Hi!

“The press release is dead” is a popular refrain these days.

But as AI changes how people search for and discover information, press releases are more than just a formality, and may offer a different kind of value: They now serve as source material for search engines, AI platforms, investors, patients, and anyone trying to understand a company's science, pipeline, or latest developments.

At our most recent Digital & Social Media Roundtable session, our speakers explored what this means for how biopharma companies write, publish, and manage their news.

Our top 10 takeaways from Press Releases Are Back: Optimizing Biopharma Storytelling for Web, Search, Social, and AI Discovery

1. Write for three audiences at once. A release now serves the reporter or analyst skimming headlines, the investor or patient searching for updates, and the search engines and LLMs extracting facts, so draft for all audiences.
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2. Keep the classic structure and sharpen the headline. Dateline, five-W lead, attributed quotes, forward-looking statements, and boilerplate still belong, and the headline should carry the company name, drug, indication, trial phase, and result.
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3. Cut the enthusiasm from quotes. Phrases like “we are thrilled” or “excited to announce” state no facts and add language AI has to parse, so build executive and KOL quotes around data worth pulling.
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4. Make facts easy to lift. Use one fact per sentence, define acronyms once, keep drug and company names consistent, and move dense data into bullets, tables, or an FAQ that readers and machines can scan.
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5. Link deliberately to build relationships. Link the company name on first mention, ClinicalTrials.gov, FDA documents, related releases, patents, and researchers, since explicit connections help models learn the relationships you intend.
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6. Treat the release like a mini website. Product photos, fact sheets, charts, and partner logos make complex data easier to digest, LLMs can extract data points from charts, and visuals give audiences a reason to click through.
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7. Own the source on your newsroom. Host the full release at a permanent URL on a newsroom you control, link to it from product pages, and add structured data such as title, summary, author, and canonical tag.
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8. Layer updates on a single URL. For an evolving product, post each update on the same page with the newest news on top, which keeps the trust search engines and LLMs already gave that URL.
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9. Publish on a steady cadence. LLMs may look elsewhere if they stop seeing you, so publish substantive content roughly every 28 days, whether a release, blog post, or analyst fireside chat summary, and skip the fluff.
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10. Speak with one voice across teams. PR, SEO, product, brand, and paid teams need a shared message, because conflicting or outdated pages compete with each other and what each team publishes shapes LLM answers.

A big thank you to our moderator, Alex Nicholson (AstraZeneca and Alexion), and panelists Tom Baker (Reportable), Jennifer Saragosa (Business Wire), and Eli Schwartz (Product-Led SEO), for sharing their perspectives – as well as the below resources!

Guides, examples, and future readings from our panelists:

Guides and checklists:

• ​GEO and AEO Best Practices Checklist​
• ​100 Reasons to Send a Press Release​
• ​7 Tips to Supercharge your Press Release​
• ​Writing News Releases for AI Discovery: Guidance for BioPharma​
• ​Newsletter: The Future of SEO & AEO by Eli Schwartz​

Examples of optimized, AI-friendly press releases:

• ​Vertex Pharmaceuticals​
• ​Takeda Pharmaceuticals​

If you missed the conversation or want to revisit the discussion, T2B Pro members can watch the replay here.

Lynnea

P.S. - If you're particularly passionate about digital/social media in our industry and are a T2B Pro member, please consider applying for a spot on our Digital & Social Media Roundtable -- applications due next Monday.