help you publish quickly, keep information accurate, manage media demand, and prove whether your response is being seen.

Let’s start with the big one.

1. Crisis newsroom

When a PR crisis breaks, people start looking for answers fast, and a crisis newsroom gives all of them one place to go.

Instead of relying on scattered social posts, emailed statements, or PDFs that go out of date the moment they are sent, a crisis newsroom acts as the central hub for verified information. It can house your updates, statements, FAQs, media contacts, and other details that need to stay current as the situation develops.

What to look for

A dedicated crisis page or section within your owned newsroom
Fast publishing without needing IT support
Support for statements, FAQs, timelines, media contacts, and live updates
Search visibility so journalists, stakeholders, and AI systems can find the latest information
Clear ownership so PR teams can manage the page without losing control of approvals

2. Dark sites

A crisis is a terrible time to discover that your website cannot handle a crisis.

Dark sites are pre-built crisis websites that remain hidden from the public until they are needed. They can be activated within minutes to provide a dedicated source of information during an incident.

This is useful for two reasons: First, it removes the need to build a crisis communications hub under pressure. Second, it gives you a backup communications channel if your primary website is unavailable, compromised, or overwhelmed by traffic.

What to look for

Pre-built crisis page templates that can be activated quickly
Independent hosting from your main corporate website
Fast activation without requiring development resources
The ability to prepare FAQs, statements, media contacts, and key messages in advance
Integration with your newsroom and other communications channels

3. Live news feed

If you want to avoid losing trust during a crisis, don’t leave people wondering whether your information is still current. A statement published four hours ago might as well be four days old if the situation is changing quickly.

A live news feed creates a running timeline of verified updates, giving journalists and stakeholders a clear view of the latest information without forcing them to piece together a story from multiple sources.

What to look for

The ability to publish updates in real time
Clear timestamps on every update
A chronological feed that shows how the situation has developed
Integration with your crisis newsroom or dark site
Mobile-friendly publishing for updates on the move

4. Access controls & permissions

There are two ways access control can go wrong in a crisis: everyone can publish, or nobody can. Choose the first and you create risk. Opt for the second and you’ll never get a word in.

Clearly, a middle ground is necessary.

Good crisis communications software gives teams enough control to protect the message without turning every update into a legal nightmare. Content can be drafted, reviewed, approved, and published by the right people, with clear ownership at every step.

What to look for

Role-based permissions for drafting, reviewing, approving, and publishing
Approval workflows that do not rely on email chains
The ability to restrict access to sensitive content
Audit trails showing who changed what and when
Granular controls across different teams, regions, or business units

5. Shared media inquiries

Every PR team has lived through some version of this: A journalist emails three different people, and suddenly nobody knows who owns the request anymore.

During a crisis, media inquiries need to be managed from one central place. Shared media inquiry management gives your team visibility into every request, who is handling it, what has been said, and what still needs a response. That leaves you with a more coordinated media response and fewer unpleasant surprises.

What to look for

A centralized inbox or media request hub
Clear ownership and assignment of inquiries
Visibility into response status and deadlines
Shared notes and collaboration tools
A searchable history of journalist interactions

6. Crisis reporting

When the dust settles after a crisis, someone will ask the inevitable question:

"How did we do?"

Without proper reporting, you’ll have no way to answer without making assumptions.

Good crisis communication software gives you a clear picture of what happened.

Which updates were published?
How many people saw them?
Which pages received the most attention?
When did journalists engage?
What information were stakeholders looking for?

That visibility helps teams evaluate their response, identify gaps, and make better decisions the next time a crisis occurs.

Research shows that 60.3% of organizations now use dedicated crisis tools. The real advantage is being able to respond to a crisis AND learn from one.

What to look for

Reporting on crisis page and newsroom traffic
Visibility into which updates received the most engagement
Media engagement and journalist activity tracking
Timeline reporting to review how the response unfolded
Exportable reports for internal reviews and post-crisis analysis

Why Presspage is built for the PR side of crisis communications

Most crisis software is designed to help organizations manage the incident.

Presspage is built around crisis communication best practices for PR, giving teams the infrastructure to decide what happens next.

A Presspage newsroom lets you publish verified information quickly, keep it updated as situations evolve, and gives journalists a trusted source of truth throughout a crisis.

With features including crisis newsrooms, dark sites, live updates, shared media inquiries, role-based permissions, and crisis reporting, Presspage helps you move quickly without sacrificing accuracy or control.

Because when a crisis breaks, stakeholders want answers. And the faster you can provide them, the more likely you are to stay part of the story rather than reacting to it.

FAQ: Crisis communications software features

What is crisis communications software?

Crisis communication software helps organizations communicate during a crisis by providing tools to publish updates, manage media inquiries, share verified information, and keep stakeholders informed. Unlike general crisis management platforms, it focuses on external communication rather than internal response coordination.

What is the difference between crisis communications software and crisis management software?

Crisis management software is designed to help organizations respond to an incident through workflows, task management, employee alerts, and operational coordination. Crisis communication software helps PR teams communicate that response to journalists, customers, investors, regulators, and other stakeholders.

What features should PR teams look for in crisis communications software?

To comply with crisis communication best practices, PR teams should prioritize features that help them publish and manage information quickly and accurately. Key features include a crisis newsroom, dark sites, live news feeds, access controls and permissions, shared media inquiry management, and crisis reporting.

What is a crisis newsroom?

A crisis newsroom is a dedicated section of a company's online newsroom or website used to publish verified information during a crisis. It acts as a single source of truth for journalists, stakeholders, and the public, providing updates, statements, FAQs, and other critical information as events unfold.

Why is a single source of truth important during a crisis?

A single source of truth helps reduce misinformation and speculation by giving stakeholders one trusted location for the latest information. It also makes it easier for journalists, customers, and AI search systems to find accurate updates without relying on outdated or third-party sources.

The takeaway

If you take one thing away from this piece, let it be this: Crisis communications software should make sure that when people are looking for answers, they find yours.

Journalists, customers, stakeholders, and AI search systems all need a source during a crisis. The question is whether it will be you or someone else's interpretation of events.

The organizations that come out of crises with their reputation intact have somewhere credible to publish, and something ready to go live.

Because when the pressure is on, “we’re working on a statement” is not much of a PR strategy. But having one ready - and a place to publish it - is.

Want to see how Presspage helps PR teams publish fast, manage media demand, and keep control of the story during a crisis? Request a demo.

Types of Journalists | Presspage

s.denning@presspage.live (Sinead Denning) — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:09:47 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Different journalists need different pitches. The fastest way to get ignored is to send everyone the same story in the same format.
Relevance matters more than reach. Journalists are far more likely to engage when a pitch aligns with their beat, audience, and way of working.
The best media relationships start with understanding what journalists actually need, then helping them do their job.

When your carefully crafted press release is met with crickets, it’s tempting to blame the subject line, the timing, or the story itself. And sometimes, sure, those things play a part. But often the issue starts earlier: the same pitch is being sent to very different journalists with very different jobs to do.

A freelance journalist trying to sell a story to an editor does not need the same thing as a trade reporter who has covered your industry for ten years. Treating them the same is a recipe for indifference.

The numbers back that up. According to Muck Rack’s 2024 State of Journalism report, 73% of journalists reject pitches because they are not relevant to their coverage area.

That sounds bleak, but there’s another way to look at it. Journalists still use PR pitches. Muck Rack’s 2025 State of Journalism report found that 84% of journalists say at least some of their stories originate from PR pitches.

So the opportunity is there. PR teams just need to get sharper at identifying what different journalists need, then pitch the story in a way that fits their world.

Today, we’re breaking down six common journalist profiles and looking at how to pitch each one without becoming another inbox casualty.

Why building relationships with journalists still matters

Before getting into the profiles, it’s worth saying this: media relations does not start and end with one pitch.

The journalists who answer your emails today may be the same people you need during a launch, a funding announcement, or a crisis. A journalist who knows you are relevant and responsive is far more likely to give your next email a proper look.

Let’s zoom in on relevance for a second.

Relevance here means understanding what a journalist covers, how they work, and what makes their life easier. That is especially important when journalists have more control over the stories they pursue. According to Muck Rack’s 2025 State of Journalism report, 92% of journalists either pitch or fully decide which stories they work on. Which means they’re making editorial decisions all day, every day, not sitting around waiting for your next release. Your job is to make responding a no-brainer.

A few ways PR teams can do that:

Read what they actually write before you pitch.
Send fewer, better-matched stories instead of every announcement.
Be fast, accurate, and honest when they come back with questions.
Keep spokespeople, images, background, and data ready before outreach starts.
Follow up when there is a reason, not because the calendar says it has been two weeks.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Help your PR pitches dodge the delete button with 7 no-nonsense media relations best practices for real engagement.

Read the blog >>>

The main types of journalists PR teams need to know

Here are the six types of journalists PR teams need to know:

Beat reporter - Covers a specific industry, topic, company, or area of interest on a regular basis.
Freelance journalist - Produces stories for multiple publications and often pitches article ideas directly to editors.
News desk journalist - Covers breaking news and fast-moving developments, often working to tight deadlines.
Features journalist - Writes longer-form stories focused on people, trends, experiences, and broader issues.
Broadcast journalist - Produces content for television, radio, podcasts, video, and other audio-visual formats.
Trade journalist - Writes news, features, and analysis for a specific industry or business sector rather than the general public.

Of course, no two journalists work exactly the same way. But these six profiles cover many of the people PR and communications teams interact with every day.

To make things easier, we've given each one a name.

1. Beat Reporter Ben

Ben’s been all over your industry for years. If you're in healthcare, he's spent thousands of hours writing about healthcare. If you're in aviation, he knows every major player, every merger, and every regulatory development from the last decade.

Ben is looking for sources and specifics. He definitely doesn’t need another ‘your industry for dummies’ write-up.

Dislikes

Generic mass pitches
Being taught about his own industry
Marketing language

Gets excited by

Access to senior spokespeople
Industry data
Early notice of developments

Ben is secretly wondering...

Did you read anything I've written?
Is this actually new?
Can your spokesperson answer difficult questions?

What a beat reporter wants from PR teams

Beat reporters tend to think long term, and unlike some journalists, they're not looking for a single story. They're more interested in a network of reliable contacts they can return to repeatedly.

That’s why relationship building matters so much with this group; a good interaction today can result in opportunities months down the line.

The biggest mistake PR teams make with beat reporters is focusing on the announcement instead of the relationship.

When pitching Ben, lead with why the story matters specifically to his coverage area. Show you've read his work. Offer access to people, information, and expertise that help him understand what's happening in the industry.

2. Freelance Frankie

Frankie’s job is slightly different from most journalists.

Before she can write the story, she usually needs to convince an editor that the angle is worth commissioning in the first place.

A company announcement might be enough for a staff reporter covering a beat, but Frankie? She needs a story.

Dislikes

Press releases with no broader angle
Waiting days for basic information
Stories that only matter to your company

Gets excited by

Strong trends
Original data
Sources who are ready to talk

Frankie is secretly wondering...

Why would an editor care about this?
Is there a story beyond the announcement?
Can I build an article around this?

What a freelance journalist wants from PR teams

Freelancers are constantly looking for ideas they can turn into articles, which is why company news alone often falls flat. Frankie needs something she can pitch to an editor who has no emotional attachment to your company or product.

Strong PR pitches give her most of what she needs upfront: a clear angle, relevant data, and a source who is available for interview. Maybe even a few ideas for how the story connects to a larger trend.

If you want to help Frankie sell the story internally, think less "here's our news" and more "here's a story your readers might give a s**t about."

3. News Desk Nadia

Nadia is reading your email while juggling six other stories.

She’s working against deadlines measured in minutes. If something newsworthy happens at 9:00, at 9:01 she's on the case. Speed shapes everything about how Nadia works.

Dislikes

Long introductions
Buried news angles
Delayed responses

Gets excited by

Fast access to spokespeople
Clear facts
Well-managed newsrooms

Nadia is secretly wondering...

What's the story?
Why does this matter today?
Can someone talk to me now?

What a news desk journalist wants from PR teams

Nadia needs the news ASAP.

She’s not interested in three paragraphs of company background or a lengthy explanation of your mission - the story comes first.

If you're pitching a news desk journalist, put the news in the first sentence. Make key facts easy to find, have a spokesperson available, and include supporting information that can be verified quickly.

Most importantly, move fast. Today’s hottest story becomes a hell of a lot less interesting when someone else publishes it first.

4. Features Writer Finn

Finn is looking for people, ideas, conflict, change, and the details that make readers keep scrolling. He’s not really a ‘breaking news’ kinda guy,

In fact, the story often matters more than the announcement.

A funding round might interest Nadia because it's news. Finn is more interested in what happened before the funding round, what challenges the founders faced, or how customers were affected along the way.

Dislikes

Corporate jargon
Over-rehearsed spokespeople
Stories without people

Gets excited by

Strong characters
Unexpected angles
Access behind the scenes

Finn is secretly wondering...

Who's the real story here?
What's the human angle?
Will this feel different from every other article on the topic?

What a features journalist wants from PR teams

Features journalists typically work on longer timelines than news reporters, which gives them more freedom to explore a story from different angles.

Finn is looking for interesting people. Customers with stories to tell, founders with genuine challenges, or employees with unusual experiences. Anything that helps bring a topic to life.

The best thing PR teams can do is provide access and then step back. Want a great piece? Give Finn the raw materials for a great story and let him build it in his own way.

5. Broadcast Bianca

Bianca likes stories she can show, not just tell.

Whether she’s working on a TV segment, YouTube interview, or podcast episode, she’s thinking about the audience experience from the jump. What will people see? What will they hear? Can we tell this story in a way that feels clear, credible, and alive?

A story that works beautifully in print won’t work for Bianca if there’s nothing engaging to capture on camera or over the mic.

Dislikes

Spokespeople who aren't media-ready
Stories with no visual or audio elements
Last-minute changes or limitations for interviews

Gets excited by

Strong visuals
Confident spokespeople
Opportunities to get behind the scenes

Bianca is secretly wondering...

How can I SHOW this story?
Is this spokesperson going to be any good?
Will this hold an audience's attention?

What broadcast journalists want from PR teams

Broadcast journalists need engaging footage, interesting locations, and compelling interviews. They need real people doing real things.

If you're pitching Bianca, lead with what the audience will see or hear. Don't bury the visual angle halfway down the email.

Top tip? Before offering up a spokesperson, make sure they're prepared. A subject matter expert who freezes on camera can kill an otherwise good story.

6. Trade Writer Theo

Theo knows your industry like the back of his hand.

He attends the same conferences, follows the same regulations, and speaks to the same specialists day in, day out. In some sectors, particularly across manufacturing, technology, logistics, healthcare, and energy, Theo may actually know more about the topic than the spokesperson you're pitching.

That's why surface-level stories rarely land with him.

Dislikes

Generic corporate messaging
Basic industry explanations
Spokespeople who can't answer technical questions

Gets excited by

Technical insight
Industry-specific data
Access to genuine specialists

Theo is secretly wondering...

What's actually new here?
Can this person go beyond the talking points?
Why should my readers care?

What trade and specialist journalists want from PR teams

Trade or specialist press journalists usually serve niche audiences.

Their readers already understand the industry and aren’t looking for introductory explainers or broad business updates. They want details, context, and information they can't find anywhere else.

When pitching Theo, trim the fat. Lead with a technical angle, the industry implications, or that crucial data point.

Most importantly, make sure your spokesperson knows their stuff.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main types of journalists?

There are many different journalist specialisms, but most PR teams regularly encounter six broad categories: beat reporters, freelance journalists, news desk journalists, features writers, broadcast journalists, and trade or specialist press journalists.

Each works differently, serves a different audience, and looks for different kinds of stories.

How do you pitch different types of journalists?

Start by understanding how that journalist works.

A news desk journalist needs speed and clear facts. A features writer needs people and stories. A freelance journalist needs an angle they can sell to an editor. They each have unique needs.

The best pitches are tailored to the journalist, not copied across an entire media list.

Why do journalists ignore PR pitches?

According to Muck Rack's 2024 State of Journalism report, the most common reason is relevance.

If a story doesn't match what a journalist covers, it's unlikely to get a response, no matter how well written the pitch is.

Do journalists still use PR pitches?

Yes.

Muck Rack's 2025 State of Journalism report found that 86% of journalists say PR pitches contribute to at least some of the stories they publish.

The roadblock is whether your pitch is relevant to the person receiving it.

The takeaway

One of the biggest mistakes PR teams make is assuming every journalist wants the same thing. They don’t. They need a targeted, personalised approach that aligns with how they work and who they work for.

The more you understand how journalists work, the easier it becomes to give them what they're actually looking for. And when that happens, media relations starts feeling a lot less like sending emails into the void.

Want more tips on what journalists really want? Check out our LIVE webinar!

How to write press release quotes + examples | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:45:31 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Quotes give journalists and AI systems something they can lift and reuse.
Generic lines like “we’re excited to announce” disappear into the background.
Strong press release quotes introduce perspective, context, or a fresh angle.
Short, personable quotes get picked up more often than long executive speeches.
The spokesperson matters as much as the wording.
AI search is turning press release quotes into citation material.

Somewhere in a newsroom, a journalist has twenty tabs open, two deadlines approaching, MS Teams notifications firing nonstop, and another (sigh) pitch landing in their inbox.

Behind the chaos, the tools they're leaning on are moving just as fast.

According to Muck Rack’s 2025 State of Journalism research, 77% of journalists now use AI tools in their workflow. Nearly half use ChatGPT specifically.

At the same time, only 20% of journalists say they consistently have enough time to do their work to the standard they want.

Journalists need material they can work with quickly. AI systems are on the hunt for language they can interpret easily and directly attribute to a real person. Both are scanning for the same thing: something worth repeating.

That something is usually a press release quote - if it's any good.

The right one gives your company a voice inside the story, adds context, and is often the sentence someone copies into an article, references in a newsletter, or spots in an AI-generated summary.
And when we say the ‘right quote’ we don’t mean:

“We’re excited to announce this important milestone as part of our continued commitment to innovation and customer success.”

💀

In this post, we’ll cover why some press release quotes get lifted while others sit there sounding like they they went through seven rounds of approval, each sucking more life out of it than the last.

Why press release quotes get ignored (and why that hurts your story)

Most bad quotes share the same problem: they repeat information readers already saw in the headline or body copy.

For example:

Headline:
Acme launches AI tool reducing customer response times by 35%

Body copy:
The tool automatically categorizes and routes support requests.

Quote:
“We’re excited to launch this new tool and provide better experiences for our customers.”

The quote has nothing new to add. No insider insight, no personal opinion, no additional context. It’s dead air.

Journalists are already short on time. According to Muck Rack, 86% ignore pitches that are off-topic.

And according to PR News Online, journalists increasingly appreciate ready-to-use assets that reduce work on their side.

That includes:

data points
visuals
context
quotes they can lift directly

AI systems behave in a similar way, looking for concise statements that explain significance or add a POV.

If your quote says nothing, there is nothing to reuse.

RESOURCE ALERT

Quotes are just one piece of the puzzle. If your press releases are getting ignored more broadly, here's a look at the 6 most common PR content mistakes - and how to fix them.

>>> Check out the blog

What it looks like when you get it right

Strong quotes make a journalist’s job easier. They also give AI systems cleaner signals about what your company actually thinks.

Picture a journalist writing a story about a company launching a new employee onboarding platform. They already have the launch date, the feature list, and the customer numbers.

What they don't have is a human angle:

Why does this matter now?
What’s changing?
What does someone inside the company actually think?

Instead of:

“We’re excited to launch this new platform.”

You want:

“People decide whether they belong long before their first day. It’s a fragile time period and many companies largely ignore it. Our aim is to give new hires the software equivalent of a warm hug during that crucial pre-start period.”

That’s a thought someone can work with.

RESOURCE ALERT

The quote gets you into the story. The pitch gets the story to the journalist. Here's the difference between a media pitch and a press release - and when to use each.

>>> Check out the blog

How to write press release quotes that actually get used

Don’t expect a perfect formula - press release quotes are not Lego - but there are patterns. The ones that get lifted tend to do several of these things at once, while the best ones manage to do all of them and still sound like a real person said them.

1. Say something the body copy doesn’t

The body explains what happened, and the quote explains why somebody should care. Those are two different jobs.

❌ Bad:

“Today we announced the launch of our employee app.”

✅ Better:

“Employees already use consumer apps that feel personal and intuitive every day. Workplace tools are finally catching up.”

2. Make it sound like a human said it

Some quotes sound like they were assembled by six people and approved by three departments.
People don’t speak that way.

They pause, generalize, use contractions and (occasionally) have opinions - yes, even CEOs.

❌ Bad:

“We are delighted to leverage our technology capabilities to create enhanced user experiences.”

✅ Better:

“People get frustrated when software adds steps instead of removing them.”

If you can almost hear someone saying it, that’s usually a good sign.

3. Offer a point of view

Strong quotes take a position, not necessarily an extreme position, but something beyond banalities.

❌ Bad:

“The market continues evolving rapidly.”

✅ Better:

“For years, companies treated cybersecurity as an IT problem. That was the mistake. Customers experience it as a trust problem.”

Someone reading that learns something new about your company’s approach.

4. Keep it short and liftable

Long executive speeches rarely survive intact. Journalists cut them and AI systems summarize them. So you might as well be the one who chooses what stays and what goes.

Aim for roughly one to three sentences. If you need to take a breath halfway through reading it aloud, that’s your cue to cut.

Ask yourself: Could someone copy this sentence into a story immediately without losing context?

If yes, you’re on the right track.

RESOURCE ALERT

Press release quotes are increasingly citation material for AI systems - which means how you structure and publish them matters. Here's a practical guide to making your newsroom content work for both search and AI discovery.

>>> Check out the blog

5. Choose the right spokesperson

Your CEO isn’t automatically the best person.

Often the better choice is:

a product leader
a regional manager
a researcher
a customer-facing team member

If you want the quote to be on-point, you need to match the person to the story.

Cybersecurity story? Use the security lead.

Hiring trend story? Use the HR director.

Retail data story? Use the commercial lead.

The closer the speaker sits to the topic, the more natural the quote will feel.

6. Avoid the banned lingo

Certain words trigger immediate press release fatigue.

You’ve seen them:

excited
delighted
cutting-edge
innovative
groundbreaking
world-class

These words usually replace actual substance (and they kinda make you sound like an amateur).

Try replacing adjectives with observations.

Instead of:

What is a quote in a press release?

A quote gives a spokesperson space to add interpretation, opinion, or context around the announcement. It should do something the body copy can't, such as add a human voice, take a position, or explain why the news matters. If it just repeats what the headline already said, it isn't pulling its weight.

Where can I find good press release quotes examples?

The best press release quotes examples tend to come from announcements where the spokesperson adds perspective rather than repeating facts. Looking at strong press release examples across product launches, partnerships, hiring announcements, and crisis communications can help you identify common patterns.

How many quotes should a press release include?

Most press releases work well with one or two quotes. One strong quote from the right person usually does more than three average ones. Too many quotes can fragment the story and dilute the message, especially if they all say variations of the same thing.

How long should a press release quote be?

One to three sentences is usually the sweet spot. Long quotes get cut by journalists and summarized by AI systems, so it's better to make the editorial decision yourself. If you can't read it aloud in one breath, it's probably too long.

Who should be quoted in a press release?

The person closest to the story, not necessarily the most senior person in the room. A product leader, researcher, regional manager, or customer-facing team member will often produce a more credible and specific quote than a CEO speaking in generalities. Match the spokesperson to the subject matter.

Can AI generate press release quotes?

AI can help with first drafts and brainstorming, and it's a useful starting point when you're stuck. But generic language surfaces quickly and perspective disappears fast. Any AI-assisted quote needs a human edit, ideally from the person being quoted, to make sure it actually sounds like them.

Should every press release include a quote?

Most do benefit from one. A good quote adds a layer of meaning the body copy can't provide on its own. But if there's genuinely no perspective to add, leaving it out is better than forcing weak filler into the story. A missing quote is less damaging than a bad one.

The corporate reputation management playbook | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:53:21 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Corporate reputation management should be treated as a continuous discipline, not a crisis response. The work happens in the business as usual moments between incidents.
The biggest reputation threats - data breaches, leadership scandals, poor crisis communication, AI misinformation, and value-behavior misalignment - all do more damage when there's no foundation in place beforehand.
A proactive PR strategy means knowing your reputation baseline, defining a clear narrative, backing your claims with evidence, and keeping your owned channels current enough that your version of the story is always the easiest one to find.

Ask most communications directors whether they manage their company's reputation and the answer will be yes. Ask them when they last proactively updated their narrative, audited their owned channels, or prepared for a scenario that hasn't happened yet, and you might be met with ums and ahs.

The data backs that up: 58% of executives believe online reputation management should be addressed, but only 15% do anything about it.

Teams set up Google Alerts, track media mentions, and brief the CEO before earnings calls. And then they wait… for something to go wrong, for a journalist to call, or for a story to get out of hand before anyone’s thought about what to say.

When the inevitable crisis then arrives - a data breach, a leadership scandal, or a viral thread that reframes your brand overnight - that approach leaves them scrambling. Suddenly the narrative is moving on without them and other voices jump in when they should be the one setting the tone.

The PR teams who stay in control when pressure hits have already done the work. They have a clear point of view, a central source of verified information, and content that journalists, stakeholders, and AI systems can easily find and use. In other words, a reputation that was actively built long before anyone came looking.

This playbook covers what corporate reputation management actually involves, what puts it at risk, and how to build a proactive strategy that holds up when it matters most. Let’s get into it!

What is corporate reputation management?

Corporate reputation management is the ongoing process of shaping, protecting, and strengthening how a company is perceived by the public, media, employees, investors, and increasingly, AI systems that surface brand information in search results and generated answers.

It covers everything from:

The content a brand publishes on its owned channels
How the brand responds when put under pressure
The narrative a CEO puts forward in an interview
The press release that either builds credibility or wastes a journalist's time
The newsroom that gives stakeholders a single, verified place to understand what a company stands for

Most importantly, it's a continuous function. A brand's reputation is built - or eroded - during the business-as-usual moments between crises. The brands that manage it well treat it as infrastructure.

Corporate reputation management strategy, on the other hand, refers to the deliberate, planned approach behind that work: the decisions about what a company wants to be known for, how it communicates that consistently, and what systems it puts in place to protect and sustain that position over time.

Corporate reputation management vs. crisis communication: what's the difference?

Though closely related, these two disciplines operate on different timelines, and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes comms teams make.

Crisis communication is what you activate when something goes wrong. You need to come up with a response, send out a statement, limit damage, correct misinformation, and protect your brand’s position under pressure. It’s sensitive, high-stakes, and reactive by nature.

Corporate reputation management is everything you do before, and after, that moment. It's the ongoing work of building a credible, consistent, and well-documented brand presence that holds up when you’re in the hot seat. As it involves monitoring, narrative development, owned content, and stakeholder alignment, you should treat it as part of your issue management.

This distinction matters. If you only invest in crisis comms, you’re always playing catch-up. Having a strong reputation doesn’t make you any less susceptible to crises, but it does change how much damage they can do when they arrive.

	Corporate Reputation Management	Crisis Communication
Timeline	Ongoing / proactive	Reactive
Trigger	No trigger needed	Incident or threat
Goal	Build and sustain credibility	Limit damage and restore trust
Owned by	PR / Comms team	PR / Comms + Legal + Leadership
Output	Content, narrative, infrastructure	Statements, responses, updates

Common threats to your corporate reputation

When your corporate reputation takes a hit, the post-mortem usually reveals the same thing: it was a long time coming. Only 17% of businesses maintain an active reputation management plan. For the rest, damage control is the only plan there is.

Here are the five most common causes.

1. Data breaches and cybersecurity incidents

A data breach is a one way ticket to losing public trust. The incident itself is damaging enough, but the reputational fallout is almost always made worse by slow communication, vague statements, and a brand presence that gives journalists and stakeholders nothing solid to work with.

Before you can manage your reputation, you need to know where it stands. What are journalists writing about you? What comes up when stakeholders search your brand? What are AI systems surfacing when someone asks about your company?

Run a reputation audit: Analyze your owned channels, media coverage, search presence, and social sentiment to get an honest starting point.
Look for gaps: Missing information, outdated content, and inconsistent messaging are often more damaging than negative coverage.
Check what AI surfaces: Search your brand name in AI tools and see what gets cited. If the answer surprises you, that's your baseline problem.

2. Define what you want to be known for

What do you want people to associate with your brand? Find the answer to that question, not to polish your mission statement, but to define the specific narratives you want journalists, stakeholders, and AI systems to connect with your name when they go looking.

Pick your narratives: Choose three to five themes you want your brand to own and make sure every piece of public communication reflects them.
Make it specific: "We're innovative" is not a narrative. "We're the company that reduced supply chain emissions by 40% in two years" is.
Align leadership: Your executives are part of your reputation. Make sure their public voices reinforce the same story.

3. Back your claims with evidence

A point of view means nothing without proof. Every claim your brand makes publicly needs something to back it up, otherwise it will read as marketing fluff.

Use real data: Case studies, performance metrics, third-party validation. Give journalists and stakeholders something they can actually verify.
Publish your proof: Don't keep evidence locked in internal decks. Put it somewhere public, findable, and easy to reference.
Update it regularly: Stale proof is almost as damaging as no proof. If your last case study is from 2022, it shows.

4. Create a central source of truth

If journalists, stakeholders, and AI systems are all going to different places to understand your brand - and finding different things in the process - you've already lost control of the narrative. A well-maintained online newsroom gives everyone a single, current, verified place to find who you are and what you stand for.

Keep it current: An outdated newsroom is worse than a thin one. Set a regular cadence for updates.
Structure it for AI: Clear headings, direct answers, and well-organized content make it easier for AI systems to understand and cite your brand accurately.
Make it the default: When your team sends press releases, pitches journalists, or responds to inquiries, your brand newsroom should always be the reference point.

RESOURCE ALERT

Want to build a newsroom that acts as your single source of truth?

>>> Check out our blog

5. Keep the story aligned across teams and channels

Misaligned messaging rarely looks like a crisis from the inside. But from the outside, it reads as confusion at best and dishonesty at worst.

Align on core messaging: Make sure PR, legal, leadership, and customer-facing teams are all working from the same approved narrative.
Create shared resources: Message frameworks, approved language, and Q&A documents should be accessible to everyone who speaks publicly on behalf of the brand.
Run regular alignment checks: Before major announcements, product launches, or anything high-stakes, verify that all teams are still telling the same story.

6. Make your perspective easy to find, quote, and cite

Having a point of view is important, but it won’t matter if no one can find it. Your owned content needs to be structured so journalists can pull quotes, stakeholders can reference it easily, and AI systems can surface it accurately.

Write for scannability: Clear headings, short paragraphs, and strong standalone statements make your content easier to use.
Include direct answers: If someone searches a question about your brand or industry, your content should answer it clearly and early.
Think in quotes: Every piece of owned content should have at least one line strong enough to stand alone, something a journalist or AI system could lift and use.

RESOURCE ALERT

Want to create newsroom content that’s optimized for SEO, GEO & AI discovery?

>>> Check out our guide

7. Prepare for pressure before it arrives

Run scenario planning before anything goes wrong. The teams that lead their response in a crisis are the ones who think fastest under pressure AND did their homework in advance.

Map your risk scenarios: Data breach, leadership scandal, product failure, or AI misinformation. Know in advance what your response would look like for each.
Prepare holding statements: Have draft statements ready for your highest-probability scenarios. They'll need updating when the moment arrives, but starting from something is faster than reinventing the wheel.
Clarify your approval chain: Know exactly who needs to sign off on what before anything goes public. Delays in approval are one of the most common causes of poor crisis communication.

RESOURCE ALERT

Don’t start from scratch - download our holding statement templates, tailored to different crisis scenarios.

>>> Download the template

8. Measure reputation as a business asset

What gets measured gets managed. Tracking the right metrics turns reputation from an abstract concept into something you can report on, optimize, and defend to leadership.

Track media sentiment and share of voice: Are you being covered positively? Are you part of the conversations that matter in your industry?
Monitor your newsroom performance: Traffic, time on page, and inbound media inquiries are all signals of how well your owned presence is working.
Measure AI citation share: Are AI systems citing your brand when relevant questions are asked? This is becoming one of the most important visibility metrics in PR.

According to PwC's 2025 Global CEO Pulse, 84% of executives ranked brand and reputation risk as their top external concern, ahead of cyber risk and regulatory risk for the first time. If the C-suite is paying attention, your measurement framework should be ready to match.

RESOURCE ALERT

No idea what PR analytics to track? Here are the 5 you need to get a handle on your owned media performance.

>>> Check out our blog

PRESSPAGE PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Presspage helps PR and comms teams build and manage an online newsroom that works as a genuine source of truth for journalists looking for brand information, stakeholders tracking company updates, and AI systems indexing your content.

Our newsroom software offers fast publishing, workflows built for comms teams that need approvals across multiple stakeholders, and a newsroom that stays structured in a way that makes your content easy to find, use, and cite. Whether you’re managing a single brand or coordinating across multiple markets and languages, Presspage gives your team full control over what goes out, when it goes out, and who sees it - crisis or not.

FAQ: Corporate reputation management

What is corporate reputation management?

Corporate reputation management is the ongoing process of shaping, protecting, and strengthening how a company is perceived by the public, media, employees, investors, and AI systems. It covers everything from owned content and narrative development to stakeholder alignment and crisis preparedness.

What is a corporate reputation management strategy?

A corporate reputation management strategy is the deliberate, planned approach behind your reputation work. It involves the decisions about what you want to be known for, how you communicate that consistently, and what systems you put in place to protect and sustain that position over time.

What is the difference between reputation management and crisis communications?

Crisis communications is what you activate when something goes wrong. Corporate reputation management is everything you do before and after that moment, including the ongoing work of building a credible, consistent brand presence that holds up under pressure.

Why is proactive reputation management important?

Because reactive reputation management leaves you chasing the narrative. The brands that come out of difficult moments with their credibility intact had already built something solid: a clear point of view, current owned channels, and aligned messaging, before the pressure was even on.

How does AI affect corporate reputation management?

AI systems increasingly surface brand information in search results and generated answers. If your owned channels are thin, outdated, or poorly structured, AI fills the gaps with whatever is publicly available. Keeping your newsroom current and well-structured helps ensure your version of the story is the one that gets cited.

The takeaway

Here's an uncomfortable question to end on: If a journalist searched your brand right now, would they find a clear, current, credible version of your story? Or would they find gaps, old quotes, and a newsroom that hasn't been touched since last quarter?

The brands that have gotten the hang of things have one thing in common: they understood that their corporate reputation management strategy needs a proactive approach.

If you want to go deeper on what that looks like in practice, we're hosting a webinar on exactly this.

Everybody Wants This: A Reputation Management Webinar for the AI Era

Reputation rarely collapses on the runway. It unravels in the fitting room, long before the lights, the cameras, and the audience arrive.

Join host Jesse Finn and a special mystery guest - Global Communications Director at one of the world's best-known travel brands - for an hour on reputation management, AI visibility, and the comms work that needs to happen behind the curtain.

📅 Tuesday, June 16 - 3:00 PM CET
→ Register here

Why Press Releases Get Ignored | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:13:36 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Journalists scan fast. Your headline and lead need to explain the story immediately.
AI systems extract facts. Vague language gives them very little to work with.
Quotes should add a human point of view, not repeat the body copy.
Hype language kills credibility when it is not backed by proof.
Legal, technical, and stakeholder details matter, but they do not all belong in the first paragraph.

You published the press release. It went live. The CEO liked it. The internal team signed it off. WOOHOO!

Then…nothing.

No journalist picked it up, search barely noticed and AI systems couldn’t care less. Even though release technically said everything it needed to say, nobody used it.

That is where a lot of PR content lands now. Not bad per se, just kind of…there. And painfully easy to ignore.

The way people find, scan, and reuse press releases has changed. There’s more content available than ever, journalists are busier, and releases are often read in pieces rather than from top to bottom. As well as that, you have SEO and GEO with search engines looking for structure and authority and AI systems pulling facts, summaries, and context, often without giving readers the ‘full page’ experience.

Which is all to say that in 2026, your release has to do several jobs at once.

It needs to:

help a journalist understand the story quickly;
give search engines a clear structure;
serve AI systems facts that can be extracted without twisting the message;
and, most importantly, it needs to give people a reason to care!

During Presspage’s recent PR Content Roast webinar, we looked at real press release examples with writer and former PR Newswire press release editor Tom Clarke. The same issues kept coming up: vague headlines, buried proof, empty quotes, hype language, and first paragraphs packed with internal detail.

Here are the 6 biggest mistakes, plus practical ways to fix them.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn!

Tom's take: write for the person who has never heard of you

Tom Clarke has seen press releases from both sides: first as a press release editor, then as the person writing them for clients. His biggest point from the webinar was practical: a press release usually speaks to people who do not know your company yet.

That means the release has to explain the story fast, in language a smart outsider can understand.

“They don’t know you from Adam. That’s why you’re writing a press release.”

This is a good gut check for every announcement. If the first paragraph only makes sense to people inside the business, the release is doing internal comms in public.

Mistake 1: The news angle is too hard to find

A press release can have a real story buried inside it and still fail.

That often happens when the headline and lead focus on the company action, rather than the reason anyone else should care.

For example:

Company A announces partnership with Company B.

Technically, that may be accurate. But it leaves the reader with a very obvious question: so what?

A partnership, product launch, or research report only becomes news when the release explains what changes because of it. Will customers get faster access to something? Will patients receive better care? Will a city reduce water waste? Will a market gain capacity? Will a business problem become less painful?

That information needs to appear early.

A weak release says:

Torch Dental expands offering with Young Innovations Partnership.

A stronger version would move the real-world outcome closer to the top:

Torch Dental partnership gives dental practices faster access to essential supplies.

That version isn’t flashy, but it doesn’t need to be. It tells the reader who is involved, what is happening, and why the story matters outside the company.

The fix: before writing the headline, answer this question in one sentence:

What changes for the audience because this happened?

Then build the headline and lead around that answer.

Tom's tip

Use the “elderly grandmother” test. Could you explain the story to someone outside your industry in one clear sentence? If not, the release probably needs a sharper lead.

Mistake 2: The release sounds like it was written for internal approval

A lot of press releases are written from the inside out.

They use the company’s language, reflect the company’s internal priorities, and include the details every department wanted to see. They make perfect sense to the people who spent six months working on the project.

Then a journalist reads it and has no idea what is going on.

This is one of the most common PR content problems. The release might be accurate, but it’s not accessible. It assumes the reader already understands the company, the product, the market, the acronyms, and the reason the announcement matters.

And that is a risky assumption.

A press release is usually designed for people who do not know your company well yet. That could be a journalist, stakeholder, or customer. OR it could be an AI system trying to understand what your company does and how this announcement fits into the bigger picture.

So the first job of the release is to help outsiders understand the story quickly (not to impress company insiders).

That means cutting back on internal phrasing like:

“enhancing access”
“evolving our offering”
“strengthening our platform”
“strategic software licence agreement”
“unlocking value across a complex landscape”

Some of these phrases may feel normal inside the business, but for Joe Public, they slow everything down.

Try this structure:

What happened?
Who is affected?
Why does it matter now?
What proof backs it up?
Where can people get more information?

The fix: Ensure your first paragraph answers at least the first three line items above. If not, keep working.

Mistake 3: The quote says the obvious

Quotes are one of the biggest missed opportunities in press releases.

Too often, they repeat what the release already said:

“We are excited to partner with Company B as we continue strengthening our commitment to delivering high-quality solutions for our customers.”

Nobody talks like that, and more importantly, if they did, you wouldn’t bother quoting it.

A good quote should earn its place and add something the body copy cannot. A point of view! An insight only someone close to the work can give.

The body copy can explain the facts but the quote is where you can breath some emotion into the piece and explain the behind-the-scenes thinking.

That is especially important now because so much content sounds polished to the point of emptiness. A quote gives you a chance to bring back the human voice.

The fastest way to improve quotes is also the most obvious: speak to the person being quoted.

Ask them:

Why does this matter?
What problem does it solve?
What changed that made this necessary now?
What would you say to a customer, journalist, or stakeholder who does not know the background?
What detail are you most glad made it into the final project?

We get it, there people can be hard to get in touch with, so you might have to get creative. A voice note can work. A five-minute call can work. Even a few rough bullet points can work better than a quote written entirely in approval-language.

Then clean it up. Lightly! Resist the urge to sand away the human edge.

Tom's tip

Ask for a voice note instead of writing the quote from scratch. A busy CEO may not have time for a full interview, but a rough 60-second answer often gives you more usable language than three rounds of polished approval copy.

A weak quote says:

“This partnership reflects our continued commitment to strengthening and evolving our offering.”

A stronger quote says:

“Dental teams do not have time to chase supplies across multiple systems. This partnership helps practices get the products they need faster, so they can spend less time on purchasing and more time with patients.”

That version gives the reader context, names the problem, and connects the announcement to a real-world outcome.

The fix: Use quotes to move the story forward. If you can delete the quote and the release still says the same thing, rewrite it.

Mistake 4: Hype language replaces proof

Some press releases try to generate excitement by turning the volume up.

Everything is game-changing. Revolutionary. Cutting-edge. Future-ready. First-class. Seamless. Unparalleled. Next-generation.

Now these words aren’t necessarily wrong, but they often arrive before the proof.

If you call something game-changing, the next sentence needs to prove it.

What changes? For whom? By how much? Compared to what? Why now? What evidence supports the claim?

Without that context, hype language weakens the release, ensuring the story sounds bigger, but less credible.

In the webinar, one product launch example packed several of these buzzwords into the opening paragraph: revolutionary, engineered from the ground up, unparalleled scalability, security, flexibility, seamless, reliable, cutting-edge experiences.

That is a lot for one paragraph to carry…

The fix: Replace hype with proof.

Instead of:

“A revolutionary platform designed to transform retail lottery operations at scale.”

Try:

“The platform lets lottery operators manage retail systems through Google Cloud, giving teams a central way to handle deployment, security, and updates across multiple locations.”

That may be less dramatic, but it gives the reader something to understand, check, and reuse.

You can still use strong language, but it needs to earn its place.

Tom's tip

If you use a phrase like “game-changing,” prove it immediately. What changes? For whom? By how much? Compared to what? Big claims need evidence close by, or they start to weaken the story.

Mistake 5: The proof is buried too low

Many weak releases have a lot of potential…buried below a lot of fluff.

The real outcome sits at the bottom of the quote; the strongest proof point makes its grand entrance in paragraph six; and the most human detail is taking a sabbatical under product terminology.

That creates work for the reader - most readers will not do that work.

Press releases need to follow the logic of the inverted pyramid: the most important information goes first, then the supporting detail, then the background, technical, legal, and company information.

You don’t have to go to war with legal to remove that detail; it simply needs to live in the right spot.

One example from the webinar was heavy detail: satellite data, AI, water leakage detection, software licensing, blah blah blah. Somewhere inside that detail was a far more interesting story: better leak detection and water conservation for a city’s water network.

That story should have been near the top.

A weak opening says:

Company A announced a strategic software licence agreement with Company B for deployment of its AI-powered platform in a long-term water service operation project.

A stronger opening says:

A new AI and satellite data partnership will help detect water leaks earlier across the city’s water network, supporting faster repairs and better water conservation.

The story comes first. The technical details can live at the bottom of the pyramid.

The fix: After drafting the release, look for the strongest sentence. The one that explains why the announcement matters. If it appears below paragraph three, move it up.

Mistake 6: Too many stakeholders flatten the story

Press releases often go through a lot of hands before publication.

PR writes the draft, product adds detail, legal adds caveats, and the list goes on. By the end, the release may be accurate, but the story has been sucked dry (along with your patience).

That is a real challenge. PR teams cannot always ignore internal feedback and technical details often need to be there.

But (and it’s a big but) every stakeholder does not need equal space in the opening section.

The first job of the release is to communicate the story. If the first paragraph tries to satisfy every internal concern at once, you’ll probably lose the reader.

The fix is partly structural and partly internal.

Structurally, separate the story from the supporting detail:

Lead with the news and why it matters.
Add the most important proof points.
Use the quote to bring in perspective.
Explain the technical or legal mechanics lower down.
Keep company boilerplate and background at the end.

Internally, PR teams need to communicate that the goal is not to remove detail, but to make sure people read far enough to reach it.

A good line to use with stakeholders:

“We have included the detail, but moved it lower so the release opens with the story journalists are most likely to use.”

That frames structure as a distribution decision rather than a style preference.

Tom's tip

Keep the legal, technical, and stakeholder detail in the release, but move it to the right place. The exciting part belongs at the top. The terms, caveats, and mechanics can sit lower down.

What Tom would fix first

If you only have time for one more pass before publishing, focus on these three areas:

The headline and the first paragraph
Make sure they explain the story quickly. Who is involved? What happened? Why should anyone outside the company care?
The quote
Make it sound like a person with a point of view. It should add context, not repeat the announcement.
The order of information
Move the human outcome, and the proof points up. Move internal mechanics down

A practical framework for better press releases

A strong press release gives journalists, search engines, and AI systems enough to work with.

Presspage’s framework breaks that down into nine parts:

P - Pointed headline

Say what happened clearly. Avoid vague announcement language. Add the real-world angle where possible.

R - Relevant lead

Use the opening paragraph to answer the basics: who, what, where, when, and why it matters.

E - Essential facts

Give readers the information they need to understand the story without digging.

S - Story significance

Explain why this announcement matters now. Connect it to a market shift, customer need, public issue, or practical outcome.

S - Strong quote

Use the quote to add perspective, not repetition. Make it sound like a person with something to say.

P - Proof points

Include numbers, dates, examples, customer details, market data, or concrete results where you can.

A - AI-friendly structure

Use clear headings, clean formatting, and extractable facts. Make the page easy to parse.

G - Get in touch

Make media contact details easy to find. Do not make journalists hunt.

E - Easy to reuse

Write in a way that allows journalists to quote, cite, summarise, and repurpose the story without needing to decode it first.

A quick checklist before you publish

Before the next release goes live, ask:

Can someone understand the story from the headline and lead alone?
Does the first paragraph explain why the announcement matters?
Are the most important facts near the top?
Does the quote add a point of view?
Have we replaced hype with proof?
Is technical or legal detail placed where it helps, rather than where it blocks the story?
Can a journalist lift a fact or quote without extra explanation?
Can an AI system extract the correct information without guessing?

If the answer is no, the release probably needs another pass.

Final takeaway

Most press releases fail because the story is hard to find.

So improving PR content starts with a question:

What does the reader need to understand, use, and care about in this story?

Answer that early and back it up with proof.

That is how you turn a press release from something that gets approved into something that gets used.

Want to publish press releases that journalists, search engines, and AI systems will use?

Book a Presspage demo and see how the platform helps comms manage 5-star PR content from one place.

PR data breach response plan | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Fri, 08 May 2026 09:40:50 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

A data breach quickly becomes a trust issue, not just a technical one.
PR should not diagnose the breach, but it must own the communication process.
Early statements should share confirmed facts, not guesswork.
One central update page helps stop mixed messages, outdated screenshots, and AI summaries from spreading confusion.
The response is not finished when the news cycle slows down. Close the loop publicly and update the plan for next time.

A data breach is a technical issue that almost always turns into a trust issue. That second part is where PR teams step in.

While IT investigates what happened, the story is already moving. Customers expect answers, journalists want a timeline, and employees need talking points. And in 2026, AI summaries start pulling from whatever information is public first.

That makes data breach crisis management different from most other crisis work. You are rarely dealing with a complete picture from the get-go, and you're expected to start communicating regardless.

Data breaches by the numbers:

The Identity Theft Resource Center tracked 3,205 data compromises in 2023, a record high and a 72% increase over the previous all-time high.
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report puts the global average breach cost at USD 4.4 million, with faster identification and containment linked to lower costs.
Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report analysed more than 22,000 security incidents and 12,195 confirmed data breaches, with credential abuse as one of the main culprits.

These figures show the problem is not going away soon. For PR teams, the lesson is this: you can’t own the investigation. But you must own the communications process around it.

This data breach response plan helps you do just this by breaking that process into six stages: detection, internal alignment, first response, public messaging, ongoing updates, and recovery.

What is a data breach?

A data breach happens when personal, confidential, or protected information is accessed, disclosed, lost, stolen, altered, or exposed without authorization.

That can include:

Customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, or login details
Financial information
Medical or health data
Employee records
Passport numbers, ID numbers, or Social Security numbers
Commercially sensitive company data
Data exposed through a supplier, vendor, or software provider

Not every cyber incident is a data breach. A system outage, ransomware attempt, or suspicious login may not involve confirmed data exposure. But from a communications point of view, the distinction can get lost in the public court of opinion.

That is why PR should avoid overclaiming early.

“Cybersecurity incident” may be accurate while the facts are still being reviewed. “Data breach” may become accurate once unauthorized access to data is confirmed. The wording matters because it shapes customer fear, media coverage, regulatory expectations, and legal exposure.

The FTC’s breach response guide has this to say:

“The only thing worse than a data breach is multiple data breaches.”

That line may be aimed at security teams, but it hits a nerve with comms too. A poor first statement can create a second PR crisis: confusion, contradiction, and loss of trust.

What makes a data breach different from other crises?

Most crises create a reputational problem. A data breach adds legal, technical, personal, and emotional risk.

People want to know:

Was my data stolen?
What type of data?
Am I at risk of identity theft?
When did you know?
Why did you not protect it?
What should I do now?
Can I still trust you?

That makes the communications job more complicated than normal. PR cannot publish vague reassurance and hope the story settles. The response has to be factual, careful, human, and regularly updated.

There are four reasons data breach crisis management is especially difficult.

1. The facts change quickly

Early information is often incomplete. The breach may involve one system, then a supplier, then a larger dataset. The number of affected people may change. The type of data exposed may change. The cause could quickly shift from a suspected phishing attack to a compromised third-party.

23andMe is a useful example. The company said in December 2023 that it had learned of unauthorized access to a number of 23andMe accounts through credential stuffing (where usernames and passwords are reused from other compromised websites). Later investigations by the UK ICO and Canada’s privacy regulator focused on how the attack unfolded and the protections in place.

The communications lesson: your first statement should create room for updates. Say what is known, what is not yet known, what is being done, and when people can expect more information.

2. Legal notification duties may apply

Under GDPR Article 33, organizations may need to notify the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours after becoming aware of a personal data breach if the breach is likely to create risk for individuals. The Dutch Data Protection Authority also states that organizations may be obliged to report a breach to the AP (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) within 72 hours.

PR should align with legal, not interpret the law.

Our role is to make sure public messaging, customer notifications, media statements, executive lines, internal updates, and website content all work from the same approved facts.

3. The public story may start before the company speaks

Sometimes the first public signal is not a company statement.

Picture this: your customer support team receives three complaints about suspicious account activity. At the same time, a journalist emails asking whether your company has been affected by a supplier breach. Someone on LinkedIn posts a screenshot claiming customer data is for sale. Internally, security is still checking whether the claim is real.

That is the moment PR needs a process. Not necessarily a polished final answer, but a way to align facts, prepare a holding line, and stop five different versions of the story from circulating.

4. Operational disruption becomes part of the story

A breach can shut down systems, disrupt services, and even affect customers who were never directly exposed.

Change Healthcare is a recent example of how fast a breach can spread beyond the security team. In 2024, a cyberattack disrupted healthcare payments and claims across the United States, affecting hospitals, pharmacies, insurers, and patients. Reuters later reported that private data may have been exposed for about one-third of the US population.

The lesson for PR teams: when a breach affects daily services, communication needs to explain both the data risk and the real-world disruption.

The 6-stage data breach response plan

A good data breach response plan gives PR teams structure before the story explodes.

The aim is to communicate with enough speed, clarity, and discipline that the organization maintains credibility as the investigation develops.

Phase 1 - Detection: stay internal, gather facts, monitor signals

The first phase begins when a possible breach is detected. At this point, the communications team may only have fragments. A monitoring alert, vendor notice, or perhaps a journalist is asking whether customer data has been exposed.

PR’s job is not to diagnose the breach. It is to prepare the communications response, keep teams aligned, and make sure nobody gets ahead of the facts.

At this stage, PR should establish:

What has been detected
Who detected it
Which systems or datasets may be involved
Whether personal data may be affected
Whether customers, employees, partners, or media are already aware
Whether any public claims are circulating
Who is currently investigating
Who is authorized to approve statements

This is also the time to start a live communications log. Record what is known, when it became known, who confirmed it, what has been approved, and what has been published.

Resource Alert: Learn how to create a live feed with our Live News feature to avoid confusion while you're waiting for the facts. Watch the webinar >>>

In a breach, your timeline becomes evidence. Journalists, regulators, customers, and internal teams will all care about when the organization knew, what it said, and how quickly it acted.

PR checklist for Phase 1

Open a shared comms timeline
Confirm the internal incident lead
Identify legal, security, customer support, HR, and leadership contacts
Start monitoring media, social, search, forums, and AI summaries
Prepare a draft holding line for internal use
Do not publish before facts and approvals are clear

Phase 2 - Internal alignment: align messaging with legal and IT

This is often where the response starts to break down.

The security team is still piecing together what happened, legal is reviewing what can be said, and customer-facing teams are already getting questions they cannot fully answer yet.

PR sits in the middle of the mess.

And that is exactly why the response plan matters. It gives everyone a shared process before uncertainty turns into mixed messaging.

The core group should include:

Security or IT lead
Legal or privacy counsel
Communications lead
Customer support lead
HR or internal comms lead
Executive sponsor
Relevant regional or market leads

The comms lead should push for one shared fact base that answers:

What happened?
When was it detected?
What data may be involved?
Who may be affected?
What has the organization done so far?
What should affected people do?
What is still being investigated?
When will the next update come?

If those answers are not ready, say so internally. Then prepare messaging that acknowledges uncertainty without sounding evasive.

For example:

Bad line: “We take security seriously and are investigating.”

Better line: “We are investigating unauthorized access to part of our customer account environment. At this stage, we are working to confirm what data may have been involved. We will update affected customers directly as soon as we can provide verified information.”

The second version still protects the investigation, but it also gives people something concrete.

Phase 3 - First response: prepare the holding statement

A holding statement should be ready before the company has every detail. It gives the organization a controlled, factual line to use with stakeholders and affected parties while the investigation continues.

A good data breach holding statement should include:

Acknowledgement of the incident
Current status of the investigation
What is known
What is not yet confirmed
Actions already taken
Commitment to direct updates for affected people
A clear place for future updates

The tone should be clear, serious, and measured. Avoid panic, vague reassurance, or over-apologizing.

You don’t need to answer every question immediately. Offer enough confirmed information for people to understand the situation and how it might affect them.

The risk is that many companies stop there and never become more specific, which can cause trust to drain away.

PR checklist for Phase 3

Draft one approved holding statement
Prepare internal Q&A for employees and customer teams
Create media response lines
Decide where the statement will live
Prepare a brand newsroom or update page
Set review times for the next update
Avoid speculation about cause, scale, or affected data

Phase 4 - Public messaging: acknowledge early, share confirmed facts, set expectations

Once the organization communicates publicly, the response shifts gear.

Your stakeholders will extend the reach of your initial statement. AI and search will summarize it for new audiences. And social media may strip it of all context, boiling your carefully crafted message down to clickbait, screenshots, and memes.

That means the public message has to work hard.

It should answer five questions quickly:

What happened?
Who may be affected?
What information may be involved?
What is the organization doing?
What should people do now?

The FTC recommends anticipating the questions people will ask and putting clear answers somewhere easy to find. That is where an online newsroom software or dedicated breach update page becomes important. It gives journalists, customers, and other stakeholders one official source instead of scattered statements across email, social, and customer service scripts.

For PR teams, the public message should also be built for reuse. That means quotable facts for journalists, straightforward instructions for customers, and clear entities, dates, and claims for AI systems.

Weak public messaging sounds like this:

“We recently became aware of an incident that may have involved certain information. We take this matter seriously and are working diligently to address it.”

Stronger public messaging sounds like this:

“On [date], we detected unauthorized access to [system/account environment/vendor platform]. Our investigation so far indicates that [type of data] may have been involved. We have [action taken], engaged [external support/law enforcement/regulators where appropriate], and will contact affected individuals directly with steps they can take.”

Phase 5 - Managing ongoing updates: keep the cadence, handle media, correct misinformation

The first public statement rarely ends the story.

In many data breach crises, the hardest part comes after disclosure. New information appears, and the proverbial “shit” hits the fan again: more customer complaints, more journalist questions, and more AI summaries pulling from incomplete information.

Picture a retail brand that publishes its first breach statement on Monday morning. By Monday afternoon, the affected customer group has changed. By Tuesday, a trade journalist is reporting on a supplier connection. By Wednesday, customers are sharing old screenshots of the first statement as if it is still current.

Without one live source of truth, the team ends up fighting yesterday’s version of the story.

This is where a steady update rhythm matters.

A breach update page should include:

Latest verified status
Timeline of updates
Who is affected
What data may be involved
What the company has done
What affected people should do
Contact details for media and customers
Links to regulator notices or support resources where relevant

The goal is to reduce confusion. If a journalist, employee, customer, or AI tool looks for the latest official position, they should land on the same current information.

The MOVEit breach wave shows why this matters. One software vulnerability affected organizations across multiple sectors, leaving many companies to explain a breach they did not directly cause. As more organizations confirmed exposure, the story kept expanding.

That is exactly when a single, current update page that you control becomes essential. Customers rarely care where the breach began. They care whether their data was affected, what happens next, and whether your organization is being clear with them.

PR checklist for Phase 5

Publish updates in one central place
Add timestamps to every update
Keep old statements accessible where appropriate
Brief customer-facing teams before each public update
Monitor media and social narratives
Correct inaccurate claims quickly
Keep spokespeople aligned on what can and cannot be said
Avoid “no comment” where a factual process answer is possible

A better alternative to “no comment”:

“We cannot confirm that detail while the investigation is active. What we can confirm is that [verified fact]. Our next update will be published on [channel] when we have more verified information.”

Phase 6 - Resolution and learnings: close the loop publicly

A data breach response does not end when the news cycle slows down.

Your customers will want to know what happened and regulators may still investigate. Journalists may even revisit the story months later. And search results and AI summaries will continue to surface old information unless the official record is updated.

The final phase comms should close the loop and include:

Final scope of affected data, where known
Number or category of affected individuals, where appropriate
Customer notification status
Support provided, such as credit monitoring or identity protection
Security measures taken
Policy or process changes
Contact routes for further questions
A statement from an accountable leader

This is also the moment to review the communications response internally.

Ask:

Did PR join the incident team early enough?
Was the approval process clear?
Did legal, security, and comms work from one fact base?
Were customer teams briefed before public updates?
Did the newsroom or update page carry the latest information?
Which questions were hardest to answer?
What misinformation appeared?
Which response materials should be updated?

Want this resource as an easy-to-use template?

FAQ: Data breach response plan

What should be included in a data breach response plan?

A data breach response plan should define who is involved, who approves messaging, where updates are published, and how affected people will be informed. For PR teams, it should cover detection, internal alignment, first response, public messaging, ongoing updates, and post-crisis review.

How should PR teams respond to a data breach?

PR teams should gather confirmed facts, align with legal and security, prepare a holding statement, and publish clear updates from one official source. The goal is to communicate early enough to reduce confusion, without speculating or getting ahead of the investigation.

When should a company communicate publicly about a data breach?

A company should communicate publicly when it has enough verified information to acknowledge the issue clearly, or when customers, journalists, employees, or public speculation make silence more damaging. Legal notification duties may also apply, so PR should work closely with legal before publishing.

What should a data breach holding statement include?

A data breach holding statement should acknowledge the incident, explain what is being investigated, share confirmed facts, outline actions already taken, and point people to the official place for future updates. It should be clear, serious, and measured.

How do you rebuild trust after a data breach?

Rebuilding trust after a data breach means closing the loop publicly. That includes explaining what happened where possible, what actions were taken, what affected people should do, and what has changed since the incident. The response should also feed into a stronger plan for next time.

The takeaway

A data breach puts your whole organization under scrutiny.

The technical investigation and legal process matters. But the public response shapes how people understand the incident, how much they trust your organization, and whether the story becomes a controlled update or a brand reputation freefall.

The best PR teams prepare before the breach is public. They know who needs to approve the message, where updates will be published and what can be said before the full picture is available. And they know how to do all this without sounding evasive.

A good data breach response plan gives teams that structure. And when the story is moving fast, structure is what keeps the message from falling apart.

Need some help? Try our ‘Autopsy of a PR crisis’ webinar!

A data breach is a crime. But the real damage often happens after.

In this live PR crisis simulator, we reopen a data breach case and examine the communications response like a crime scene. You will inspect the evidence, follow the timeline, spot where the response broke down, and see how the situation could have been handled differently.

Thought leadership in PR | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:14:16 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

Thought leadership gives your content a reason to be used by making it easier to quote, reference, and reuse across media, search, and AI-driven channels.
Real visibility comes from what happens after you publish, not from the act of publishing itself.
Consistency turns perspective into authority, as each piece reinforces the last and builds recognition over time.
Even the strongest ideas won’t go far without the right setup, so your content needs a structure that makes it easy to find, understand, and reuse.

Somewhere right now, a journalist is writing a story you could have been in.

They needed a sharp quote, a confident voice, and a source with something real to say. Unfortunately for you, your name didn’t come up. Why? Because your content doesn’t add anything deeper to the conversation.

This is the underlying problem behind a lot of PR activity that looks healthy on paper. Everyone’s calendars are full, content is getting published, and metrics are looking good, but when decisions are made about what to quote, reference, or reuse, your content is nowhere to be found.

Thought leadership changes that by building long-term, authoritative credibility.

In this guide, we’ll break down what thought leadership in PR actually means, how it differs from traditional PR content, and how to build a strategy that helps your brand show up across media, search, and AI-driven discovery.

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership is the practice of sharing a clear, informed point of view on topics that matter in your industry. It looks at what’s happening and goes a step further by taking an authoritative stance, explaining the implications, and pointing out what others aren’t saying.

At its core, thought leadership does three things:

takes a stance
backs it up with experience or insight
adds something new to the conversation

That last part is what most content misses. A lot of what brands publish is accurate and well-produced, but it doesn’t dare to try anything new.

Thought leadership does the opposite. It takes a position, backs it up, and gives people (and machines) something worth repeating.

Why is thought leadership in PR important?

If thought leadership gives your content a point of view, its real value shows up in what happens after it makes the rounds.

Your content moves through multiple layers - from journalists deciding what to include, to AI systems determining what to surface, to audiences choosing what to engage with.

Thought leadership is what helps your perspective hold up across all of them.

It makes your perspective easier to carry across those environments, which builds authority and credibility over time.

Here’s how that plays out.

1. It increases your chances of being quoted

Most journalists already have the facts. What they need is a perspective they can work with.

When they’re chasing tight deadlines, they look for sources that already frame the story. A clear point of view can be lifted directly into an article, used to support an argument, or added as expert context without extra interpretation.

How thought leadership helps with this:

You give journalists something they can quote
You help shape the angle of the story
Your brand becomes a source, not just a mention
You become easier to include when speed matters

2. It helps AI systems understand and cite your brand as a credible source

Clarity is what makes content usable for AI systems.

When generating answers or summaries, AI relies on information that is structured and easy to extract. Content that clearly expresses an idea is more likely to be surfaced and reused.

How thought leadership helps with this:

Your ideas are easier to extract and summarize
Clear statements are more likely to be surfaced in AI-generated answers
Repeated appearances reinforce your brand as a credible source
Your content becomes something AI can reference, not just index

RESOURCE ALERT

Looking for tips on how to optimize your content and newsroom for LLMs and AI discovery? Check out our recent guide.

3. It adds a human voice in an AI-heavy content avalanche

Most content gets consumed quickly and forgotten just as fast. Often, what makes something stick is when it’s a real person's unique point of view. That’s the thing that makes people give a sh*t.

How thought leadership helps with this:

You offer people something to agree with, challenge, or respond to
Your content creates a stronger connection with your audience
Your ideas are more likely to be remembered and revisited
Your brand feels more recognizable and consistent over time

4. Builds long-term visibility and authority

Over time, consistent thought leadership starts to compound.

When your content is grounded in a consistent perspective, each piece reinforces the last. Over time, that builds recognition and makes your brand easier to find, reference, and trust.

That’s what drives real impact. For example, 53% of buyers say thought leadership has directly influenced a purchasing decision, and 89% of decision-makers say it improves their perception of an organization.

How thought leadership helps with this:

Your ideas reinforce each other instead of competing
You build recognition through consistency, not volume
Your perspective becomes easier to find and trust
Visibility grows as your thinking shows up across channels

What is thought leadership content? (+ examples)

Enough theory - let’s look at some thought leadership IRL.

In most cases, you’re not creating something from scratch, but working with the same formats you already use - press releases, blog posts, LinkedIn updates - and approaching them differently.

Instead of simply sharing information, thought leadership content interprets it, challenges it, or connects it to a broader perspective based on your unique experience.

IRL, that could be:

A press release that goes beyond the announcement and explains what it signals for your industry
A blog post that takes a position on a trend, rather than just listing it
A LinkedIn post that reacts to a current topic with a clear, informed stance
An executive viewpoint that connects day-to-day developments to a bigger picture
A breakdown of a complex issue that introduces a distinct way of thinking about it
A podcast or interview that explores a topic in depth and surfaces a clear, experience-led perspective

What these examples have in common is that each piece gives people something they can take away and use: a quote, a perspective, or a way of framing a topic that goes beyond what’s already out there.

Thought leadership vs. traditional PR content

Now, we’re not saying to make all of your PR content thought leadership. Just to implement it into your existing content strategy.

Both types have their place, but they serve different purposes: Traditional PR content is designed to inform, while thought leadership is made to influence.

Here’s how they compare:

	Traditional PR content	Thought leadership content
Primary goal	Share information or announcements	Shape perspective and influence thinking
Focus	What happened	What it means and why it matters
Tone	Neutral, factual	Opinionated, interpretive
Structure	Standardized (e.g. press release format)	Flexible, driven by argument or perspective
Quotability	Limited (facts over opinions)	High (clear statements that can be reused)
Longevity	Short-term relevance	Longer-term, often evergreen
Role in PR	Supports communication and distribution	Builds authority and visibility over time
AI/search value	Indexed and referenced as a source	More likely to be cited, summarized, and surfaced

How to build a thought leadership PR strategy

The strongest voices on social media often make it look easy, but that kind of consistency doesn’t happen by accident.

Behind most thought leadership is a team shaping the message and making sure it shows up in the right places.

Here’s how to build that into your PR strategy.

1. Define your point of view

Everything starts here.

If your content doesn’t take a position, it won’t make it far.

Your point of view should be grounded in:

What you see happening in your industry
What you believe others are getting wrong
What your experience tells you that others might miss

This isn’t about being controversial for the sake of it. It just means being clear about where you stand, and why.

A practical example from automotive PR

Take the automotive industry.

There’s no shortage of content about the shift to electric vehicles. Most of it repeats the same points around adoption, infrastructure, and regulation.

Now compare that to a brand that has defined its point of view, arguing that the real barrier isn’t infrastructure, but trust, particularly around long-term costs, battery lifespan, and resale value.

That shift gives their content a different role. It moves from reporting what’s happening to shaping how it’s understood, which gives journalists something to quote and audiences something to engage with.

2. Turn expertise into content

Most teams already have the expertise. The challenge is getting it out of people’s heads and onto the page.

That often means:

Turning internal conversations into external insights
Translating experience into clear arguments
Focusing on interpretation, not just information

Instead of asking “Can we turn this into something?”, the better question is: “What do we actually think about this?”

3. Publish on owned channels

Thought leadership needs a place to live.

Your newsroom, blog, or content hub gives you control over how your ideas are presented, structured, and discovered, both by journalists and by AI systems.

It also ensures your content is:

Consistent
Accessible
Easy to reference over time

This is what turns individual pieces into something that builds authority.

4. Activate corporate influencers

Thought leadership lands harder when it comes from people, not logos.

Enter: corporate influencers.

Corporate influencers are individuals within your organization who consistently share perspectives on behalf of the company. Think executives, subject matter experts, or team leads who have both the expertise and the credibility to speak on industry topics.

They’re the voices behind the opinions you see circulating on platforms like LinkedIn.

They’re effective because:

People engage with people more than brands
Expertise feels more authentic when it’s tied to a person
Perspectives are easier to recognize and follow over time

In practice, this means:

Helping internal experts develop their point of view
Supporting them in turning that into content
Creating consistency in how and where they show up

A practical example from travel PR

The scenario: A travel brand is looking to build more authority around sustainable tourism.

Instead of publishing generic content under the brand name, the PR team identifies a Head of Sustainability who is already close to the topic and has a clear perspective on the challenges behind it.

Rather than just asking them to “post more”, they work with that person to shape a point of view. For example, they agree on sharing the idea that most sustainability messaging in travel is too vague to build real trust, and that travellers are starting to expect more transparency around impact.

From there, the team supports them in turning that perspective into content. A longer article in the brand newsroom becomes the foundation, which is then adapted into LinkedIn posts, media commentary, and talking points for interviews.

Over time, that individual becomes associated with that perspective. Their voice becomes recognizable, their opinions easier to reference, and the brand benefits from being consistently linked to a clear, credible point of view.

5. Distribute and repurpose

Publishing is only the starting point. To get real value from thought leadership, your content needs to circulate.

That means:

Sharing it across channels
Adapting it for different formats
Revisiting and reusing ideas over time

One strong perspective can become a blog post, LinkedIn thread, media pitch, or quote in a press release.

But PR distribution alone isn’t enough. Your content also needs to be discoverable and usable over time.

A well-structured newsroom software like Presspage makes your content easier to index, easier to find, and easier to pick up, by both search engines and AI systems looking for credible sources. It becomes a central place where your perspective lives and can be discovered over time.

Rather than trying to create more, the goal is to make your content carry further on its own, so it continues to stay relevant without relying on constant distribution.

PRESSPAGE PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Presspage gives your team a structured newsroom where thought leadership can live, grow, and be discovered. Instead of content being scattered across channels, everything sits in one place that’s built for visibility, making it easier for journalists to find, for search engines to index, and for AI systems to pick up and reuse.

It also helps you turn perspectives into usable content faster. From publishing perspective-led articles to creating media-ready formats and tracking how they perform, Presspage supports the full lifecycle, so your thought leadership continues to show up beyond where you publish it.

FAQ: thought leadership in PR

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership in PR is the practice of sharing a clear, informed point of view on topics that matter in your industry. Instead of just reporting what’s happening, it explains what it means, why it matters, and adds a perspective others can reference or build on.

What is thought leadership content?

Thought leadership content is any content that expresses a distinct perspective, whether that’s a blog post, press release, LinkedIn post, or interview. The format doesn’t matter as much as the intent: it should give people something they can quote, reuse, or engage with.

What is a corporate influencer?

A corporate influencer is someone within your organization - such as an executive, subject matter expert, or team lead - who consistently shares perspectives on behalf of the company. They act as the voice behind your thought leadership, making ideas more credible, recognizable, and easier to follow.

Why is thought leadership important for PR?

Thought leadership helps PR teams move beyond publishing content to shaping conversations. It increases the chances of being quoted, improves visibility in AI-generated results, and builds long-term authority by making your ideas easier to find, reference, and reuse.

How do you build a thought leadership strategy?

Building a thought leadership strategy starts with defining a clear point of view, turning internal expertise into content, and publishing it on owned channels. From there, it involves activating corporate influencers and distributing content in ways that help it reach new audiences and contexts over time.

The takeaway

Don’t treat thought leadership like a one-off content exercise.

If you want it to work, focus on what is proven to be effective: a clear point of view, the right voices behind it, and a structure that makes it easy to find, reference, and return to.

So the next time you create something, make sure it has a reason to be picked up.

To see how a newsroom supports that, explore The Ultimate Guide to Managing a Brand Newsroom:

The Crisis Lifecycle Framework | Presspage

Teis Meijer — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:28:23 GMT

TL;DR - Key takeaways:

The Crisis Lifecycle Framework gives PR teams a clear structure to handle issues from early signals to recovery
The six stages – Sense, Frame, Manage, Act, Recover, Improve – create a shared language when things move fast
Most communication failures happen in the early stages, not during the peak of a crisis
Applying the framework in real scenarios helps teams respond faster, publish sooner, and stay consistent

Most PR teams understand the importance of crisis communication. What they often lack is a concrete framework to rely on when things get messy.

When a crisis hits, everything speeds up, often without warning. Teams jump into action, with monitoring, drafting, approvals, and internal updates happening at the same time. But without a shared structure, things can get messy. Teams move at different speeds, decisions stall, and the story takes shape before you have a chance to respond.

Even though 72.4% of organisations activated their emergency communications plan in the past year, only 49% have a structured approach behind it.

So yes, plans exist. But execution still breaks down. That’s exactly what a clear crisis communication framework is built to fix.

In this article, we’ll break down our Crisis Lifecycle Framework and show how to apply it IRL.

What is the Crisis Lifecycle Framework?

The Crisis Lifecycle Framework is a structured approach to crisis communication that breaks response into six practical stages:

Sense
Frame
Manage
Act
Recover
Improve

Instead of treating a crisis as a single moment, the framework sees it as a sequence of decisions.

Each stage answers a different question:

Are we aware of what’s happening?
Have we defined the narrative?
Are teams aligned internally?
Are we responding externally?
Have we stabilized the situation?
What did we learn?

This is what makes it useful. It outlines actions AND gives teams a clear way to coordinate when speed and alignment matter most.

The 6 stages of the Crisis Lifecycle Framework

1. Sense

This is your early-warning system.

“Sensing” means detecting signals before they escalate into full-blown issues. That goes beyond traditional media monitoring.

You should be tracking:

News coverage and social signals
AI-generated answers about your brand
Internal spikes in questions from sales, HR, or support
Screenshots or narratives circulating outside official channels

Where teams go wrong:

They rely too heavily on traditional media monitoring. By the time coverage appears, the narrative is already forming elsewhere.

What to do instead:

Expand your monitoring to include AI platforms and internal signals. If you’re only monitoring the headlines, you’re already late to the party.

2. Frame

This is where most crises are won or lost.

“Framing” means publishing your version of events before speculation fills the gap.

You don’t need to craft a perfect statement, just a clear, factual anchor while you’re figuring out the details.

That could be:

A short newsroom update
A timestamped holding statement
A basic FAQ clarifying what’s known and unknown

Where teams go wrong:

They wait for full certainty. Meanwhile, the story moves without them.

What to do instead:

Prepare pre-approved templates in advance. The middle of a crisis is not the time to align on wording.

3. Manage

Now is the time to start thinking about internal alignment.

At this stage, you’re coordinating:

Communications
Legal
Leadership
HR and customer-facing teams

Update:

Crisis playbooks
Approval workflows
Monitoring setups
Executive training

Where teams go wrong:

They treat crises as one-offs instead of learning opportunities.

What to do instead:

Turn every incident into a repeatable improvement. Today’s edge case becomes tomorrow’s standard scenario.

Applying the Crisis Lifecycle Framework IRL

Manage:

You align internally across comms, support, product, and operations. Teams agree on what is known so far, how to respond to incoming questions, and when to escalate externally. Leadership is briefed on potential impact.

Act:

You communicate selectively and early. Affected customers are informed directly, and if the issue starts gaining visibility, you publish a clear update outlining what’s happening and what customers can expect next.

Recover:

You monitor whether the issue stabilizes or spreads. Are complaints increasing? Are customers reassured by your response? You adjust communication as needed to prevent confusion or escalation.

Improve:

You review how quickly the issue was detected and how effectively it was contained. You refine monitoring, escalation thresholds, and communication workflows to catch and address similar issues earlier in the future.

FAQ: Crisis communication framework

What is a crisis communication framework?

A crisis communication framework is a structured approach that helps organizations respond to issues consistently and effectively. It defines the stages of response, from early detection to post-crisis improvement.

Why is a structured crisis communication strategy important?

Without structure, crisis response becomes reactive and inconsistent. A clear framework ensures teams move faster, align internally, and communicate more effectively under pressure.

When should a crisis communication plan be activated?

As early as possible. The “Sense” stage exists to catch signals before they escalate. Waiting until an issue is fully visible often means you’ve already lost control of the narrative.

How does the Crisis Lifecycle Framework improve response speed?

By giving teams predefined stages and actions, the framework removes uncertainty. Instead of debating what to do, teams can focus on execution.

What tools support a crisis communication framework?

Most teams use a mix of media monitoring, internal communication tools, and crisis communication software. The key is having a central place where verified information is published and updated.

The takeaway

Most teams already have the pieces in place. Monitoring, messaging, approvals, and escalation paths. What’s often missing is how those pieces connect when things start moving.

The Crisis Lifecycle Framework helps tie that together, so you’re not left figuring it out in the heat of the moment.

If you’re looking at how this plays out in practice, from monitoring to publishing to keeping everything in one place, it’s exactly what modern crisis communication setups are built around.

Presspage helps teams put that structure in place. Find out how we can help you level up your crisis communication strategy.