Formatting Your Press Release
Once you know the basics involved in writing a Press Release, you’ll find it’s a pretty simple process to put one together. In fact, if you conform to “industry standards” and include the information that reporters and editors are expecting to find, your press release stands a very good chance of actually being used.
Here are the formatting rules you need to follow:
Use mixed case. NEVER SUBMIT A PRESS RELEASE IN ALL UPPER CASE LETTERS. As you can see, it’s much more difficult to read that way.
Always follow the rules of grammar and style. Errors in grammar and style affect your credibility. Excessive errors will cause your press release to be rejected.
Don’t use HTML. When sending your press release to online Media, do not embed HTML or other markup languages in it. Including such formatting will negatively impact the readability of your press release.
Use more than one paragraph. If you can say everything in only a few sentences, then chances are you do not have a newsworthy story. (*Note: You may hear that your press release should “never” be more than one page long. I have found that a press release should be as long as it takes to tell your story. If that means one and a-half or two pages, then that’s how long it should be. Do your best to keep it short and sweet, but don’t take out important information just to make it fit on one page.)
The Power of Personal PR
Ten seconds is all it takes to make a first impression – whether it’s your personal presentation or the first contact a potential client or customer has with your business through the telephone, website or other communication collateral.
When they walk through their door – or you walk through
theirs – your image is imprinted in the first moment.
Research has proven that 67% of first impressions are
accurate. Your personal image tells the world who you are
and where you are going. Your business image says the same.
Every email, voicemail, and phone call you make creates
first impressions that build your brand.
But it’s not just your logo or your business stationery
that needs to look good. How you present yourself in person
also says a lot about your brand. For many small business
people or business entrepreneurs, you are your business and
how your project yourself is vitally important to the
success of your business.
How you shake hands, make eye contact, conduct yourself in
social situations and the clothes you choose to wear
contribute to your personal brand. Your image is like the
weather. People notice when it’s extremely good or
extremely bad. People shouldn’t judge us by our outward
appearances but of course you know they will. First
impressions can indicate to a potential client, your sense
of style, ambition and self-confidence level.
Tips to Get Press Coverage
Press exposure can significantly impact a small businesses’
success. Press releases are not just for big businesses;
many small businesses find press releases to be an
inexpensive way to gain exposure and attention. It is not
uncommon for reporters from magazines, newspapers or blogs
to scan press releases as a means to locate content.
Here are some tips to enhance the exposure and quality of
your press releases:
1. Relevant
First and foremost, it is important to decide what
information should be included in your press release.
Information that is newsworthy and relevant will have the
best chances of gaining the attention of an editor. The
press release should be sent to related publications: a pet
magazine is not going to print a press release about the
latest compression utility, but it might print a release
about software that manages records of a pets shots.
2. Customize
Giving your press release a personalized touch, especially
for bloggers and online journalists, can be helpful in
gaining attention. Spending an extra few moments to
personalize a press release could be just what is needed to
make it stand out from hundreds of other press releases.
While it is impractical to customize all of the press
releases sent, it might make sense to personalize the
releases for key publications or media outlets.
Top 10 Tips to PR Success
As business owners I’m sure you recognise the power of
publicity and how positive media coverage can have an
impact on your business. Free media exposure has a lot more
credibility than advertising. In fact it’s said that
publicity is seven times more effective.
However you may also think that you don’t have the skills
or knowledge to gain publicity and maybe you’re not in a
financial position to hire a PR firm (yet!).
But if you follow my 10-point plan I’m sure that you’ll
soon experience the power of the press.
1. Gain the appropriate skills and knowledge to become an
expert in your field. Experts on specialist topics are
sought after by the media. Become a qualified member of
your industry’s association, as this will give you
credibility when the media choose to profile you.
2. Be clear on what your message is, know what you want to
say. Understand that you need to have a point of difference
or something interesting to say and that you need to get
that across in an entertaining and informative way.
Summarise your message in short, succinct, sound bites.
3. You need to have an audience to listen to your message.
Do some research on your ideal customer, perhaps a survey.
Look at whom your competitors are talking to. Zero in on
your target.
How to Craft a Compelling Press Release
One of the primary tools still used by PR professionals to garner media coverage is the press release. Now, understand the purpose of a press release is to grab the attention of
an editor, not to offer a word for word story to a publication. Most professionals, as well as small business owners, misunderstand this concept and are therefore frustrated when they can’t seem to make it work for them.
If you understand that the purpose of a press release is to
grab attention, then you might also begin to realize that
there is a bit of an art to writing an effective one.
This art actually begins with proper format. It probably
shouldn’t matter how you format a good story, but editor
after editor has told me that if a press release comes to
them and is not properly formatted, it often doesn’t get
read. Read that again if you are bit of a maverick. You
want to read about your company in the news then you might
just have to follow the rules.
Ultimately, your story will have to stand on its own, but
follow this accepted format, and you stand a better chance
of making that all important first impression.
Keys to Successful PR
PR is such a powerful marketing tool that I simply can’t
say enough about it. And yet, most small business owners
don’t spend the time and energy they should developing
positive press about their firm. Let’s look at several
ideas you can begin implementing immediately.
A positive story in the media about some aspect of your
firm will generate some new leads, but it also resells your
current clients and makes it easier to refer your firm to
others.
Maybe you’ve heard me say some of this in the past, but
here are my keys to consistently generating positive media
mentions.
Target your sources
Think of the journalists that cover your industry or town
like you would a hot prospect. Target them and spend time
getting to know what they write and what interests them.
Set-up Google News alerts for each journalist or
publication you are tracking and you can follow all the
stories you need to watch.
Blow Your Own Trumpet for Positive PR
You can become famous. Maybe you don’t want be famous but at least you can learn to make your product or service well known. Of course that will in turn help the bottom line and you might become rich and famous! Is that what you want – your 15 minutes of fame? Your opportunity to shine in the spotlight.
So how do we get that opportunity? Why not tell everyone
who you are, what you do and how you make a difference. The
way of doing that is through public relations and it is
simply communicating who you are and what you do, it’s
having “relationships” with your “public”.
One way of letting people know who you are is through
publicity. Getting that free editorial coverage in press,
on radio and television is what we all want. It’s our way
of letting people know about our product or service or how
terrific we are. But most of us don’t like blowing our own
trumpet. But without promotion something terrible happens -
nothing!
Build Brand, Buzz and Business through the Power of the Press
You’d think with all the communication going on these days
that we’d be getting tired of reading more material – but
it seems in this “information era” we can’t get enough
knowledge whether it’s through online sites such as the one
you are currently logged into or through books and
magazines. So how can we tap into this valuable resource?
Learn how you can build some buzz for your business through
the Power of the Press.
Recently a colleague had an article about her appear in a
magazine and wondered how she could maximise this
opportunity for some publicity. A participant at a recent
seminar of mine wondered if writing articles and submitting
them to magazines was a good publicity idea. Yes! Anytime
you have something written about you it creates awareness
of you and your product or service.
The media is such a powerful tool and when used well can
really help profile you and your brand. Two ways you can
use the media to profile your business and brand is through
a media publicity campaign or writing articles for
magazines. They can help position you as the expert and
authority in your area. The first person people contact
when it comes to that subject. People notice. Okay they
might not immediately pick up the phone and buy from you,
but consistently being seen says, “you’re in business, you
mean business and I’m here when you’re ready to buy”.
The main thing you need to be aware of when writing an
article or media release is that you need to have something
interesting to say. You need to be unique, differentiate
yourself from the others in your field. What is you point
of difference? What sets you apart? Once you work that out,
that can be your “hook” to gain media attention.
The Building Blocks of Visual Vocabulary: Consistency
Your Visual Vocabulary consists of the secondary design
elements that are used in conjunction with your logo to
form your brand identity. Your Visual Vocabulary is
composed of the graphics, font styles, colors, and even the
type of paper you choose.
Once you have determined the elements to use in your Visual
Vocabulary, it is important to use those elements
consistently throughout all of your marketing materials.
This consistency will make your entire set of materials
look like a family. Having a consistent set of marketing
materials makes you look more organized and professional.
It also makes your business more memorable, because the
repetition of the consistent elements creates repeated
impressions on your audience. The more you repeat your
marketing images and messages consistently, the easier it
will be for your clients to associate them with your
business.
The four ways to create consistency in your Visual
Vocabulary are:
1. Using the same or similar visuals and graphics
throughout your marketing materials makes them instantly
recognizable, which is becoming more important as marketing
media messages become more prevalent and people become more
inundated with them. The graphical elements that you can
work with in your Visual Vocabulary include the
backgrounds, text treatments (such as tagline styles),
shapes, layout conventions, and the photo library you use.
5 Key Lessons I Learned From Working at AOL About Creating a Brand for Your Business
Copyright (c) 2007 Mary Foley
After 10 years of forging my career at AOL during their
rise to global dominance, I consider myself corrupted. The
lessons I learned there are seared onto my brain. And,
thankfully so, because I’ve used everything single one in
building my own business.
One huge lesson I learned was about BRANDING. By 1997, AOL
was the number one online service, but the lead wasn’t so
huge that Microsoft’s new MSN service couldn’t take it
away. If AOL was going to continue to bust open and take a
huge lead, we needed to do something a bit different.
Enter COO Bob Pittman. His first, foremost, and I believe,
most valuable, thing he ever did was to insist that the
company get serious about creating a brand. Not simply a
well-known company, not a recognized logo, but a brand,
something that evokes a strong emotion, that’s incredibly
attractive, and that people want to stay attached to.
We started to get deliberate about creating a brand.
Everything we did – from look and feel to marketing to
customer service to pricing to online content and more –
communicated several tenants of the AOL brand:Â easy,
affordable, and useful. It worked. By the year 2000, AOL
was a $7 billion dollar company with 23 million members and
a wide lead in the top spot.
