How To Score Big With A Press Release

A press release is used to create publicity for your business or company. They are sent to the media and journalists in hopes that they will write articles about your business or news. If a journalist finds interest in your company or your newsworthy event, your press release is what they will use as a basis to write their article.

A press release is basically a brief summary of a news story. A business or company prepares press releases to disclose new information about their products, activities or services to create interest in their company and become more visible to the public. But remember, a press release is not written as a sales ad for your company or product. It is written as a news story. The best way to have your press release picked up by the media is to make sure it is newsworthy. If your company or business is related to a hot news topic or current event, it would make for a good press release. Anything news related that gives you the opportunity to plug your company is good. Some examples would be if your company is participating in a community event, or receiving an award, building something new in the community, offering a new product, or any other of your company's accomplishments. You can also write about unusual stories like a rare celebrity encounter at your company. The media loves celebrity sightings. Just make sure you include your link in your press release, and that will give you lots of publicity and links back to your business.

If you use your press release online, it could lead to obtaining more links to your site which is great for search engines. You can also use an online news distribution company such as Webwire.com to submit your press release to online news networks such as Yahoo news, MSN news and Google news. You can also use such online news sources like Yahoo News and Google News to find other related articles to write about. You could write an article from the news you find on those sites and include your link in the article to submit to webwire.com or other news distribution companies.

When writing a press release, it should be on company letterhead and should include the name, address, and logo of the company, as well as the name and phone number of a contact person or business owner. Your press release should be straight to the point and no more than two pages long and should include the following sections: Headline, dateline, introduction or lead, body, boilerplate, close, and media contact information.

The headline for your press release should contain some important keywords and should be written to grab the journalist's attention immediately. After the headline, you must include a dateline which is the date of the release, the originating city of the press release, and the words "Press Release". The introduction (or lead) of your press release is the first few lines of the press release and should answer the questions who, what, when, where, why and how of the story. The body of the press release is a further explanation of the story and should state the facts to support your information with statistics, product description and other details. After the body of your press release comes the boilerplate, which is a short section about your company. Here you can include your website link, background of your company or yourself and your contact information. At the end of the boilerplate you will close the press release with the symbol "-30-" or the symbol "###". These symbols indicate the end of the press release. After the close symbol is where you will put your media contact information which should include your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and any other contact information.

All of this may seem a bit overwhelming at first until you get the hang of it. You can always look at other press releases to observe and learn the ropes. Or you can hire a company to do all the hard work for you as well as use press-release distribution services or online news distribution services to distribute your news releases.
In the end, a press release is an excellent way to attract media attention to your product or business and create the well needed publicity your company needs.