Effective Press Releases

Although common practice in the corporate world, press releases are an example of an all too often overlooked potential for business growth, exposure, and traffic generation. Press releases done correctly can provide your work at home business with significant low cost marketing.

Developing an effective press release could be an art form. The content must be creative, eye catching and somehow moving to the reader. Though this sounds much like the creation of a successful marketing campaign the idea here is to assemble a final release that communicates ideas and features in a manner that makes the press release of interest to the news hungry.

One of the most important lessons that you need to learn is that writing media releases is all about developing a persuasive communication within the framework of a traditional news story format.

Editors will quickly trash media releases that make promotional promises such as “the best ever, everyone wins, one-of-a-kind, changing human kind forever”. Instead, you must think like a reporter. Media releases must follow journalistic style in order to be given any kind of consideration. How do you accomplish this task?

Contrary to what most people think a journalist actually spends the bulk of his time in collating information and facts. When everything is ready, it is not uncommon for journalists to finish writing the story in just half an hour. How should we go about collating all the information and facts surrounding a particular event? A simple rule of thumb is to find answers to questions pertaining to the who, what, when, where, why of the event. And we do not stop at just the absolute facts and figures. These must be presented in the right perspective relative to some industry norms or trends. You may have to undertake some researches by going through past industry and newspaper's reports.

Now that you have collated all the relevant facts and figures, the next step is to identify the angle or headline of your story. A good story angle must have the most important fact in your story, must be timely, must be unique, news worthy or contrary to industry norms and trends. The story angle must be presented in the first paragraph as well as the headline of your press release. A lot of newspapers present the most important information in the opening paragraph, followed by other information that support or develop the key points raised in the first paragraph.

Keep your headline short and simple using less than ten words. It should convey the key point raised in your opening paragraph in a light-hearted manner that catches people's attention and imagination. Unlike an emailed newsletter that is written in a personal voice, a press release must be presented objectively from a third person point of view. The reason is obvious. Every journalist has a duty to provide his readers with impartial facts and figures. He must not be seen as endorsing a company's products or services. So, refrain from using any sales pitch in your press release and remove "you", "I", "we" and "us" and replace them with "he" and "they". Provide references to any statistics, facts and figures raised in the press release. No personal opinions, unless they are done in quotes and draw conclusion from facts and statistics not from general opinion.

You should end your press release with an appendix that provides brief background information on your company, newsmakers as well as who to contact for further information. The key to an effective communication, whether verbal or written, lies in presenting your messages to interested audience or readers. Whenever possible, you should only send your press releases to those media whose readers' profile matches that of your target consumers.

About the Author

Tom Moor is a full time work-at-home supporter. Tom accepts wealth accumulation through the internet as to be true and converted to an online business enthusiast after learning about traffic generation strategies. He loves his Work At Home Business.