Writing press releases

Writing press releases is not difficult, but, as often happens, it is difficult to write them well.

The Press Releaseis a brief announcement, usually about an event or an important fact for the company or organization, intended for journalists, public relations officers, publishers, editors o opinion leaders, both offline and online. A fundamental and primary characteristic of a good press release is that it must present facts in a concise, non-promotional form, respecting the rules of the “five Ws” (who, what, where, when, why, and how).

Objectives
The objective of a press release is to arouse the interest of a journalist or a communications manager or a publicist, stimulating them to write a news item or an in-depth article for a newspaper, magazine, announcement site, or industry blog/forum.

The reader of the press release is not the end reader. Including a press release that is too detailed, as if the reader were the end user, carries the risk of it being duplicated in full.

Other objectives may include:
• informing the end reader;
• attracting traffic to the site;
• promoting the brand;
• increasing the site’s link popularity, thanks to the links included in the text;
• improving the site’s positioning.

General criteria
Press circuits are mostly frequented by people looking for information to publish themselves or to cite in their documents. End-users, those for whom the product or service in question is intended, almost never read press release circuits.
The press release, therefore, must be written in a way that piques the interest of whoever will report it, with the minimum necessary information to stimulate and understand the topic.

Those interested in more complete information, if it is deemed interesting for republication, can go to the official page on the website, for which a link or textual indication is present in the press release.

By including only the minimum data in the press release, the interested party will extract material from the in-depth page to create their own short article. This ensures that the viral propagation of the press release always results in different copies of the communication.

If the press release is complete, the temptation for the interested party to replicate the entire text would be very high, and in many cases, this is precisely what happens. However, this significantly increases the risk of anti-duplication filters in search engines being triggered. A very short press release, on the other hand, if replicated entirely and inserted into the context of pages where its percentage contribution of text is minimal, will have a greater chance of bypassing search engine analysis algorithms. This is also ethically correct.

We are led to believe that a journalist, finding a shortened press release, will not report it in favor of another if it means they have to write. This is only partially true. It should be considered that, in any case, in this unfortunate scenario, the interested party can still refer to the official document on the website. However, they will only do so if the information is not important. No journalist, communications professional, or editor would fully copy an official announcement of important news. Their work, in fact, would be too easily discredited in such a case.

Content format
The content must be concise, stick to the facts, without the use of magnifying attributes or promotional and commercial stimulation.

Having decided to write a short text, it is important to use a concise style, carefully choosing every word, avoiding unnecessary repetitions and perfunctory phrases.
After writing the press release, make a copy, reread it, weighing every word and removing the unnecessary ones. Almost always, the press release emerges in a shortened and even stylistically preferable form.

If the press release is intended to directly inform the end-reader, because it is being placed on a high-traffic portal or a category website, the same general rules apply, but the text should be more detailed. It should also be considered that in this case, the term “press release” is conceptually incorrect.

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Pubblicato in Business