I’ve written so many press releases that I think I could write them in my sleep.
Over the last five years, though—as Sally Falkow of Press Feed reminds us—the game has changed. Your press release is courting a reporter who is busier than ever before. Now, reporters not only need to report the news and/or write great feature stories, they’re also expected to blog, tweet, and contribute to their media outlet’s website. That’s a hefty menu of activities, and reporters really appreciate it when you help them out. And you do that with a social media press release.
Ms. Falkow provides a nice set of instructions for writing it. () When you go to the link embedded here, you can download a printable poster that serves as a quick reminder of the information a press release should provide and how it should look.
Here are a few of the high points:
- Keep your headline short; view it as fodder for a tweet.
- Place an image at the top, and use the headline as a caption.
- Write a short lead paragraph, using a keyword or phrase, as you did in your headline.
- Add links to information that supports what you’re saying.
- Include a video if you can.
- Use real, specific contact information, not one of those “info@” email addresses.
- Make it easy to share the release on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.
Of course, as in the good old days, you still want to make sure that your release is brief and relevant. And you also want to resist the temptation to manufacture news if it doesn’t exist.
Ms. Falkow aims her advice at enterprises, but I believe it works equally well for small businesses and non-profits. Regardless of the nature or size of your organization, if you’re going to make the effort of issuing a press release, you should make it useful to the media.
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