Big Idea Company | Big Ideas for Marketing Success

Real World Strategies vs. Classroom Theory

by Ryan Faist

Big Idea Company

Some public relations professors will hate me for what I’m about to tell you. I don’t care. The P.R. purists who preach a strict, formal approach to writing press releases may have good intentions, but their own loyalty to old school journalism is actually keeping you out of the news more often than not.

Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who writes a press release should familiarize themselves with the Associated Press style. In its purest form, it is objective journalism. That’s a good thing. But if you want to get in the news, there’s something else you need to know.

First off, you have to realize that real people are reading these releases; not robots. If you were submitting to machines, you wouldn’t have to worry about the pitfall of boredom. But in real life, a boring press release is a sure-fire way to keep you out of the news. More on this in a second.

You also need to realize that you’re writing for a specific audience who only wants to do two things: (1) find news that will appeal to their audience, and (2) narrow down the stack of a hundred or so press releases received that day into the few that will actually make the news.

Before you write a word, think about these two things carefully. Discover the reason their audience will care about your announcement.

Now you are ready to write. This is the tricky part. You have to intrigue editors the same way they want to intrigue their audience. You want editors to read your headline and think, ‘Now this is interesting.’ In order to do that, you must always remember that they only care about news that their audience will care about. So make sure your headline SCREAMS why their audience will love your announcement. But don’t give away everything. Write your headline in a way that makes the editor want to read the next paragraph. That’s how you get an editor’s attention. AP Style Guide doesn’t teach you that.

Once you’ve caught an editor’s attention, you’ve got three to five seconds to convince them that it was worth it. So get to the point. The first paragraph of your press release is where you list the who, what, when, where and why. Journalists call this an inverted pyramid structure: most important information at the top, least important information at the bottom. Stick to this. Busy editors will appreciate you getting to the point quickly.

Finally, list your contact information at the bottom of the press release; not the top. I know many press release guides tell you differently, but they’re wrong. You want editors to see your headline first; not your contact information. Editors decide in a matter of seconds whether to throw your press release away or read the next sentence. Do you think they’ll be intrigued by your name and number? 

This is real life press release advice. I can see some old pundits shaking their heads at me right now, despite the wall of newspaper clippings behind me. All I can say is: it’s a good thing you and I are submitting our press releases to real editors instead of people who preach and theorize about them. With all due respect, there is a difference.