Get to Know a VIP: The Press Release Approval Process

This is the second installment in our ‘Very Important Process’ (VIP) series, in which we look at some of the most important processes across different business departments.

Today, we’re exploring the press release process.

Much like a ‘Very Important Person’, very important processes are often given special treatment due to their significance in the organization. For those that missed the first post of the series, let’s briefly restate what we mean by a VIP:

Now let’s identify the VIP when it comes to the press release process—from creation to publication—and how Nintex, with its easy-to-use intelligent process automation technology, can help you make content-centric processes more efficient.

Hold the Press

Press releases are an important component to a PR professional’s communications arsenal.

Companies can easily create and distribute their own press releases to announce news to a variety of stakeholders, making this an effective alternative of generating visibility versus paid advertising campaigns.

However, creating and approving press releases can be a cumbersome process. You’ll often need to get quotes from your C-Level executives and your content will need to go through various stages of internal/external approval from stakeholder to stakeholder.

The press release approval is undoubtedly a VIP for your communications team. So, the question is how can this process be streamlined to save time and reduce errors?

Finding the VIP in the Press Release Process

The “approval process” is a vital part of generating a press release and any type of company content or public information. It’s important to write well; and always double and triple check your work. Skipping over the details can damage your reputation and credibility.

Sticking to these guidelines doesn’t mean getting a bunch of individuals involved in the approval process, either.

Your job is to work fast and work well.

The more steps that are added to the press release approval process, requiring another action from an individual, the longer it’s going to take to publish your company’s news.

Let’s look at which steps might be included in a standard press release approval process:

• Writing the content for your press release (this is often done by an internal PR team and/or external PR agency partner)
• Sourcing quotes from your CEO and/or external stakeholders (customers, partners, influencers) to make your press release more newsworthy
• Identifying a member/s of your team to edit and proof your press release
• Securing approvals from multiple sources – communications team, marketing team, product team, executive team, legal team, etc.
• Sending the final approved press release to a newswire service to distribute
• Waiting for the newswire to set up your release and issue
• Posting your press release online (corporate website, intranets, and across social channels)
• Sharing your press release with journalists to write about your news

Waiting for each of those actions to be completed slows down the process and may even lead to your product launch or service update being delayed while you wait for people to “sign off” on the press release.

Thanks to process automation technology there is a new modern, consistent way of producing, approving and distributing a press release.

Automating the Press Release Approval Process

While the reviewing of documents should be thorough, the actual approval process itself should be as streamlined and fast as possible.

This is where workflow and content automation software can help. This business process automation technology can automate much of the press release process – saving time and reducing errors.

At Nintex, we believe that sophisticated workflows should be designed with ease.

Building workflows with the Nintex Workflow Cloud can be done so through a drag-and-drop interface, expediting much of the back and forth that usually occurs between stakeholders as they review and edit a press release.

When applied to the VIP press release process, this can make the approval stages quicker.

You remove the potential that individual tasks are simply forgotten or pushed behind other tasks, and you don’t lose time waiting for execs to get back to you. But, you still get the benefit of having multiple individuals review your press release to make sure the tone is right and that no mistakes have slipped through, including typos or spelling someone’s name wrong (a very common mistake).

Automating the VIP that is the press release process will speed things up to help you generate positive results for your company.

Everyone will welcome a streamlined PR approval process… making press release approvals a VIP!

Keep following the Nintex Blog for more Very Important Process “VIP” posts.