Once upon a time, there lived a hale and hearty press release. Aspiring public relations professionals went to communications schools, studied all they could about them - how to write them, mastered the art of selling them and made careers out of them. Everyone lived happily ever after till the advent of the World Wide Web and the emergence of mass communication’s star attraction, the ‘blog’. Then began a revolution where the press release was stripped off its glory and suddenly became just another tool to communicate, with a choice to be ignored.
While press releases aren’t redundant, there definitely is a dire need to revamp the way they are written. But most importantly, a press release needs to make itself heard above the clatter and din through its most powerful selling point – its headline.
Here’s what they probably haven’t told you in mass communications school, but every PR professional needs to know about press releases:
Make it an attention grabber: I once had a reporter tell me with exasperation that she received at least 10 “relatively illegible” press releases daily and went on to say that she knew of colleagues who received as many as 250 or more in a single day! Rarely, she said, did she go beyond the subject line in her mailbox before those bulk mails faced the ill-fated click of the delete button. So if your headline is what will convince the reporter to make it to the second line, it better exude all the charm and intrigue it possibly can or risk facing the guillotine. For this, it has to be attention grabbing. And I don’t mean over promising or confusing while trying to be clever.
Remember, if it makes sense to you, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to the intended reader. What I normally do after having written the release is ask at least three people what they thought of the headline and if they could grasp from that one line what the release talked about. This wouldn’t just be colleagues, it could be friends, family and people unrelated to the business since I wasn’t always trying to communicate to people who were in the know of what I was talking about. If I got so much as one confused look, I knew that something was wrong and had to be changed.
Write for the audience, not your CEO: Don’t write a release headline the way your company head would convey it. Write the headline the way you would read it in the next day’s paper, the way a reporter would edit it when she is writing her story headline. Help the reporter out, don’t make her work harder. You don’t do this by churning out umpteen press releases with flowery marketing jargon and then calling up journalists, trying to get them to carry your release. In today’s world when the media can make money out of publishing your brand or information about it, why would they want to publish it for free?
Help the reporter think differently with you release headline. Don’t try and hard sell your company, its products or services and stay away from using adjectives that self-praise. That’s a number one turn off. Journalists don’t like chest thumping releases and they’ll probably junk your release just because they’ve been put off by the language.
First write the release, then the headline: Never go about it the other way around. This gives you time to think about the headline while you are writing it. It may change several times in your head by the time you finish the release. It will go through various transformations, structures and punctuations before you come up with something really good. And the best part is, the headline is the easiest thing to come up with after you’re done with the writing of the body.
When you’ve finished with the body of the release, you’ll know exactly what information is important and what you want to focus on. That’s your headline. Always do a good bit of thinking before you come up with that ideal line. Make sure it’s a worthwhile announcement. If it doesn’t sound like news to you, it probably isn’t worth sending out!
This isn’t true for just a one off release. If the media see more than one release from you that isn’t newsworthy or well written, chances are they’ll ignore your future releases just going by the reputation you’ve built up. That can’t spell good news for you.
Make it web friendly: In the virtual age that we are in right now, press releases are struggling to stay alive. Most call it a waste of money and time and its time they gave the good ole “press release” a decent burial. So, if you still are writing one, make sure it is equipped to survive in the virtual world.
SEO, SEO, SEO! Yes, it’s said too many times, and it applies to releases as well! Make sure you’ve embedded in the title of your release appropriate keywords that link to your company’s website. This helps increase the search engine optimization for the release and most importantly, for your website. While press release may or may not generate adequate newsprint for your brand or service, they are more useful in increasing your company’s visibility online. While running a search for your product or service, your press release should be optimized to show up in the results. You do this by making your release attractive enough for the spiders of those search engines.
Short and sweet: Definitely no rambling! The reporter has just a few seconds to glance at your release, make sure you give them your message in that short time. Be concise and spot on. At the same time, summarize the content of your press release message in the title. Get right to the point, tell the reader what he can expect to learn from the content in the release and of course, make sure the recipient has an interest in the subject.
Always remember, journalists will judge a press release by its cover – the headline!
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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in May, 2011. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.
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—About our writer:
Monica Mascarenhas Prabhu is a post graduate in Mass Communications from India’s premier school, Xavier Institute of Mass Communications. She works as a PR professional with one of the country’s leading aviation companies and has in the past worked with The Times of India Group, a PR firm and a sports apparel company. Well versed with web based, business, employee targeted and IT communication, she writes on topics ranging from pets and children to IT, business and media.
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