I’ve covered this before in a previous post but I think it’s worth revisiting from a slightly different angle. Press releases are still an excellent vehicle for building quality links and – if they catch the attention of the newspapers - driving traffic to your website. Here’s how to write a successful press release.

• take a quick sanity check… is your news genuinely newsworthy or is it a paper-thin disguise for advertising your business? 
• write in the third person
• consider printed newspapers as well as SEO and write accordingly. If a national or local paper, magazine or trade publication picks up your story you’ll get a flood of traffic. I know someone who, having appeared in The Guardian, was shot to relative stardom in her field and is still reaping enormous financial and career benefits. Yes, include keywords and phrases for link building and SEO. But do it so subtly that nobody except an SEO expert would notice
• headlines are important for SEO as well as catching editors’ and media researchers’ eyes. So create a mighty headline that includes your top key word or phrase as well as appealing to human readers
• kick off with a powerful statement that explains the subject matter clearly in plain language
• raise a question - a useful little trick used by many fine journalists and editorial writers
• answer your own question succinctly and factually, including a quote or two to lend interest, credibility and variety
• conclude the release with a round-up that reflects on your news and reveals what might happen in the future
• avoid superlatives outside of quotes and avoid making sales pitches – this is news, not advertising

A killer press release can win you anything from a few lines in your local newspaper to a double page spread in the centre of The Sun worth tens of thousands of pounds. So they’re worth spending time and effort on. The better your releases, the more chance you have of taking your news offline into the newspapers… even on TV if you hit the nail on the head hard and accurately enough. 

There’s no reason, if your news is a winner and your release is the best it can be, why it couldn’t be you. If you’re not 100% confident writing your own releases DIY could be a false economy. Get a freelance copywriter on the job.

I’ve written a quick ‘n’ dirty fictional press release example to help you understand press release structure. Here goes:

FREE happiness for everyone - new happiness experiment delivers “astonishing” results

The Gross National Happiness index proved that the fewer resources we use and the less stuff we buy, the happier we are. Adding spice to the ongoing saga of establishing exactly what makes us happy, recent research by Brighton-based company Life PLC has revealed exciting new insights into the complex nature of human happiness.  So what’s the story?

Life PLC’s Chief Executive Katie Goldstone explains. “We’ve undertaken a massive worldwide social experiment, across multiple cultures and continents, to establish exactly how much control – if any – humans have over our own happiness. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the results are world-changing. This is huge.”

Life PLC split 20 million willing volunteers into three random groups. Group one acted as the control. Group two were given a series of simple mental exercises designed to help them modify their internal dialogue so it’s wholly positive. Group three were given the same exercises but designed with the opposite intention, to help them achieve an entirely negative frame of mind.

“We were astonished to find, a year later when we started analysing the detailed diary data our subjects handed in, that group two felt remarkably happy within themselves. They enjoyed their lives more than they’d thought possible and were amazed how much things had changed for the better.” reveals Goldstone. “In contrast group three reported being constantly depressed and unhappy with almost every aspect of their lives.”   

The numbers are impressive. Group three, the control group, exhibited the usual mix ‘n’ match of emotional states, everything from ecstatic to very unhappy indeed. 98% of group two reported dramatic, significant increases in overall happiness whereas 93% of group three claimed to feel absolutely dreadful almost all the time.

“There’s only one conclusion and the proof is conclusive” claims Goldstone. “With very few exceptions, the key to human happines lies within us.” 

So how will the world look once the news gets out? Potentially very different. When we’re unhappy we’re more destructive, unproductive, intolerant, angry, sad, bored and unattractive. When we’re happy we’re more generous and forgiving, kinder, healthier, more sociable, productive and creative. We even look better. 

“A hike in international happiness levels could be so powerful that it results in our solving global warming, ending poverty and putting a stop to war.” concludes Katie Goldstone. “On a grand scale the implications are nothing short of revolutionary. At the moment we’re busy identifying channels to market so we can get this happiness show – the greatest show on earth – on the road!”  

Contact details for Editors

Contact Katie Goldstone for details and comment. Email: xxx@xxx or phone: xxxxxx.

So many press releases sink without a trace. Here are 31 common sense reasons why your news might not be seeing the light of day.

1. It’s boring! You might think your news is amazing but be honest with yourself… is it really newsworthy?
2. You haven’t targeted your release properly – are you sending out news about green widgets to an audience of blue widget magazines?
3. You’ve sent it to the wrong person – many publications have more than one editor / specialist editors
4. You sent it at the weekend, or first thing Monday morning when everyone’s in box is overflowing with the weekend’s spam ‘n’ kipple
5. It sounds like an advert for your business rather than a legitimate news item
6. You’ve forgotten to include full contact details
7. Your headline didn’t catch their eye
8. You attempted to be funny and clever but just ended up sounding weird
9. You tried busy editors’ patience by being needlessly mysterious 
10. You wrote too much
11. You wrote too little
12. You used technical language and blinded them with science
13. You blew your own trumpet far too hard
14. You focused on the features of your product but forgot about  the benefits
15. Your release was so dense and poorly formatted that people couldn’t be bothered to read it
16. You were shamelessly biased
17. Your message was confused / confusing
18. You responded to relevent circumstances too slowly
19. Wild, exaggerated claims made editors suspicious
20. You forgot to include a call to action and response mechanisms
21. You didn’t carry out a follow up - which can boost response significantly
22. You didn’t say anything fresh, just repeated old news
23. You wrote to ‘dear Sir or Madam’ instead of personalising your message 
24. You didn’t include quotes from pertinent people
25. You used poor English - your release was badly written, spelled and punctuated
26. You were rude about a fellow business or individual
27. You sent it in a format they couldn’t work with
28. You missed a deadline
29. The publication uses someone else as their regular, trusted supplier for feedback on a particular subject
30. You only send a release once in a blue moon
31. You don’t sound confident

1. headline 
2. introductory statement
3. question
4. quotation
5. response
6. quotation
7. conclusion
8. contact details

Here’s an example. I’ve numbered each bit so you can see what I mean.

1. Search website launches holiday genie challenge

2. The economy’s in a mess, jobs are precious, money’s tight and – in times like these – saving cash on your package holiday is more important than ever. The MD of online holiday search website HolidayMagic.com is so confident that his site will always return the cheapest deals, 100% of the time, that he’s happy to put his money where his mouth is.

3. So what’s the story?

4. “We’ve employed a genie” explained Nutter Smith. “I stubbed my toe on an old lamp on holiday in Turkey last month and out popped this brilliant holiday Genie. We haven’t looked back since”.

5. The secret of the holiday Genie’s success appears to be his ability to slide backwards and forwards in time, predicting and nabbing the best holiday deals a fraction of a second before the competition. And boy, do consumers love it.

6. “If anyone, anywhere out there, can find a better deal than my holiday Genie,” grins Smith, “I’ll pay for it. Bugger it, you can take the wife and the car too if you want.”  

7.  And he’s not joking. The man’s deadly serious. A winner for holidaymakers seeking the very best deals? Undoubtedly. But as to whether Smith’s holiday Genie can continue to pull it out of the hat, that’s a different matter… watch this space!

8. Details for editors: HolidayMagic is a virtual holiday operator based on Mars. MD Mr Nutter Smith has eleven hundred years’ experience in inter-stellar travel. For more details and comment contact: Telephone 000000000. Email address: xxxx. Website address:  xxxxx. Street address: xxx

Making the effort to write great press releases really is worthwhile. But, as I’ve said before, talk’s cheap. Here’s a real life Case Study to illustrate my point.

I recently wrote a release for a client, World Leaders, that resulted in a feature in London’s Metro newspaper. It was distributed via a handful of free press release distribution sites and sent it to some relevant forum editors.

A Metro journalist saw the release and contacted World Leaders for an interview. The result? A full page of editorial, including pictures, in Metro’s London edition, at the cost of a press release and a couple of hours’ marketing.

Buying a full page colour ad would have cost them £22,657 (rate card price)… a very healthy return on investment! Don’t short change yourself. It’s a sure fire way to miss out on opportunities for low cost, high impact visibility. Use a proper copywriter and squeeze every drop of effectiveness out of your press releases!

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