The Daily Feed Issue #34: Polar Bears and how to write your own press release

Welcome to Issue #34 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more. 

We had another day of great ads with Feedjit Rush. There was one ad in particular that caught our eye, posted by Bob McKerrow, a New Zealander and titled "Save the Polar Bear". Bob's ad links to his blog which has some great data on the Arctic Ocean. He discusses the latest developments regarding mining and mineral rights in that area and the potential impact it could have. Bob's blog entry contains a lot of well researched data.

If you would like to help share the message and data that Bob has on his blog, drop us an email when you purchase a Feedjit Rush ad tomorrow and we'll add the same number of impressions that you bought to Bob's Polar Bear ad at no extra cost to you.

Now, lets discuss writing your own Press Release. 

By far the best book I've read on writing news releases is "The Associated Press Guide to News Writing" [Links to a Google search]. It's an essential read and will give you the guidelines that the best in the business use for writing news and feature releases. Read it cover to cover before you put out your release. It contains a lot of great writing tips that you'll use even after you're done your PR campaign. 

When you're writing your news release, the most important component is the headline. You should spend three to five times as much time on the headline as on the body text.  It is what news men read to decide if they want to know more. 

Start your body text with the date and the city in which the release is written. If the city is confusing because there are multiple locations or you don't have a location then you can omit the location. The first sentence is your lead and it is almost, but not quite, as important as your headline. The next 2 sentences should expand on your lead. 

The body of your news release is simply well presented data that journalists will mash up into an article they can call their own. It needs to be well written and present the facts starting with the most pertinent and interesting first. It should be concise but not choppy or clinical. It should convey data that is worth printing. 

Don't make your press release longer than 400 words. Journalists are busy and they will contact you if the are covering you in detail and need more information.

If you're a company, include a brief company "bio" at the end of your release. 

The absolute best advice I can give you if you're doing a news release is to read releases from fortune 500 companies. They employ the best copy writers in the world to write their releases. Study the format and style and imitate them freely. Google's press release archive is a great place to start. 

When reading the press release archives of companies, note in particular how they use quotes. Not where the quote is positioned in the release and how it's incorporated into the copy. Most company news releases I've seen include a quote that a journalist can lift verbatim and incorporate into their story. This acquisition announcement by Google is a great example.

That's it for today. In a future issue I'll cover how to get your press release out into the wild and covered by journalists.

Regards,

Mark Maunder

Feedjit Founder & CEO.

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