Choose benefits, news and feature leads
Are you still using the fact pack — cramming who, what, when, where, why and how into the first paragraph of your news release?… Read the full article
Press Release
How to write a quote that sounds human
Add passion, personality to your sound bites
Add personality to your quotes through passion, humanity and colloquialisms.
Make it personal.
When two-thirds of Californians failed every question on a fast food nutrition quiz, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy distributed a release including this sound bite.… Read the full article
Reporters hate press release quotes
They snooze, you lose
What’s the least important element in a release — less important even than the dateline or the boilerplate?
Quotes, say one in four reporters surveyed in a study by Greentarget.… Read the full article
How to write a press release headline that targets readers
Write about the reader, not ‘us and our stuff’
Front-loading your headlines with your topic word just makes sense if your readers are going to encounter those headlines in online lists — a search engine results page, for instance, or your online newsroom.… Read the full article
How to write a lead for a press release
Want readers to read? Put the reader first, lead with you
It’s counterintuitive, but true: The product is never the topic. The program is never the topic.… Read the full article
Write third-party testimonials for your messages
Get The Peer Principle of Persuasion into your next campaign
“What others say about you and your product, service, or business is at least 1,000 times more convincing than what you say, even if you are 2,000 times more eloquent.”
… Read the full articleDetails make the difference
Go granular with PR leads
The internet coffee pot. Word of the year. The Dust Bowl.
Details like these grab attention and help readers see your big idea.… Read the full article
Think like a reporter
Make your release relevant to the reader
Editors don’t care that “Amalgamated Technologies Has Released the New XYZ-2000 Coated Cable Bushing,” writes Stinson Liles, principal and co-founder at Red Deluxe.… Read the full article
Is the press release dead?
Don’t give up on traditional media
Have blogs killed traditional journalism? Should the press release really die, die, die, die? Why did the PR pro cross the road?… Read the full article
Choose nouns and verbs
Avoid adjectives and adverbs in news release heads
News flash: Journalists, bloggers and readers are sick of robust, scalable, award-winning, enterprisewide solutions.
But that doesn’t stop PR pros from using them: Nearly 14% of release headlines contain at least one of the Top 20 PR buzzwords to avoid.… Read the full article