Fifteen More Press Release Writing Rules to Improve Your Organization's Branding
In a previous article, I described fifteen ways you can improve your press release. But because I know that, crafting a media release can be overwhelming at first, so I've come up with another fifteen rules for the new marketer.
With some knowledge and experience you can write an effective piece. To start, just follow the tips below for writing and distributing your media release.
1. Include Company Information If your company is going to take the time to write a news article, you should probably take the time to write a paragraph about the company. This gives the reporters a little background information on the business and qualifies the source of information.
2. Interest Your Audience Keep your audience and the publications readers in mind. Before writing your press release you should consider why the news matters to them. Ask yourself if you'd want to read the press release, if you were in their shoes.
3. Clear Headlines Keep in mind that the reader should be able to catch the idea of your story from the headline alone. Focusing on the angle and idea of the story is more important than developing a 'catchy' slogan.
4. Personalize Your Distribution Get the name of the person you are sending your press release to and place it in a prominent position. Be sure to double-check the spelling.
5. Stay Relevant Journalists want news that is relevant to their audience. Writing to meet the needs of the publication your submitting to greatly improves your odds of inclusion.
6. Build Credibility Quotes from your company's senior executives should do. News releases are taken a much more seriously when the boss's name is on the line.
7. Condense The News You should try to tell the entire story in the first paragraph. The rest of the release can contain more details. But it's nice to know that if everything else is cut, you still got your main points across. Being top heavy" is a good thing.
8. Demonstrate Positive Intentions If space permits, allow an executive of your organization to inject some human interest to the story. These types of quotes can be used to demonstrate compassion, show good intentions, or simply transition a negative story back to a positive tone.
9. Be Truthful It may be tempting to bend the truth to develop a better story, but you should avoid doing so. Media professionals have a rule of verifying information before publication.
10. Location Matters You should define the location your press release originates from. Editors love to find a local angle on popular stories. And for certain industries, location matters.
11. Utilize Proper Attribution If your press release includes information or quotes from other sources, it's a good idea to attribute that information to the original source. This allows the journalist to verify the information, plus it provides credibility.
12. Make Yourself Reachable Provide a specific contact person with a phone number where they can be reached. Don't make contacting you a challenge. In fact it's a good idea to include an email address, web address, and fax number as well.
13. Solve Problems The media loves stories that explain how human innovation and creativity are solving our everyday problems. If you can explain how to fix a common problem, you'll appear to be the expert. Alternatively, you might demonstrate how a solution is being developed.
14. Clean Layout For press releases submitted by mail, you should always double space them, number your pages, type News Release" at the top, and include a release date.
15. Avoid Jargon Industry jargon isn't appropriate for all publications. You need to keep your readers in mind when writing your release. Using common language makes your release easier to understand.
If you follow these rules for writing powerful press releases, you substantially increase the chance of your press release being picked up. If you want even more ways to improve your media release writing you should read the large list of ways to write more effective news releases.
About the Author
This article was written by Wes Upchurch of PressDr.com, a leading press release distribution company. You can visit the PressDr Blog for even more press release advice.
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