Press release writing is a specialized art form. The well written press release is far from being a classified ad for the newest and greatest pre-launch business model. A press release is a professional piece of journalism which answers the following questions adequately.

• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why

“A press release is simply a statement prepared for distribution to the news media announcing something claimed as having news value with the intent of gaining media coverage.”

A press release consists of following elements:

• Headline

  The headline is the first single line of text in the press release and tells what the press release is about. It can be a very effective tool to grab the attention of the journalists, so writing it from a journalists perspective is very important. Think what headlines catch your eyes in the newspaper.

  The headline should be descriptive but not too long. For the later reason, The headline should be formatted in title case, that is, each word in the sentence should have first letter capitalized, and rest of the letters in lowercase. Acronyms can be in uppercase.

• Summary

  The summary lets you build up your chance to sell your press release to the journalist. It is generally a requirement of online press release services. Identify a unique feature about your product or service and then write how it is going to revolutionize the world.

  The summary should be a single paragraph with about three to five lines. Beyond 250 characters is too long, so this is the limit for PRLog. All sentences in the summary should be in sentence case, that is, only first letter of a sentence should be capital, and all others should be lowercase. Again, acronyms can be all capital letters.

• Body

  1. Dateline

     The dateline contains the release date of the press release and usually also the originating city of the press release. For online press release services like PRLog, the date stamp is automatic and should not be entered.

  2. Introduction

     The introduction is where the press release body starts. It is the first paragraph in a press release, that generally gives basic answers to the questions of who, what, when, where and why.

  3. Details

     The details come after the introduction. It gives further explanation, statistics, background, or other details relevant to the news and also serves to back up whatever claims were made in the introductory paragraph.

  The body should be around 3000 characters or 450 words. The body should have a minimum of two paragraphs. All paragraphs should be ideally between 5 to 8 lines each. There should be a blank line after each paragraph for good visibility.

• About

  The about section is also called the “boilerplate” as it used over and over again. It is generally a short section providing background information on the press release issuing company or organization.

• Media Contact Information

  This section contains the contact information like name, phone number, email address, mailing address, etc for the media relations contact person. For good credibility, the email address should be the same as the organization the press release is about. For example, if the press release is about an organization with a website, then the following information is to be found here: Consult with Butch Hamilton-Writer for Hire!

General Tips

• A press release should be written in third person. Instead of using we, us and ours, your should be using they, them and theirs.
• Moving away from the idea of selling, recruiting or advertising goods, services or something of worth on the web is difficult for many to accomplish. Press release writing, just like anything else, is more mindset than actual work. Once the thinking is arranged properly, then the actual work can be accomplished seamlessly and effortlessly.

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