How to Write a Press Release

A step-by-step guide to being your own reporter

“A businessman reading a newspaper in a park” by rawpixel

The What

Press releases are an efficient, straightforward way to communicate your company’s news or updates to the world.

You may want to consider writing a press release if you want to spread the word about…

• A new hire
• A merger / acquisition
• Notable business performance
• Recent fundraising
• An event or partnership

If you’re looking for journalists to cover such an event, it is standard to provide them with a press release (hence the press in press release).

If you’re a company with a board or a startup with investors, sending out press releases is an easy way to update your shareholders in real time.

Including press releases on your website is also a good way to publicly record company milestones and build trust with potential users.

And, good news — it’s not that hard to create one, but many overcomplicate it.

The How

Before you start

While you should maintain your company’s grammar guidelines when writing a press release, it’s important to momentarily put all notions of voice and branding to the side.

Press releases aren’t an opportunity to express your brand’s voice. They are a chance to communicate your company’s news through the voice of a journalist.

Avoid:

• Subjective opinions
• Stylized wording
• Gradually revealing the subject, so that the audience will continue reading
• 1st person pronouns (“I” “we”)

Instead, stick to:

• Short, straightforward phrases
• Fact-based sentences that get to the point quickly
• 3rd person pronouns (“he” “she” “they” “it”)

Press releases also shouldn’t be long documents; they are ideally 1 page but should not exceed 2.

Title

If a press release is a news article, then the title is its headline.

This should be a short, simple statement that clearly defines the event you’re going to discuss. Some examples:

• Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp
• Angela Ahrendts to Join Apple as Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores

Subtitle

If you think that your title has communicated enough key information, you can stop there (like Apple).

But, if there are more, crucial facts of the event that can be communicated in a short sentence, you may want to consider implementing a subtitle (like Oscar). This approach is the most common in writing press releases.

If you include more than one sentence in the subtitled field, you may want to use bullet points (like Facebook).

Opening Paragraph

The first paragraph should begin with the dateline — or the city where the news is coming from and the date you’re going to make this press release public.

If covering news from the US, you can format it as:

• City, State, Date — Text begins here

If covering news from abroad, you can format the dateline as:

• City, Country, Date — Text begins here

If you’re announcing an update from a company based in more than once city, you can include multiple cities in this field like so:

• New York/Tokyo, October 1, 2018 —

The introductory paragraph should then answer all of the most basic questions about the central event in 3 sentences or less:

• What happened?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?
• Who was involved?

Next…

Use the 2nd paragraph (and 3rd, if needed) to provide additional details that you couldn’t fit in the first paragraph, primarily:

• Why did this happen?
• How did this happen?

These paragraphs should be short as well, roughly 2–5 sentences long.

Hear it from the Experts

You can then include a quote from a key person involved.

This quote should be designed for reporters to take out of the press release and use in their own article. Unlike the rest of the document, the quote can use 1st person pronouns (“I” “we”).

This quote should:

• Emphasize the central event of the press release
  (What happened?)
• Then address the larger implications
  (How did this come about? What is the impact of this event? How do they feel about it?)

Reading the Future

Now that you’ve fully addressed what’s happened, make sure to include what will happen.

Explain:

• What are future implications or changes that may result from this event?
• How these changes will look to the readers?
• What is the future impact for the companies involved?

Wrapping Up

If it makes sense to include quotes from more than one person in this press release, feel free to add another one here. Or — if the first quote was a little long — you can break it up and include the second half of it here, especially if it addresses impact or the future of the company.

If you don’t have any more quotes to add — congrats, you have finished the body of the press release!

About Us

You want to make sure the world knows not just what’s going on with your business, but also what your business actually does.

At the end of the press release, make sure to include a boilerplate statement or about us paragraph for each of the companies included in the press release.

If you need any help writing an about us paragraph, check out our article on exactly that.

Who to Contact

In case journalists have any questions, mention who they should reach out to for more information:

• If you need any additional information, please reach out to:
  Name
  Role Title
  Email
  Phone Number

Photos

If there are any images that correspond to your press release, you may want to send them along to journalists as well. But attaching numerous photos to an email increases the odds that the email will be marked as spam or be harder to send.

A best practice is to upload the photos to a sharable location — such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or WeTransfer — and send journalists the link to this folder of images.

Share It

Once finished, make sure to publish the press release online, distribute to relevant shareholders and send along to individual journalists or PR personnel you may be reaching out to.

When publishing online, make sure you publish it as text! If you publish the press release as a pdf document online, it will not appear in search results and thus can’t help your SEO.

The best practice is to publish the copy of the press release on your site, as searchable text.

If you want to know more about SEO best practices, check this out.

If you’re particularly interested in wide exposure but aren’t already working with a PR agency, you may want to consider signing up for a press release distribution site, such as PR Newswire. These services will send your press release to targeted groups of journalists and sometimes publish them online directly. However, these services can be rather costly, so smaller or newer companies may want to opt for more personal outreach.