How to Write a Professional Press Release

Press releases are published in newspapers or online and are a formal way of announcing new products or events your company is launching.  Press releases usually have a bit more of a journalistic angle, different to internal communications that happen within a company.  The writing in a press release needs to have a bit of an edge while at the same time, being professional.

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A carefully crafted press release is usually sent to journalists and editors and can result in many other articles being published about your company and its product.  It’s the easiest way to get free publicity which could lead to new clients contacting your company in order to do business with you.

Press releases often end up being more efficient and less expensive than paid advertising, as new clients will contact you through other articles written by journalists and editors.

Here are some good reasons for writing a press release:

• Gets attention

Journalists and media organisations are able to reach far more people than a business on its own, so use a press release to grab attention for your business and its products.

• Building relationships

Journalists need new stories and information so sending a press release to them can start a mutually beneficial business relationship with someone in the media industry.

• Control your business image

You can have a degree of control over your brand image and you can influence people’s perception through informative statements.

• Improve your rankings on the web

If you use keywords efficiently on your website, your ranking for those keywords on search engines can improve dramatically.  If a journalist uses your contributions for an article, you could get backlinks from their company’s website which could also improve your website rankings.

The professional format for a press release

The chances of a journalist publishing articles about your press release are higher if it conforms to a format that journalists.  You also need to ensure that what’s in your press release is currently trending and of interest to journalists – something they will want to cover.

Some key pointers for your press release format are as follows:

• Attention grabbing headline

Have a newsworthy item with a title that will grab people’s attention.  It should also be clear from the title, what the article is about.

• Location

This tells the reader where your news is happening/taking place.

• Your lead

Your first sentence should be an attention grabbing explanation of your newsworthy content.

• The body

This should be the lighter section of information which can be portrayed with decreasing levels of importance.  Using quotes is a good way to provide backing for your arguments.

• The boilerplate

These are just a few words used to describe your company to the reader.

• Press contact

You should provide the contact details for your media coordinator.  This is someone who a journalist can communicate with to get more information.

If you want to enhance your business writing capabilities, have a look at these helpful press release templates.