PR Company, Internet Marketing

Press Release Tips

If you have hired a PR Agency to handle your media image then the chances are that the first thing they will do when you have some news to announce is write a press release.

Press releases are a great tool for issuing news to the media. A good PR Agency can write and issue press releases very quickly, meaning that if your news has a short shelf-life then the media will soon know about it.

Journalists get their news sources from a huge range of sources, tip-offs from the public, diary events and PR people are just a few. Getting news from a press release issued by a PR Agency helps journalists who are over-worked and working to tight deadlines, so we have put together five tips to help you get press releases noticed.

- Always write an attention-grabbing headline but avoid caps and exclamation remarks as your release could be mistaken for spam. The story may be quite mundane but a snappy headline could rescue everything. Ask yourself what is unique about your story and don’t be afraid to write a headline with a pun that The Sun newspaper would be proud of.

- Don’t send your press release as an attachment in an email. Nobody wants to risk getting a virus from attachments but also, you slow down the journey for the journalist who wants to read your news!

- Don’t call ahead to ask if you can send a press release. The response will probably be: “send it, I can’t stop you!” Call a couple of hours later or the day after sending a press release to ask the journalist if they had received it and ask if they are interested in using your client’s story. If they have already read the press release then they may have questions that you can answer there and then to really sell it.

- Including a quote in a press release is standard, however do try to avoid the usual “We are very excited to be… blah, blah, blah” as it probably won’t get used if it is that dull anyway.

- Don’t send your press release after 4.30pm. This is about the time when people start winding down for the day and ignoring emails to finish other tasks that cropped up during the day. You don’t want to risk you email getting lost among others until the next day.

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