Press releases are a great way to get publicity without spending huge amounts of money. They are a powerful tool that helps get your business noticed, but with editors receiving hundreds of press releases each day you need to make sure yours stands out. Here are my top tips on writing a press release that editors will want to read and publicise.
- Know your subject
Make sure you know the subject you are writing about. If you don’t then do some research. If you are writing a press release that your product “can make people’s life easier” or you can “guarantee to triple sales in a week” then you need to be able to convince the editor too.
- Is your news “newsworthy”?
Not all news is newsworthy. A press release is to inform about your news item, not to make a sale. If your press release sounds like an advert, re-write it. A press release should answer the questions who?, what?, when?, where? and why?
- Effective headline
Use a headline that has maximum impact and effectiveness. The headline is what the editor will see first about your press release so it needs to be catchy and wanting them to read more.
- Third person
A press release should be written in the third person, as if you were a journalist writing it.
- Structure
A press release should have a beginning, middle and an end. Following the headline should be a newsworthy summary giving more information about the news item. It is these first few words that count towards the success of getting the press release published or not. The middle will provide information backing up the summary. The end will be a ‘call to action’ such as “for more information call…” and a round-up of the information in the press release.
- Notes to editors
In the notes to editors include a boilerplate with some general information on the company issuing the release.
- Proofread
Always proofread your press release.
- Press information
Include media contact information, including name, phone number and email address.
- Quotes
Quotes can hold a great deal of weight to a press release, but offer quotes that are relevant to the news item.
- Media distribution
Compile a media distribution list that is relevant to the press release being written. Don’t send a press release to every media contact you have “just in case”, this can be harmful to your relationship with them if they are constantly receiving news items that do not interest them. A well constructed media list will have a bigger impact.
It’s been 40 years since Neil Armstrong said those famous words “One small step for man, One giant leap for mankind…”
From Cape Canaveral (then Cape Kennedy) in Florida over half a million people watched as three astronauts (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins) were boosted towards the first lunar landing.
Coming eight years after President Kennedy’s speech to Congress in 1961, in which he unveiled the Apollo programme “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”. Half a billion people watched on television as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moved about on the lunar surface with its gravity one-sixth that of Earth’s.
Since 20 July 1969 only five more missions took man to the moon, not forgetting Apollo 13, which is famous for not getting there and the heroic efforts needed to save the crew. The last mission was Apollo 17 on December 11, 1972 by Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.
This begs the question, why haven’t we been back to the moon since? Landing on the moon was a magnificent achievement for mankind and from which we have made many discoveries.
The ‘space race’ continues, but what will we achieve in the next 40 years?
Designing a website should not be considered in the same light as you would design a poster or a leaflet. All too often we see websites that would look great printed and hung on a wall, but offer the modern computer-savvy customer little in the way of interactivity, options, style, or flair.
A website is a portal into your business that can sell to customers even when your entire workforce is safely tucked up in bed – and if the website is good enough it may even do a better job, as it is inherently driven by the needs of the customer rather than a “hard-sell” salesman.
The key to good website design is identifying the expectations of the customer and how they are likely to want to use your site (NOT how you want them to use it!). This can be difficult. As a retail business you naturally want to guide customers to ensure a sale, but now you must rely on the website to do that for you.
The silver lining of this careful balancing act is that the winning formula will keep working for you on every customer, time and time again, even when you are still in your pyjamas. So, get it right and spend the right amount of time and effort doing so, because it will pay you back ten-fold.
Web standards exist to try to standardise the way website code is displayed in various different browsers. They have been created by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to guide developers on the best way to code websites and to help browser manufacturers such as Microsoft, Mozilla and Google create browsers that can display websites correctly. Unfortunately, the W3C web standards are only recommendations, and although there is excellent support globally for their adoption, some browsers reflect them better than others.
So why should we develop to these standards if they’re not fully supported? The fact is that most modern ‘A’-grade browsers do implement the W3C standards very well, and problems arise mostly from older browsers. The issue for web developers is deciding which versions of old browsers to continue supporting, as customers often have browsers on their computers which are out of date. Our aim is always to make the website as accessible as possible to the most people on widely differing technology. The pay-off is more potential customers reaching your valuable information; the cost is a harder, longer development time, but by developing to the latest web standards, you are ensuring your website will reach the widest audience and support the most forms of technology available to your prospective customers, and you are building a platform for the future that will be easy to maintain and re-develop.
Whilst many people may feel one way or another about Michael Jackson, there is no debating the world-wide phenomenon that was his life. And now in death, it seems his effect is even more powerful.
As the news about Jackson’s death began to circulate, the Internet became a focal point for people everywhere trying to verify the story, find out more facts, and pass the information on to friends and family across the world.
The vast increase in traffic caused many sites to feel the strain, with Google producing error pages on related searches, and Twitter crashing for only the second recorded time. In fact, the search for more information on Michael Jackson became so feverish, that Google rated the topic as “volcanic” on their hotness meter, even considering the sudden influx as a possible attack, and BBC News received 72% more traffic around the time of his death, along with many other sites.
The fact that the Internet can be rocked by such real, physical events is somewhat reassuring – we haven’t yet reached the stage where computers, cold and unfeeling, can report the news dispassionately, without a thought for its effects on those more “fleshly”. At least not yet, and I for one think that’s a good thing.
