Guidelines for Writing a Great Press Release

By Meghan Harris, Harris Consulting LLC

Press releases are a great tool for building awareness and hopefully getting press vehicles to pick up on your corporate news stories. Press releases are also a key component to your search engine optimization strategy for building links and content to your website. When you write a press release, think of it not just as a news story but also as a vehicle for building keywords and gaining links and traffic to your website.

You can write a press release about anything that can be considered news. Some ideas are employee announcements, reorganizations, new website features, corporate financial or growth milestones, new banking or credit arrangements, corporate anniversary, new office, name change, new products or features, pricing, promotions, holiday specials, new tag line, new positioning or ad campaign, contests or sweepstakes, free trials and samples, white papers, market trends, industry information, expert or CEO opinions, survey results, helpful tips, executive speeches, events and trade shows, webinars, seminars, case studies or inspirational client stories, new customer wins and endorsements, charity involvement or sponsorship, pro-bono work or internships, financial earnings updates, legal issues, or crisis communications.

Your press releases should be “multi-media.” Before writing your press release, gather all possible attachments to your press release. These include a web-resolution version of your corporate logo in .jpg or .png format, the embed code to your corporate introductory video if you have one, and a photo of the CEO, product or subject of the press release in a low resolution .jpg or .png format. You could also attach a pdf of a white paper, an audio file, or a slide presentation.

Always include contact information, with a name, email address and phone number for press contacts or inquiries. Consider setting up a corporate mailbox for PR@ and a dedicated telephone number. These can point to a marketing person or mailbox. This will give you flexibility to re-point these as responsibilities change, or if you use a consultant or outside firm for public relations at some point, etc.

Follow a standard format for all press releases. Your press release should include a title, summary, date, location, subject paragraph, supporting paragraph(s), a quote or two from relevant individuals, then a standard summary paragraph on your company. If you are discussing a partnership with another company or trade show/event participation, you may wish two quotes, one from your side and one from theirs; and two descriptions, one of the partner company or trade show/event, followed by your standard corporate paragraph. If your CEO is well known and has lots of Twitter followers and LinkedIn contacts, you will want to leverage his or her “brand,” so consider including a photo and quote from him/her.

Titles should be in title case, catch the reader’s attention, use active verbs (announce, launch, unveil, reveal, etc.) and be 170 characters or less, for search engines to pick them up. Google picks up only the first 60 characters, and Yahoo! shows the first 120 characters. Including the same corporate name and description or tagline in each title will provide some recognition and consistency for readers. For example, “Acme Roofing, the Leading Provider of Tile Roofing Material, Announces a New…” or “BigStar Hosting, “Your Cloud Web Partner,” Launches…”

Throughout your press release, limit jargon and acronyms; be conscious that your reader may be outside of your industry. Write your text in the active tense – use exciting active verbs. Instead of “form a

Guidelines for Writing a Great Press Release partnership” use “partnered” etc. Also, do not use the first person. Most press release services will not let you use “you”, “I” or “we” outside of a direct quote. Your summary should be three to four sentences, italicized, and include keywords and a link to your site. Again, include your corporate name and description or tagline. Start the body of the press release with the city, state (press release service) day, month, and year, then reword but repeat your title sentence. In the text, concentrate exposure on a short list of keywords in your press releases and on your site, to help search engine optimization. You should have a few keywords that you include in every press release. These should be used as links, and one link per 100 words is generally the accepted norm. Don’t always link to your homepage; include a variety of page links in your press releases. Also, some press release engines let you edit the URL of the press release to include keywords; if so, add keywords from your short list to the URL.

Your company description should be updated but remain consistent across press releases. This is the “boilerplate” information you want everyone to know about your company. Include your name, location, tagline, what you do, and why you do it better than everyone else. You may want to include some statistics, such as how much you’ve grown in the past year, how many employees or users you have, etc. but keep these round numbers – you want to look large and successful, but not give away any new information to competitors! Always include contact information such as your website address, telephone number, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter ID. Usually, if you include an email address you will need to write it in the format name(at)company(dot)com, as either the press release service will not include it, or spam bots will pick it up and spam the email address.

When you release your press release, you will want to use a web-based service and get as much distribution as you can. Set up an RSS feed on your website, and include your press releases in every RSS feed. You will also want to send this out over Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. If your CEO has a number of followers on these, use his or her page for your corporate information. You can use his or her account to set up a company page as well. Then post the press release on your website, as text, and send the link to this page over email to all employees and investors, ask them to share it with their social media contacts. Post the website link on your corporate Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media site pages. If you have an internal customer portal, post the press release here as well. You can also build your own email distribution list of press contacts, through searching top news sites in your industry and from trade show participation, and send them a courtesy copy of your release.

You can measure results in several ways. Most press release services will also report on distribution, impressions and reads for each of your releases. Google Analytics will show you traffic sources, and you can measure visits from the web-based press release service to your site, and see if traffic has come to your site from other press sources. If you write press releases on a weekly basis, you will start to see them as search results for your keywords in search engines.

Press releases are an effective tool to increasing media exposure, brand recognition, and search engine optimization. They contribute to content on your website, and can increase website traffic, clicks and sales. A weekly press release can help your marketing and branding initiatives significantly, for a relatively small investment. Given the wide range of potential topics, writing a weekly release should not be too arduous a task, and can pay off in sales and revenue.