One of the newer, and most effective, marketing strategies are press releases. Press releases are informative and objective pieces which are supposed to be newsworthy and are circulated in PR wires for pickup by various newsgroups and editors. Once a press release is picked up, it can be published in various channels all over the Internet, or even through print publications.
Immediately, the sharp marketing mind would be able to see the grand potentials of press releases as amazing tools that would help them spread the word about their business. Imagine the promising things that await if ever a press release is picked up or print or online publication. Such would be tantamount to instantaneous exposure for your business to entirely new audiences!
However, you cannot simply write a press release the same way you would an article, or a content piece, or a sales letter. To employ the same style with press releases would be to court disaster. Your press release won’t be accepted by newswires, hence, it won’t have the chance to get picked up.
So how exactly should you write a press release? Let’s take a look at the guidelines below.
* Pay attention to the 5 Ws. These are Who, What, When, Where and Why. These are the questions which your press release should focus on. If you’re going to write a press release for your dog grooming business, for example, you should be able to state who you are, what your business is about, when it will, or was, launched, where it can be found and why it was established. If you are going to launch, or just launched, a new product, you would have to state who the creator is, what the product is all about, when it was or will be launched, where it can be bought, and why it was introduced to the market.
* Be objective. Remember, a press release should be a newsworthy item. News is never subjective. Stay away from flowery words that merely tend to hype up what you want to discuss. Stick with the facts and only the facts. You are writing news, not a promotional piece.
* The ultimate aim is to promote your product, but be subtle about it. To do this, reorient your focus. Try to make your press release informative instead of persuasive. Remember, you’re not writing a sales copy. You’re writing something that would announce your business or your product.
* There are three parts to a press release: the headline, the summary, and the body. The headline is the title of your piece. The summary is a paragraph that would serve as an introduction to your press release, or a summary of its most salient contents. The body is where you objectively discuss the 5 Ws.
* Length is not a factor. Don’t ever think that if you write a longer press release, it would have a better chance of getting picked up. Often, the rule is, the more concise your press release, the better its chances are of success. A 1,000-word piece is considered a little too lengthy for a press release. 300 to 700 words are succinct enough for this purpose.
Press releases can win for your business the exposure it needs. It is capable of instantaneous results for as long your press release gets picked up and published. A lot of Internet marketers have testified to the power of press releases as marketing tools. So put on your thinking cap and commence to write an objective and informative piece about your business or product, observe the guidelines we have delineated above, and ready yourself for the new audience you’re almost certain to garner.
Of course, this short article only gives you a brief guideline about writing an effective press release.
Comments