A press release can help you create a buzz and amongst your anticipated audience and in so doing boost the attendance. What’s challenging about writing a press release is that the media (social, email, texts) is so flooded with information that it’s impossible to generate excitement unless it’s strategically written.
This article will address some of your concerns about press releases, like should you write a traditional one or do you go for an online-press release? You will also learn the basic principles that you should use in writing a press release for this tool to benefit you.
Step 1: Find Your Hook
A press release is simply a tool that you want to use to get the media and target audience to pay attention to your story. A powerful SEO optimised headline can help you grab your reader’s attention and act as an opener to cheer your reader on. For the media to be attracted to your story you should identify an angle on your event that will spark excitement in people. Will you have a celebrity at you entertainment event? Will the attendees be allowed to make a selection of weekend vacation homes? What part of the auction will readers benefit from?
It’s good to aim for your press release to go online even if you wrote a traditional one. This is because once it’s online it can be permanently accessed by people even way after the event. Your title should be the first part of the press release with a hook.
Step 2: Summarize in a Maximum Four Sentences
A summary of the entire press release is important in both traditional and online press release. If you hire a good press release writing service they will write you a comprehensive summary. Normally it’s advised that you write the summary after completing the main press release although you should position it just after the heading. Readers who are too busy or too lazy to read the entire press release can be motivated by a short summary.
Step 3: Use a Dateline and Lead Paragraph
These give the critical information in the press release and answers the 5W questions; “who, what, where, when and why”. All this information can normally be given in the first paragraph. This will help a reader know from the onset if this is the kind of thing he or she is interested in. A press release writing service can optimize your dateline and lead paragraph with SEO keywords so that only readers who search for similar events online come to the page.
Step 4: The Meat of the Press Release
The meat or the body of the press release is where the story of your event is told in full detail. This part usually contains two to three paragraphs. The first paragraph gives more details of the event, talks about the audience and celebrity guests and finally encourages the reader to attend by giving out benefits of the event. The second and third paragraphs can contain the history of the company, event or the venue.
Step 5: Conclusion
This is simply a conclusion of the content and not the press release per se. It’s like an “about” page on a website. It should thus contain the details about the company, like the services you offer, names of key stakeholders, company mission, and vision and so on. So this is essentially the phase of the company that you want to portray to the public.
The real conclusion to a press release should be the contact information. This should have the name of the company, phone number, web address, physical address (can be excluded) and the details of the key contact person.
Source: Killer content writers
