Get Media To Pick Your Press Release | Steps To Pen A Media Release

Reading is pretty boring. Except for the minority of people with vivid enough imagination that they can construct a medieval palace out of a Sidney Sheldon novel, nobody wants to spare time for reading stuff that isn’t their cup of tea. The same can be said for press releases. Unless yours is out of the creativity ballpark, media outlets rarely bother themselves with them.

However, your release does not need to be rejected by the media for being too banal. All it takes is a little ingenuity and a smidge of creativity to make yours stand out from the rest. So, to understand how to write a killer press release, you first need to understand what the media does look for in a press release? And secondly, how can you send your press release to the media? Let’s dig in.

Trick of the Trade: Press Releases

A press release, first of all, is a piece of writing that intimates the reader of a product, service, or event. Now, getting people to read about anything is already an achievement in itself, but press release marketing is a laborious process in itself in the sense that it requires the reader to go through the whole text.

However, with simple ingenious tweaks to the text, a press release can actually be turned into a formidable marketing weapon. It requires creativity and an innate sense of press release marketing to make sure that your product flies and media outlets scramble to get in on the action.

What Media wants from the Press Release

A press release is yours and your product’s story. It needs to be heard. Media outlets are there to provide you the medium. However, it’s not as simple as it would seem. Media outlets have a ton of stuff to pay attention to. From politics to international newsmakers, they have got their hands pretty full.

They don’t usually bother with promotional stuff unless they are considered as adverts and pay a good premium to the publisher. Nevertheless, we have a few aces in our pockets. As busy as the media is, there is a dearth of stuff to be shown on televisions or to be published in newspapers. For those journalists, a press release is the perfect filler material. It fills spaces and conveys news. What else could they need?

To get to that coveted space, a press release needs to be competitive enough to stand out from the sea of dull, monotonous releases that populate a journalist’s desk. For that to happen, you need to take a few steps before sending your press release to the media. Let’s get it started.

Send your Press Release to the Media, with Style

First things first. Outlook is critical. If your press release gets sent to media men full of lackluster stuff and uninteresting information, it gets tossed right into the bin. Journalists don’t bother with a story that can’t carry itself. Therefore, for your press release to be picked up by the media, it needs to make its mark on the journalist and the publication itself.

Make your Press Release Stand Out

The only way to get your press release published by the media is to make it snappy. There are few pointers for writing a press release that does not get binned. Let’s have a look at them.

Creativity is Key:

It cannot be stressed enough. Creativity can make the difference between your press release getting picked up by a media outlet or getting rejected from every outlet. It is the only factor that separates a good release from a bad one. Therefore, you want to keep your press release creative enough and attractive enough for the journalists to deem it as an asset rather than a liability. To keep it simple, newspapers and channels want stuff that,

1. Puts a little color on the palette.
2. Gravitates a person towards it, thereby guaranteeing views and reads.

Keep these points in mind for the next time a press release is required. Is it catchy enough to get picked by a media outlet? And will your press release guarantee views by virtue of its impressive lines? If your press release answers yes to both the questions, kudos. You’ve got a winner on your hands.

Top the Text with Cherries:

No, not literally, figuratively. Just like newspapers and media outlets do, top an otherwise bland story with a headline that pulls the reader towards it. Your story has words, it’s got a bunch of them. But it needs to be topped by a catchy headline. Imagine your press release as a sundae that is to be bought by a customer.

Putting something on top is good, but not enough. It needs something to catch a person’s eye. Red like a figurative cherry, your headline needs to as eye-catching a line as the color red. Some tips for that,

1. Unorthodox and flashy statements are like garnishing on a soup. They might not be necessary, but with them, soup gets more upscale.
2. Headlines need to be clever. Use puns or even phrases to drive home the point. Get creative. A headline is the one place that can determine if a reader goes through the text or disregards it as gray.
3. Boilerplates and quotes need to be something other than the usual. Run-of-the-mill quotes and expressions serve to annoy a reader; they don’t want to know if the CEO is ecstatic or the chairman feels proud. They need to know about the product that makes both of them happy. So, focus on the product, not the personnel attached.

Details make the Difference:

Once your headline has done its job of catching readers and getting them hooked, the text needs to continue it. Especially details, whether they chronicle the company’s beginnings or the products’ salient features, should be interesting and engaging. There is nothing better than a press release that can engage readers in its details; if it can manage to hook readers to the history of the company and product.

This way, a reader feels in tune with the company and feels a sort of camaraderie with the press release itself. Make your detail a kind of story; be it a rags-to-riches story or the incredible odds the company overcame to exist, make it run like a story that’s everyone’s favorite.

Do the Media’s Job for them:

Everybody likes it when their jobs are made easy for them. Why not make it so that your release makes the media man’s job easier? It’ll get you and your press release in the good graces of the publication.

So, what does it mean by doing his job for him?

Well, to understand that, you need to know that a press release does not get picked by the media and published as it is. They tweak it and add or subtract stuff however it befits their publication. Usually, this editing is reserved for creative inputs by the editor. However, if it were to happen that the press release was already loaded with eye-catching stuff and headlines that rest beautifully on a page, maybe the media man would be grateful, for your press release has spared him the hour or so he’d spend on it, wracking his brain trying to come up with a good headline or boilerplate.

So, do them a favor by doing your job and you can reap benefits from a smidge of creativity and then some from the journalist himself.

How to Send your Press Release to the Media?

So now that you’ve crafted the penultimate press release, cramming it with everything a journalist will be looking for, you encounter yet another problem. How are you supposed to send the release? Don’t worry, we got you. Below is a roadmap of how to get your press release media coverage and how to get it to the media first.

Steps To Follow When Sending a Press Release: https://icrowdnewswire.com/blog/how-to-send-a-press-release/

• • Network with journalists: First up, get to a website of a publication. They usually have a ‘Team’ tab, which you can access with all their contact details. Make one your posse and get to work on contacting and sending the artwork. Its as simple as that.
• • Mailing your press release to the media: Want to send your press release to the media but don’t have the time to go through the formality walk with a journalist? Thank God for the internet. Simply mail your release to a bunch of press release distribution services and media houses. If your work is good enough, you can expect publication requests from almost all of them. Then it’s up to you to decide who gets to be the winner. Pretty easy, right?

Simply contact a publisher and send the media outlet your press release. Once it’s in the pipeline, wait for the publication date and voila!There’s your masterpiece in black and white.