What You Need to Know about Writing Press Releases

I’ve also written a few times about where to put your keywords on the front (the copy your readers see) and the back (the HTML that searchbots see) of your Web pages. Keep your keywords in mind when you’re writing press releases. They’re particularly important and I’ll write a quick recap at the bottom of this post.

Headlines for Press Releases

Your objective is to write compelling, descriptive titles that pull in readers.

Just to clarify: A descriptive headline is one that actually makes sense. This is not the time to be cute or obscure. If your company has won a new client or has accomplished something newsworthy, put it into your headline.

For example:

Web Acme Design Company Wins Contract to Develop a Web Site for the XYZ Corporation.

The head should express one complete idea or thought, which is what Sister Mary Agnus taught me in parochial school. If I didn’t think so, she’d whack me with a ruler, so it must be true.

Note, I put an initial cap on nearly every word. That’s the way it’s usually done. I don’t agree with doing it that way, because I think it’s harder to read. I prefer sentence case for my headlines, meaning just the first word has an initial cap and the rest are lower case. Each to his own. Personally, I think sentence case also is more inviting. I’m not the only one who thinks that either. It’s up to you.

Use bold face.

By the way, do not end your headline with punctuation.

Also use your keywords in headlines and put them first when you can.  Your keywords should be on the top shelf, where the good stuff is always displayed in liquor stores (or “packies” as we say here around Boston).

3. Subheads

Follow your headline with a subhead or”deck” as we say in the trade. Think of it as a sentence that amplifies your headline. So, using the example above, you subhead might be:

The goal of the new Web site will be to incorporate an open-source e-commerce system that will help cuts costs, enhance inventory management and boost sales.

Notice the headline and subhead complement each other. If the reader were to read nothing else, those two lines tell the story.

It’s complement, not compliment, a common mistake, which is why I mention it.

Punctuation is often used for the subhead. It’s also common to put it in italics.

4. Body copy

Here’s where you have to fly solo because I can’t tell you everything you need to know about writing. If you lack the skill, consider hiring someone. Nothing is worse than a press release that comes across as though it were written by a child or a mindless blow hard, which is more often the case.

At least I can tell you something about structure. You need a lead, or what writers sometimes call a “nut graf.” It’s the old “who, what, when, where, why and how” stuff you may have learned in high school or college. However, the rules are a bit less rigid with news releases.

Here, what you’re after is to get to the point, the nut, of the release. So, following up on the example above, you might write something like this:

NEW YORK–Today Web Acme Company won a contract from XYZ Corp. to redesign and launch a Web site based on a popular open-source content management system and e-commerce platform that will enable XYZ to aggressively manage its growth and to better serve the needs of its customers.

“Web Acme specializes in using applications such as the Drupal content management system to make it easy for companies like XYZ to manage their online content without requiring the services of an outside firm, which can often be expensive,” says Bob Sprat, Web Acme’s chief technical officer who will oversee the project. “We’ll also be tying XYZ’s inventory and ordering systems into Zen Cart, a leading open-source e-commerce solution.”

By using open-source products such as Drupal and Zen Cart, XYZ will save close to $98,000 over buying commercial software.

Yada, yada.

Put your keyword phrases toward the top of pages and in opening paragraphs. While you’re at it, anticipate the sequence of words someone might enter into a search engine and make sure those on your site match up.

Your pages should be keyword rich but not keyword dense. Searchbots tend to suspect too much of a good thing is bad. Some researchers claim keyword density should vary between 5 percent to 20 percent of the words on a page. A searchbot could interpret pages that exceed those numbers as spam and ignore them, they say. Sounds good to me.

I believe searchbots give more weight to bold, italic and underlined fonts. Not many writers underline copy because readers might confuse those words as links. “You pays your money and you takes your choice,” my old man says way too often.

Omit “Welcome to…” and “Our company is…” and other needless words. Get busy and start with keywords related to those products and services you sell.

Put your keywords into press releases, buyer’s guides, how-tos, instructions manuals—everything you can get your hands on. Use HTML and PDFs. Point the reader to your site.

5. Numbers and bullets

When it makes sense, use bullets or numbered lists when you have three of four key points to make: Again, using our example:

Web Acme will provide the following services and systems for ZYX:

–Complete over haul of the existing site to improve the site’s look and feel and navigation

–Drupal content management system

–Zen Cart e-commerce system

You can elaborate on each of those points, of course. Make the list parallel. Start them the same way. It’s not Web Acme will be designing the Web site, install Drupel and utilize Zen Cart. Use all verbs, all nouns, whatever.

Readers love numbered and bulleted lists. They’re easy to scan and contain loads of information but don’t take up much real estate. Those are primo places for keywords.

I’ll give you more tips on writing bullets, lists and other copy over time.

Last, keep your press release to one page. 450 to 550 words are sufficient. No one is going to read more than that. Your objective is to get people to call you or to visit your site. It almost never happens that a journalist will run your release word for word. Some bloggers might, because they don’t have the time or energy to do more than that (most bloggers have day jobs).

6. Links

Use keywords in your links and make your links descriptive. You need more than “click here” and “continue”
links. Links also break up blocks of copy and help the reader skim.

7. Images and graphics

Reporters have to make do with less. Provide as more visual content as you can. Links to photos, multimedia and so on.

When you can, use keywords in the file names of your images and graphics and your <alt> tags. Recently, Google and Adobe announced they collaborated on a new algorithm to search text and URLs embedded in Flash. That’s one more place to put your keywords.

8. Call to Action

The profs in every writing class I enrolled in in college hammered on the need to include a call to action in my copy. What do you want the reader to do? Call you for more information? Visit your Web site? Send money to you in Nigeria? Marry your sister? Whatever it is, point them in the right direction. Reinforce your call to action with your keywords.

If you have a free offer–customer case studies, a how-to guide or something similar–tell readers they can get it free at your site.

Boilerplate

Finally, include a graf about your company, what it does, where it’s located and so on. It’s a standard paragraph that you will use for all your press release. Make it tight.

A reminder about keywords and keyword placement:

Keyword-rich content matters a lot. The trick is to use keywords to guide readers and to feed searchbots. You can do both simultaneously but if I had to choose, I’d say the reader comes first–always.

–When people talk about keywords, what they’re really talking about are keyword phrases.

–Blithely stuffing the front of your pages with your keywords isn’t going to work. Searchbots look at keyphrases and sequences of keywords, the proximity of keywords to each other, where they appear on the page and at synonyms that are contextually related to your keywords.

–Repeating your keyphrases may be search-engine friendly but over doing it will make your readers seasick.

–Vary your sentences and work on making your writing compelling. You can keep the reader in mind and make your press releases search-engine friendly without being a bore.

Last post in this series: Set your press release free.