Creating Effective Press Releases

Companies that want to generate more media coverage, especially smaller businesses, need to be able to create effective press releases to be able to do so in the first place. Things like the title of the press release, as well as the stories that the company is trying to tell in the press release, are incredibly important.

Story

Before a company even starts creating its press release, it needs to think about the things it enjoys consuming through media outlets. In general, people tend to be interested in things that they haven’t heard before, things that will solve their problems, or things that will surprise them, which means the story that the company wants to tell needs to be newsworthy, and of interest to people outside of the company. If there’s anything unexpected or unusual about the story, it can be used to serve as an additional way for the company to grab the attention of the target audience and the journalist it will be reaching out to with the press release. Finally, companies also have to think about whether anyone will actually care about the story that the company is trying to tell through its press release, which might sound harsh, but is just as important as every other element of the press release so that it can generate the right type of media coverage.

Title

Journalists tend to get hundreds of emails from all kinds of businesses on a daily basis, which is why it’s important for companies to mark the emails that contain press releases with the phrase “press release” itself, to let them know. A strong subject line is also essential so that the company will be able to immediately grab the attention of the journalist they are reaching out to. However, companies should avoid being too clever or witty in their titles, because journalists only spend a few seconds deciding whether an email is worth opening or not, based on whether the title is interesting to them, or is going to be interesting to the readers. That means, if the company doesn’t make sure that the journalist will be able to understand what the story is about immediately from the title of the press release, they are likely to move on to the next important thing in their email inbox folder.

Opening

Finally, to create an effective press release, companies will have to make sure that the opening statement of the press release is going to be a summary of the overall story that the company is trying to tell, and it shouldn’t be more than 20 words long. Once a journalist opens the email that they receive from a company, that contains the press release, the next hurdle that businesses have to face is making sure that they are able to grab their attention with the first sentence so that they keep reading, which is why the opening statement of the press release should summarize the entirety of the story in just a few words.