How to Write a Press Release

Think of a press release as exciting, breaking news about your company, product or service. Pick up any newspaper and read a couple stories–I suggest browsing well-written newspapers online such as the New York Times or even Vanity Fair magazine–and you’ll get an idea of how a story is structured.

Here are some tips after you’ve done the above:

1. Write down the single most important fact for your customers and potential customers. Always focus your writing on answering your customer’s question “Why should I care about this?” Edit this down to one page-width sentence or less, and that’s your headline.
2. Answer the journalistic questions of who, what, where, and when. Include how, if relevant This is the body of your press release.
3. Write the release in third person, with your company being an “it” and staff members being “they.”
4. This is news, not sales. If there’s something amazing about this news, put that into factual terms. Avoid exclamation marks whenever possible. (See? I avoided one right there, even though I feel strongly about it.)
5. Include a quote from a company executive or customer. Interview them if need be. This quote should be in the third or fourth paragraph.
6. The second-to-last paragraph is called a “boilerplate,” which is the three or four sentence description of your company, what it does, and how long its been doing it.
7. The last paragraph is for your contact information. Always include the name and title of the person to contact, phone number, e-mail address, website, and an offer to be available for interviews.
8. Make your release one page maximum if possible.

Happy writing.

Nala