PR explained – How to send media pictures, video and audio in the right sizes and formats to maximise coverage and engagement

Engaging pictures and video are a key tool for the media in the fight to get the attention of readers, so if you want to maximise your odds of getting coverage across your target media it’s important to ensure you provide multimedia content which not only has the right content to support your key messages but is also provided in the right formats and sizes ready for use.

Put simply, the easier you may it for journalists to quickly publish your story, the better chance it will be chosen over the alternatives being pitched by other people.

Here are a few useful tips to avoid missing out on coverage, or having just text – which will be less likely to grab the reader’s attention – because you sent the wrong thing in the wrong format or size.

Copyright

Any images, video or audio needs to be copyright-cleared – if you didn’t create it, you need to have permission from whoever did and ensure they don’t want a payment from any media using it or it may not be used because media often don’t have a budget to pay for contributed content.

If necessary, you should agree a payment with the creator for the intended uses. You should always request any copyright be acknowledged by media who use it in the caption.

Print media images

• For newspapers, pictures need to be between 15cm and 30cm long on the longest edge at 200ppi (pixels per inch) – or they’ll look blurred when printed at typical usage sizes. Pictures are being used bigger to fill pages quicker. Images saved from social media typically won’t be big enough – as the platforms usually automatically shrink them to an optimal size and resolution for them but that usually leaves them less than the minimum 5 million pixels required for print media use.
• Images for glossy paper reproduction – magazines – should be at least 15cm long on the longest edge saved at 300ppi.
• It’s best to provide both Portrait (Vertical) and Landscape (Horizontal) format versions of pictures for print use as some page design templates will have picture boxes which are Portrait format or Square. If the publication doesn’t use page design templates, offering both shapes will provide the designer more freedom to work around what shape works best for the image.
• Images should be saved as a JPEG at least Quality Level 9/75%
• Images need to be saved in the Standard RGB (sRGB) colour space – publishers will make the conversion to CMYK for printing using a converter that matches the colour reproduction curve of their presses.
• For glossy media – which can usually reproduce colours more accurately – images should ideally be provided in the AdobeRGB colour space – which has more variations of colour than sRGB – if they were shot or created in that.

• Images should include the caption in the IPTC Description metadata field (viewable in Photoshop, Lightroom and some other image editing applications) – so once dropped into media’s picture management systems they can see who it is and, in some cases, automatically complete the caption under the picture once assigned to a page. It also allows them to be found again for follow-up stories.
• Keywords for the image and story should also be saved in the Keywords IPTC metadata field – to aid archiving of the images by media for reuse.
• Any limitations on images’ use need to be flagged in the Copyright Notice IPTC metadata field.

Online images

Blogs/Stories – it’s good to send contributed images at other specifications media may need them for – saving them from having to resample them from the high-resolution versions, which will help them and build the relationship with you.

Making versions at 700px wide at 100ppi (the highest resolution most monitors will show and default column width in WordPress) for web stories is ideal.

They need to be in the sRGB colour space, or web browsers won’t display them or the colours won’t display correctly.

Social – provide any for social use at 1200px wide at 100ppi in the sRGB colour space.

Video

Most media are now using video on their websites and social media as it helps get their stories attention, so offering video with your story can also give it an edge over others.

• Provide the best-quality original or edited version you can – in case TV want to broadcast it. They look for at least Full HD size (1920px wide by 1080px tall) unless the story is particularly newsworthy. They can save to a lower spec if they need to.
• Most media will want the high-resolution video files – so they can edit them into a package in their style with their standard style of captions – while some will just want a link to the video on YouTube – so they can embed it in a web page. Ask them which they prefer, if you have time, or offer both.
• If you can, provide ‘B-roll’ footage of things relevant to the story as well as interviews with the people involved – to provide relevant cutaway options for the person editing the video into a package, so it’s not just talking heads which may lose the viewer’s interest.
• If the audiences you’re targeting are particularly active on TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Instagram and the media you’re using to reach them are quite active on those platforms, look to shoot some video in vertical format, or ensure what you provide has the main content in the centre – so it can be cropped to vertical for that use.
• Save your video as an mp4 file at the highest bitrate you can. Media can reduce it for Social use if they want to use it there.
• Share video files via a cloud service such as Dropbox or We Transfer and include a link to the location in your news release.

Audio

• Save submitted audio as an mp3 file and share it via a cloud service
• If the audio is in a video and you can’t extract the audio from it, send in the video as media will be able to do that as well as using the video on their website and Social.