Press Release Basic Construction Kit.

Follow the advice on here and start to generate free editorial publicity in support of your event.

The essentials: Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?

Plus a ‘For further information’ panel at the foot of the press release.

Your name, position. Office telephone, out of hours telephone plus mobile number.

PR agencies and the like will say “For and on behalf of [client name]” then ‘for further information contact:….”

Creating a newsworthy structure....

No more that three sentences to a paragraph.

No more that five paragraphs for the whole story.

No indented bulleted lists.

No underlining.

No italics.

No pie charts.

No Graphs.

No waffle.

Consider the blank page of your press release as an inverted pyramid with the base at the top and the point at the bottom of the page.

This gives you an idea of the scale of impact of your news as you scan down the page. The more they read, the lesser the overall impact.

Try and keep the release to one page, alter the margin settings to try and keep it to one page.

Minimise any graphical design header – it uses up valuable information space. If sending by e-mail, do not send as an attachment but as text in the main body of the e-mail!

Use the press release e-mail list on this website or specialist contact organisations such as Mediadisk, who will rent you updated address lists targeted at your industry.

Finally, if a journalist telephones and you say you will ring back… make certain you do actually ring back - even if you only have a small amount of extra information to give. It is professionally appreciated and you become, in the journalists’ eyes, a valuable and reliable contact.  

This is taken from an in-house workshop and seminar programme. Details of regional availability can be obtained from Julian Bray on 07944 217476