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Tips To Creating A Press Release

Tips to creating a Press Release
In baseball, it’s said that you know an umpire is top-notch when you never notice his presence. If he’s doing his job, he won’t call attention to himself in any way. It’s much the same for the writer of a press release. When the recipient of a press release focuses only on its content — and not on its creation — the writer has succeeded. With that in mind, here’s how to develop a style that can help give you a big edge in placing your press releases.
1) Master News Style By Reading News Stories
The folks who write wire copy for the Associated Press are masters at presenting information without calling attention to themselves. Read all the AP wire copy you can and get a sense of the rhythm and flow of their writing. Examine their choice of words and sentence structure (typically, they choose the simplest way of saying things) and their overall tone of solid objectivity. This is the style to which you should aspire.
2) Write a Great Lead
The lead paragraph in a press release should, theoretically, be able to stand alone as a news item. A standard news lead answers the Five W’s — Who? What? Where? When? Why? Successfully answer those five questions in one paragraph and you’ve summarized everything beautifully.
Bad lead:
The new Acme X100 is drawing raves from customers, who call it the best thing to happen to the flanging industry since the X99.
Good lead:
Philadelphia, August 15, 2007– Calling it a "milestone day for our industry", the Acme Company unveiled the first flanger capable of creating widgets using only solar power. According to Acme President Joe Blow, the X100 is expected to find wide use in the developing world, where access to traditional electric power is unreliable.
The Five W’s are answered! Who: the Acme Company. What: theintroduction of the solar-powered X100. Where: in Philadelphia (the headquarters for our fictional company). When: August 15. And, most important, Why: for use in the developing...