Publish & share stories

Publishing your story

Once you've put the finishing touches on your story, click the Publish story button in the top right to decide how and when you want it to be published.

For most new accounts, your default publish options will look like this:

These options allow you to:

Less commonly used publish options, such as embargo, are available to toggle on and off through your feature lab settings.

Different publish options

The publish option you select affects things like:

Here's a quick summary of what each publish status offers:

Let's look at those publish statuses a little more closely.

Draft

This is our default mode for newly created stories. Your story is kept in draft until you decide on its published state. A previously published story can be returned to draft using the Publish options button.

Prezly auto-saves changes as you work on your draft, so the version of your story that you see in the editor is always current.

This also gives you the option to revert your current draft to the last hard saved version. You can view your previously saved story drafts using story version history.

A draft story is not visible on your site, is not searchable or indexable on the web, cannot be sent in your email campaigns or pitches, and will only be seen by you and others with access to your Prezly account.

If you need to share the draft story outside of Prezly for review, you can click on the Preview link in the top-right section of the editor. A new window will open showing you the draft story.

The preview URL is a temporary un-guessable link and is meant for internal viewing. This link will change when you publish the story.

Publish immediately

When you choose to Publish immediately, your story will become publicly available on your Prezly site. Any visitors to your site will be able to see the story straightaway, and search engines will begin to index your story, which helps your SEO and inbound PR.

This publish option also gives you the option to backdate your story.

When you choose the Publish immediately option, the URL generated for your story is final, with your story's headline forming part of the link, and your story can be shared immediately via your Prezly campaigns and pitches.

Schedule for later

Use Schedule for later when you want a story to be published on your site at a specific future date and time.

A scheduled story remains in draft until it reaches the scheduled date and time you set.

You can use the preview link generated by clicking the preview button in the top-right corner of the editor to share your scheduled story for internal review.

A scheduled story can only be shared in your Prezly email campaigns and pitches if those communications send on or after the story's scheduled publish date.

When the scheduled publish date is reached, the story will automatically be changed to Published and will become publicly available on your site overview, as well as indexable by search engines and AI.

Embargo

When a story is published in Embargo, the story will remain private until the embargo date is reached.

People you share this story with using a preview link or a campaign will see an embargo message at the top of the story that lets the reader know that the release should remain private until that specified date and time. 

When the set embargo date is reached, the story will automatically be changed to Published, making it publicly available on your site overview and are indexable by search engines. The embargo message banner will no longer appear from this time onwards.

The URL of the story is final and stays the same from Embargo to Published.

Publish as private

This publish option is best used for stories targeting select readers that you plan to reach out to directly, for example, for customized product proposals.

When a story is published as Private, it will not appear on your site homepage, nor will it be indexed by any search engine.

A final link will be generated for a Private story, and only people with the final link to the story will be able to see it. There will also be no sharing buttons available in the story.

Private stories remain Private indefinitely.

You can change a Private story to Public using the Publish options button.

Confidential

This publishing option is best used for sensitive information you will release, e.g. financial reporting, organization changes, R&D updates. Confidential stories only appear to the author of the story in the Prezly application. Even other teammates will not be able to read or edit it!

Confidential stories (both Confidential draft and Publish as confidential) are hidden from other Prezly users in your team. They do not appear on your site, and are not indexable by search engines.

If you wish to share a Confidential story, you can do so using the story's preview link.

You may revoke this access at any time by unpublishing the story. (You may need to publish it first, if you shared a draft.) This expires the link you shared in the previous step, but feel free to share the new one again as needed.

Pinning a story to a site's homepage

Any published story can be pinned to the top of your site and once pinned, the publication date will not show on the site's homepage. Also, if you have multilingual sites, you can pin stories for each different language.

Pin a story from the Story editor
​Once you've published a story, click on 📌 Pin to homepage in the top right. There can only be one pinned story per newsroom at any given time.

Pin a story from the Stories page
​Hover on the story you wish to pin and click on the "•••" button, then select the Pin to homepage option.

Searching for a pinned story

To find the pinned story from your list of published stories, use the filter search and apply the "Is pinned story" = Yes filter rule.

Unpin a story

Pinned stories can be removed from the top of your site's homepage at any time. When you unpin a story, the story will return to its original position based on publication date.

To unpin a story from the top of your site's homepage, you can unselect the purple ✓ Pinned to homepage button on the top right of the story editor.

Or use the "•••" button on the Stories page and click on Unpin from homepage.

Editing your story after you publish

Editing your story content

To change the title of your story or the contents of your story after it's been published, simply make your changes in the story editor and click the Publish changes button in the top-right corner when you're done to take your updates live.

This makes it easy to update media assets or key details in your story even after you have shared it with your contacts.

Changing your story URL

Prezly creates the URL of your story based on the story's title at the moment you hit "publish".

For example, a story with the title "New Gallery Opening" would generate the story slug "new-gallery-opening", which would be appended to your site URL, e.g. "www.brand.com/your-newsroom/new-gallery-opening".

If you want to change the URL of your story after it's been published, there are two ways to do this:

1. Change your story URL in SEO settings

If you're on a Standard Plan or higher, you will have access to story-specific SEO settings that let you easily change your story URL on the fly.

If you change your story URL this way, anyone trying to use the old story URL will be automatically redirected to the new URL, so you don't need to worry about broken links or losing traffic.

2. Change URL by republishing your story

If you are on an Essential Plan, you can change your story URL by unpublishing your story, changing the title to what you want the new URL to be, and then republishing.

Here are those steps in a little more detail:

What if I want the title of my story to be different from its URL?

No problem. Simply follow the steps above to set the URL you want, publish your story, then change the title to whatever you want after the story is published. Hit Save changes.

This way, your title will be updated but your URL will stay the same.

Changing the publication date

To change a published story's date:

Unpublishing your story

If you want to unpublish a story without having to delete it, click the Publish options button in the top right of your story editor, and select Unpublish and make draft. This returns your published story to draft status.

Be careful when unpublishing a story that has already been shared with others, as the link will no longer work and will show an error.

If you've unpublished a story by accident and wish to publish it again, simply go to your Publish options and publish the story.

Deleting a story

You can permanently delete stories through the Actions menu in the story editor:

You can also delete stories through the main stories view by hovering your cursor over the story you want to delete, and clicking the kebab button that appears on the very right of the grid. This will open a menu allowing you to delete your story:

You can also delete multiple draft stories at once by:

Sharing a draft story (preview URL)

You can share your story with colleagues and clients for sign off before you hit publish using the story's preview URL.

The preview URL is a temporary un-guessable link and is meant for internal viewing. This link will change when you publish the story.

To share a draft story using its preview URL:

Sharing a published story

When you publish your story, a message will appear giving you the option to share it right away via social media, URL, email campaign, or 1–1 pitch:

You can also access these options later by clicking the Share story button in your story editor.

Let's take a look at each of these sharing options.

Email campaigns & pitches

Campaigns and pitches let you share your story with one or more contacts in your CRM via email. Alongside the story, you can include other elements in this email, such as intro text and media assets.

There are several ways to create a pitch or a campaign within Prezly.

From here, you can also include a salutation, body text, media assets, and signatures to complete your email. Next, select your recipient or recipients, and hit send.

Social sharing

Sharing your story on social media is a quick way to broaden your reach, drive traffic to your newsroom, and make your content discoverable to a wider audience.

To share your story instantly to LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, X, or Threads, simply:

Share URL

If you just need a quick link you can drop anywhere – WhatsApp, Slack, your website – Prezly makes it simple.

How to copy your shareable link:

The story URL is now copied over to your clipboard. To paste it anywhere you like, right-click and select paste, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + v (Cmd + v if you’re on a Mac).

SEO settings

You can improve the chance of your story appearing first in search results and AI answers by optimizing its SEO settings, which is great for your inbound PR strategy.

Find your SEO settings by opening the story editor, and clicking on SEO settings in the sidebar on the right. (If your sidebar is collapsed, click the gear icon to open it.)

The story settings currently available to customize through Prezly:

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