Best Media Release Writing Guidines To Increase Your Business Publicity
Creating a news release may seem like a daunting task at first to a small business owner, but with a bit of research and experience you can write an excellent news release. To start, just follow the tips shown here for writing and distributing your news 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. Communicate Pertinent Information – An old rule in journalism says that you should include the 5 W’s and H. This holds true for press releases. Be sure to answer the questions What, Who, When, Where, Why, and How.
8. Positive Perception – If the local community could perceive your news in a negative manner, you should take extra care to highlight the potential positives of the announcement.
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. Be Prepared – Just because your press release has been sent, doesn’t mean you’re done crafting your message. Be ready to answer calls from journalists and prepare statements for them. Keep a log of the questions they ask, because there’s a good chance that another reporter is going to ask the same thing.
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. Show Professionalism – Using a professional layout and avoid sloppiness to indicating seriousness. Understanding and abiding by industry standards for writing press releases is a great start. For example, always write your press releases in the 3rd person and end your press releases with “-30-” or “XXX”.
15. Timely Release – For local events it is best to send your release to newspapers and television stations about 3 weeks before the event. For national magazines you will have to submit your event several months in advance.
By following these rules for writing powerful news releases, you substantially increase the likelihood of your news release being picked up. To discover additional ways to improve your media release writing you should look at this long list of tips to write better media releases.
