How to Write a Press Release: 4 PR Rules for Media Coverage
This afternoon I am teaching a course on “Brand Marketing, Media and Public Relations (opens in a new tab)” at Pan Science Academy. Before we start, let us talk briefly about what makes a press release worth a reader’s attention.
You have probably heard of the “inverted pyramid structure”. That is only a writing technique. The far more important question is whether a journalist can immediately see why this event matters, and what it has to do with the general public.
Whether you are announcing a product, a senior hire, or a milestone, you have to work out the sequence of events and their cause and effect yourself before anyone else can “understand it in seconds” (opens in a new tab).
Here is an example. I recently received a press release from Kuobrothers with this headline: “Recycle for shopping credit! Kuobrothers and Pcone team up with startup ECOCO to advance the circular economy, forming Taiwan’s first e-commerce alliance for social good and driving a positive cycle between the economy and the environment.” The headline is unwieldy, but at least a few keywords surface quickly: circular economy, social good, e-commerce.
Kuobrothers (stock code 8477), whose e-commerce platforms include Life Market and Tasty Market along with its B2B2C subsidiary Pcone, sees sustainability as a positive cycle and wants to keep acting on its corporate social impact. Today (the 4th) it announced a partnership with the circular economy platform ECOCO, becoming the first e-commerce group in Taiwan to form such an alliance for social good.
Now a counter-example. Yesterday (January 4) ITRI issued a release headlined “ITRI and southern Taiwan industry join forces: technology takes root, industrial innovation grows strong.” The headline tells you the region, but not which industries are actually involved.
Building on the strengths of southern Taiwan, ITRI today (the 4th) presented nearly 40 of its latest technologies at the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Southern Taiwan Innovation Park, including cultivated leather corals almost indistinguishable from their wild habitat and a portable UVC flowing-water module that has just won a R&D 100 Award. The work spans green energy, recycling and sustainability, 3D printing and micro-sensing, bringing together the best of the region’s research.
Only after reading that first paragraph did I understand that ITRI has spent recent years working in green energy, recycling and sustainability, 3D printing and micro-sensing, and that it wanted to bring together the region’s strongest manufacturers and talent behind nearly 40 new results. The information was there. It just was not in the headline.
Readers are busy and impatient, so put your effort into the headline and the opening paragraph, and lead with the key point and the benefit you are offering. Concrete cases, numbers and evidence make it considerably more convincing.
Apple requires its press releases to be written so that a fourth-grader can understand them. That is a good standard to borrow: use fewer specialist terms and say things plainly.
If you ran any Apple press release (opens in a new tab) through a readability test, it would most likely come back at a level an average fourth-grader could follow. Any trace of jargon, cliché or awkward technical vocabulary was removed in editing. If a “simple ordinary person” cannot understand our language, that is our failure. And we do not accept failure. Steve Jobs personally read and approved every press release the company issued.
So the four rules are straightforward:
- Work out the full context and cause and effect of the event before you write a word.
- Put the key point and the reader’s benefit in the headline and the first paragraph.
- Back the claim with real cases, numbers and evidence.
- Write plainly enough that a fourth-grader could follow it.
Methods and principles will only take you so far. Practice against these four rules often enough and you should be able to write a press release that people can actually understand and are willing to run.
★ Master “2016-2018 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference Essence Lazy Pack” in one hand!
★ Do you want your copywriting to be liked by more people? Come and watch “Slow Reading and Understanding in Seconds (opens in a new tab)”.
★ To improve your content power, please don’t miss the online course “Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands (opens in a new tab)”
★ Photo Credit: AbsolutVision (opens in a new tab)
Further reading
- How to get your website content included in Google News?
- “Brand Marketing Media Public Relations Skills” course experience: Understand the media ecosystem and master the direction of community management
- Establishing good public relations starts with media communication and press release writing
Next step
Bring this topic to your team
Vista Cheng speaks and runs workshops on AI workflows, writing and content systems for companies, schools and public agencies.
