Have you ever wondered why your press releases don’t get picked up by journalists?
Having been one for over 15 years, I can openly say that journalists are always on a deadline, often fickle and when it comes to sifting through an inbox full of press releases, when up against tight deadlines, they will take the easiest route.
Often in small businesses, where there is no PR team, home grown releases are written by marketers or sales people. They are on a mission to get all the salient features of the product, event, appointment or service across in as much detail as possible. This is often done in the first three paragraphs with a quote from the boss that repeats what has already been said. They tend to repeatedly say how brilliant or unique the company is and use superlatives with annoying frequency.
Rather than focus on one clear message they try to push several features until the point where the release becomes over long, boring or confusing. Many I have seen also contain basic typos and poor grammar – another turn off.
But the biggest fault is the real story – and there normally is one – gets buried somewhere at the end. An end most journalists never reach when scanning the release described above.
Writing a news story is a formulaic process. A journalist will have been given a word count by their editor or sub-editor – normally 150 to 300 words – and they write the story so they incude: what, where, when, who, why and how in the first few lines. Then comes some supporting well evidenced key points, followed by a punchy quote. If they have space, they will then add some more supporting information, knowing that if a more important story bumps theirs, all this and the quote can be cut without lessening the impact of the story.
Any press release you produce must be structured in a way that makes the journalist’s life easier. The main hook must be the first thing the journalist sees. Keep the subject matter to one clear focus and give three well evidenced key supporting points. And ensure the quote contains additional messages, ideally from the most senior person in the company.
The journalist will be looking for an angle that his reader will pick up on immediately. Issues based releases work best. So if your initiative or announcement addresses the environment, the community, solves a widely accepted problem or you are doing or commenting on something that will improve or impact on people’s (reader’s) lives, it will get noticed.
There are several other best practice suggestions we can share concerning the creation of great and effective press releases. To learn more contact us at: [email protected]
