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Press Releases: Promotional Magnets

The big boys have been using press releases to their advantage for years. All of the major companies have people dedicated to handling media relations and one of the most important parts of that job is overseeing the production and distribution of press releases.

Unlike many of the marketing and PR strategies used by the mega-corps that would never work for the little guy, press releases are non-discriminatory. Whether you are operating a one-person shop or running a Fortune 500 firm, you can get a lot of mileage from a press release.

A press release is a document, distributed to media and news sources, that provides information about an interesting or newsworthy story/event. A press release is circulated in hopes of convincing media outlets to run a story on the same topic.

In other words, a press release is a glorified invitation to give the sender free publicity.

If you like to put journalists on a pedestal and imagine all of them as hard working, investigative bloodhounds finding their own leads and stories, the idea of press release might bother you a little.

Press releases are proof positive that media types are just as lazy as the rest of us and appreciate it when someone else hands them work.

So, what's involved in writing a press release? It isn't the world's most complicated proposition, but one does need to understand a few expectations and conventions to pull it off effectively.

For instance, if it reads like an advertisement it won't get any mileage. Yes, the media people on the other side of the FAX transmission understand why you are supplying the release, but they don't want you to rub their noses in it.

There has to be at least some semblance of actual news worthiness about your material before anyone at the editorial desk will give it a second thought.

Press releases must be written for the media, not for the people who will eventually be reading the stories. This is an incredibly common mistake for many novice release writers. They assume that they should write the story the public wants to hear.

Not so. The audience for a press release must be the gatekeepers who'll decide if the public ever reads about your topic. Custom-tailor your text to the media readers. If they like it, they can perform the translation for public consumption.

Press releases should be written as if they came from a journalist. As a matter of convention, press releases are usually written in the inverted pyramid style taught in all basic journalism classes.