Part 1: Three basic mistakes and how to avoid them

First mistake: It’s not about you

Time after time I see companies and organisations falling into the trap of thinking that the press release is about them.

This is only true if it is a stock market-orientated press release reporting your company’s performance. Even then you may be missing an opportunity or two. Yes, it is your press release, but the cold reality is that unless you are in the Intel/Sony/Microsoft league no one cares about what your company is up to…

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Part 2: The language of robots! Avoid alienating your readers

When it is humans who read press releases why does it seem that so many are written to be read by robots? (And I’m not talking web bots, here!)

In the first part of this series I touched on your potential audiences, although before writing you would do well to sit down with colleagues and roughly flesh out the answers to…

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Part 3: Specific advice for frontline telecare/telehealth services

The first two parts of this series have dealt with identifying the audiences for your press release and how to avoid turning them off.

In this part I offer some specific advice to telecare/telehealth organisations and companies that deal directly with the public, such as alarm monitoring companies, councils and housing associations in the UK, and charities.

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Part 4: Specific advice for supplier companies

Company news (new chief officers, acquisitions, takeovers, investment plans, etc.) is only marginally more of a story for supplier companies than service provider ones, as they will have some industry-specific audiences, such as shareholders.

However, by writing dull ‘this is the facts’ press releases on these occasions you may, as I mentioned at the start of Part 1, be missing an opportunity or two.

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Part 5: Press release structure and press release doom

The conventional press release structure helps readers extract the information they want quickly.

There are variations, depending on the industry and type of press release and, when submitting releases to online distribution services, the elements often have to be split up and put in different boxes. That is, the structure is determined for you. However, the typical structure looks like this:

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Part 6: How to get journalists to contact you – and being prepared when they do

I’m glad I’m not a journalist working on a national newspaper.

Imagine…day after day having tens, possibly hundreds, of stories pitched to you in the hope that you are going to spend your precious time helping the authors get publicity.

Well, here are a few tips for breaking through that and increasing your chances of getting your story picked up and enticing a journalist to contact you for more:

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