How to Write a Proper Press Release

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody I'm John Graden and I'm a professional speaker, trainer and the author of seven books including The Impostor Syndrome. Let's talk about how to write a proper press release. And let's correct things right off the bat. It's no longer a press release, in today's electronic dissemination, electronic media it's now called a media release. And really the best way to write a media release is not to write a media release. It's better in today's world to write an article on your subject and site you as an expert being quoted in the article. Or talk about the benefits of using your product or service. Because typically with media releases we are trying to gain attention for our product or service. And if we write a straight xyz corporation unleashed the new phantom xyg configulater, who cares. Nobody cares about that, so we have to have, if we can structure the release into an interesting article that has benefits for the reader and site our new product or site ourselves as experts we can gain more attraction. It's going to be a lot more interesting to the editors and they will typically be more inclined to run an article, a media release disguised as an article rather than an advertisement disguised as a media release. I hope that makes sense to you. Let's talk about the structure of the media release. Imagine that only the first paragraph is going to be written, that the editor is going to cross everything out and they are only going to run with that first paragraph so you want to make sure that all the important information is in there, who, what ,when , where, why. That's the beginning, the middle we expand upon that, quoting ourselves talking about the product or service and at the end we have typically our biographical information, our contact information or website or phone number etcetera. So we've got a beginning, a middle and the end. Once that's written I then go back and I spend most of my time on the headline. I want a provocative compelling headline that grabs that editor's attention and or grabs the readers attention. Six ways to reduce debt, or six ways to travel at half price. That's obvious benefit headlines. So when you write your headline, here's the test. Look at it and you go, so what. XYZ corporation announces the defibrillator, so what. Six ways to reduce debt and grow wealth now. It's kind of, if you are in debt it's hard to say so what to six ways to get out of debt. So if you have a challenge in your life and my media release, or my article can solve that challenge and help you with that problem, that's going to be of great interest to you. So that's what I call the so what test. Read the headline look at it and just think, you know is that a so what, does anybody really care and make sure that headline passes the so what test. And that they do indeed care. If it's a hard copy submission make sure it's double spaced, on the top left, for immediate release. Contact, your name, phone number, email address, website. The title, the body, again double spaced, try and keep it to one page. At the bottom, at the end dash then the words, end-E N D in capital letters and another dash. So we can make it clear to the editor this is it, you are not missing anything. If you have to go on to more pages then that, make it page two of four, page three of four, page four of four end again we want to make it very clear. Our job is to make it as easy as possible for that editor to turn it over into his publication. I'm John Graden, I hope that helps you to write a proper media release, thanks."