Make your press release stand out

When you commit your whole self to make your startup successful, and it finally happens, no wonder you would like to share the news with the entire world. You can undoubtedly announce it on your media, such as your company website, newsletter, or social media. If, however, you want the news to reach a higher, sometimes global, audience, you should get print, broadcast, and internet media involved.

How can you do this? A great way is to use ‘ye good olde press release’.

A press release: what it really is

A press release is a tool used for announcing newsworthy stories. It’s an official statement that the organisation issues and dispatches to the media. Usually it’s written, but it can also take the form of an audio or video recording that talks about the company’s expansion, closing a financing round, new product, cooperation or changes in key positions.

A press release, first and foremost, has an informative function. Therefore, it shouldn’t be (too) promotional, yet it should be as objective as possible. Concrete and specific content is a must. It shouldn’t be too long — one-two pages at the most (2000 to 3000 characters).

Before you start writing

The crucial part of preparing a press release is to define your goals. Whether you want to raise awareness of your brand, attract potential employees or investors, announce the closing of a financing round or your entry into a new market, a good and careful choice of information and then media outlets will be crucial for the success of your communication.

But again, choosing the right outlets for the audience you want to reach may not be enough. You’d need to go deeper than that — finding out who in the particular media outlet covers the topics of your interest. As emails sent to general contact addresses are more likely to be overlooked, it is recommended to look for an email address to a particular journalist — whether on the medium’s website, journalist’s social media such as Twitter or LinkedIn, or simply by googling it.

Once you know to whom you will send your announcement, you should think twice about when is the right time to do it. It may seem a no-brainer — sending a press release at the moment when you want the whole world to hear your news. But you couldn’t be more wrong.

Before making the decision, investigate the publication hours at the editorial you’d like to share the news with. Also, make sure to dispatch the press release in the mornings before journalists join editorial meetings and plan publications for the day. It’s also worth checking statistics released by different newswires. For example, according to the latest information published by Prowly, the best time to dispatch news is Thursdays between 10 am and 2 pm.

Journalists need time to prepare their articles, so the press release should be sent in advance. To ensure it does not appear too soon, you can send it under embargo, requesting that they do not publish the information until a specific date. Additionally, you can share the press release with a particular journalist from a top-tier media outlet who will have priority for publication — also under embargo. However, remember that it depends on the journalist what the final version of the press release published in their outlet will look like. Some media won’t publish a copy-pasted press release; their reporters may change some parts of the received material and add other, not previously mentioned information regarding your company. For that reason, it is crucial that you carefully review the information available in your owned media, e.g. your website, and make sure whether there is no outdated data or no materials you don’t want to share anymore.

As journalists may always look for more details, it is recommended to have all the most important information about the company gathered in a press kit available on your website. It should include your onepager, boilerplate, and brand assets such as team members’ pictures and your logo.

It is also worth considering whether your news item can be placed in the broader context of current events. This may draw much more interest from the media — journalists love writing about the bigger picture.

Press release must-haves

To ensure that your press release contains all the essential information and that journalists can easily find it, it is an intelligent choice to stick to a standard structure. Depending on the media you are writing for, this may vary slightly, but it usually consists of a few fixed elements:

• Headline — this is the first thing a journalist will see, so it must be informative and catchy simultaneously; if it’s not eye-catching, the chances of reading the whole message are meager.
• Lead — it’s just below the headline and it should either summarize the article or state the most important points of it. It should include your company’s name and mention the most attractive information from the text.
• Paragraphs — the essential part of the press release that covers all the information you want to communicate; they should not be too long (up to five-six lines of text) and should be divided according to different thoughts and topics the press release touches upon.
• Subheadings — serve to introduce different issues, especially in longer texts, and give them a more transparent structure. They should summarise the following paragraph or two in a catchy way.
• Quotes — statements of the CEO, founder, or any other expert that would make the press release more interesting and give journalists another, more specialistic viewpoint on the matter.
• Boilerplate — the last paragraph of a press release that should include a short description of the company, to introduce the brand to journalists and the general audience.
• Contact info — the contact details of the spokesperson responsible for media relations and/or can answer additional questions from the journalist.

What should the press release contain?

This has to be news! As we’ve already mentioned above, you should describe something exceptional that distinguishes you from other players on the market, a remarkable achievement of your company or something that you’re an expert at. Not just the fact that you exist.

To ensure that the statement is complete and contains all the necessary information, it should include answers to the 5 Ws (and H) — what, who, when, where, why (and how):

• What is it about?
• Who is involved?
• When did it take place?
• Where did it take place?
• Why did it happen?
• How did it happen?

The answers to these questions are the information that should form the following paragraphs of your press release.

If you base your announcement on external sources, be sure to reference them directly. Using anchor text is an excellent idea to make it look more natural. This will make you more credible in the eyes of journalists and audiences.

Graphic materials are beneficial and add diversity to the press release. Infographics and tables are particularly valuable as they allow a large amount of data to be presented in a condensed form.

Sending your press release

If you have selected a small number of journalists to whom you want to send your news, the thing is quite simple. You can write a separate, personalised email to each of them with an attached announcement.

Of course, the email should also be interesting and convince the recipient to read the attachment. In the email, you can include some of the essential passages from the press release, for instance, those from the lead.

If you want to distribute your press release to as wide a range of media as possible, a better option is to use a dedicated service. You can use PR outreach tools and newswires such as Prowly or Respona. However, if you are not yet experienced, gathering and selecting the right audience can be challenging. In this case, a better solution may be a news distribution service, especially if you’re planning to simultaneously dispatch the news to different markets at once. Such a service is offered by EnterieGO, among other global PR networks.

If you would like the media to have constant access to your press releases, creating your own online newsroom would be a wise choice. Essentially, it’s a simple web page that features all your press releases and company news. This allows journalists, customers and employees to get information about your company and its activities in one place.

Dispatched. And then what?

Dispatching a press release should result in articles being published in the media — whether those are a copy-paste of the piece you distributed or are only based on it. Bear in mind that sometimes a journalist might be interested in what your press release is about and thus may ask you for further clarification or an interview. Those will not necessarily come immediately — sometimes journalists will not publish the press release you sent but will remember about your company and will get back to you once they need an expert statement on the topic you specialise in.

But what if there are no publications or interest from journalists after dispatching the press release? First of all, you should know that it happens even to the most renowned PR agencies — and definitely, that’s not a terrible thing. There can be several reasons for this, most of which are beyond your control.

Then it is always worth trying again. So re-read your press release and make sure you can’t make it any more interesting. Verify the list of journalists you sent the email to. Maybe the topic wasn’t quite for them? If resending the announcement does not yield the result as expected, then perhaps the story is not that crucial nor world-changing.

However, don’t let your content go to waste. Share it in your owned channels — your blog, Medium, social media, or newsletter — and encourage your team to share the news. The more shares, the greater the reach of your message.

And remember not to be discouraged. There are still many exciting events in your company life that will be worth sharing with journalists, which — I give you my word — they will find newsworthy.