Perhaps you look upon your organization’s elections and awards as simply yearly tasks that you and your staff must perform. But these events are noteworthy both for your organization and the winners, and they provide an easy opportunity for you to increase your organization’s brand.

The key to leveraging these events for your organization is the press release. Press releases today are no longer solely an attempt to get your organization’s name in print from mainstream media. Creating press releases to distribute via the web will increase your organization’s online presence and can help drive more traffic to your site.

Many organizations already put out a standard release announcing the new board of directors or award winners, but an extra step can lead to a much higher distribution of the message. By creating press releases for each of the winners of elections, awards, scholarships and other voting events, you can give your winners the tools they need to spread the news in their own networks.

A simple way to create individual press releases is to use a mail merge program to insert each winner’s information into a standard template. Then you can send the individual press releases to the winners with suggestions on where they can distribute the information, such as their alma matter, corporate communications department, local newspaper, industry magazines and more. In addition, you can share information about places to post press releases for free (such as this list from SubHub). If you don’t have the time or staff to create individual press releases, create a template that the winners can personalize and distribute.

Does your organization put out press releases for your elections or awards? How do you use the events to increase your brand?