The Value of a Press Release
Many companies think that with modern online businesses and technology that items such as press releases are old and dying out. But this is not the case. In fact, the opposite is true. Press releases are now more important than ever. They remain an important and effective means of getting media coverage online and in the press and increasing attention for your company. As a business, you should never underestimate the value of a press release.
Tone
When you write your PR make sure that you write from the perspective of a journalist. This means you should avoid “I” or “we” unless it is included in a quote. You should also avoid using hype-bloated phrases like “one of a kind” or “state of the art”.
Length
The shorter, the better for press releases. The best are kept under two pages, and even better than that is one page. The length should only be what is required to provide all necessary information. If your PR runs over one page in order to keep key facts in there, that is fine.
Multimedia
Use every piece of technology available. This means that you should send your PR via email and post it to live sites. You want to include audio and video material if you can so that you can back link to other sites or previous press releases or even related articles. This can help provide context for the news media.
Grab the journalist’s attention
Reporters get flooded with PRs every day. That is why your must be able to answer the question on the minds of every journalist: why should I care?
You want to stick to a basic format that has the right information. You want to create a positive message that makes journalists stop caring about anything else except the PR in front of them. They should want to drop everything for you and your PR.
Provide enough information
Don’t assume that the reader knows anything about your company. Include all relevant facts about your company in the PR. No reader will review the PR and then conduct a Google search to find out more about you. Add this information yourself.
Use the right punctuation and grammar
Your PR must be free from error. Read it multiples out loud so that you don’t miss a single thing. Even a slight error can cause it to be tossed aside. Journalists need “ready to print” copy only. They cannot afford to spend time double checking for errors.
Avoid plagiarism
Your content should not be copied from anywhere else on the web. While you might not realize you are copying it can still happen. Start from scratch as you write the PR. Write for the newspaper or magazine that you are targeting. If your content is copied at all from another course you run the risk of tarnishing your company reputation and being penalized by Google algorithms which is increasing bad for business. You can use websites like smallseotools.com or copyscape.com to verify that everything you write is plagiarism free.
Remember that you may write from memory but your memory might be so good as to remember a sentence or two verbatim and if you leave this unchecked it will not end well for you. Just take the time to make sure your PR does not have any matching content on the web. If something shows up you can verify where it is listed online and then reword or rewrite your content so as to alleviate any matching content. Some of the matching content may be your company profile which is not bad but if you can reword it a bit it will behoove you.
