How to Write a Newsworthy Press Release

The purpose of a press release is to briefly state your case to the media so someone will want to write about you, your business, or your product. The key ingredient is proving that your story is newsworthy.

Learning how to write a good press release is not much different than any other writing you do to promote yourself, your business and your products. As always, the focus has to be not on all of the above, but on your reader. The only differences are in the format, and you can find press release templates all over the web easily. We'll be looking only at the content here.

Your content is very basic "who, what, where, when and why" info. The "why" is, why is it newsworthy?

Here are the steps you need to go through to plan your angle, your "hook". You may be thinking, "I'm not newsworthy." The good news is, you don't have to be. You have to find something that IS newsworthy that connects with your product.

Where do you get your news from? You probably get it from a combination of places. I get mine from tv, blogs and forums. Maybe you get yours from your neighbors, online newspapers, and chat rooms. It doesn't matter where. Just pay attention to what is "hot", being talked about, and somehow relevant to your product.

I'm a writer. I get ideas from the strangest places. I was watching a tv show and realized that it is "spring break" for college kids right now. That made me think about their writing needs. I could write a report on how to write a research paper and have it ready for when they're back to school. How many of them will be panicking about getting that paper written before finals?

I may be one of the few people living in North America who knows almost nothing about hand-held communication devices, but it seems like they are changing almost daily with new capabilities and applications. Maybe something in this area applies to your business.

There's a new dog park going in near my home. Dog parks seem to be springing up everywhere. I would think there would be socialization issues here; suddenly all these dogs that have been walked on leashes all their lives are running free. If you had a dog website, how to train your dog to play well with others would be a good topic for an ebook or report and featuring training aids (are there any new ones?)

Once you've found your "newsworthiness" angle, your press release will almost write itself. Remember, it's all about the readers that the media contact will be writing for. What's in it for them? At the very end of any press release template, there's a paragraph that is usually referred to as the "boilerplate". This is very simply your "elevator speech" about your website or business. It's that two sentence, 15-second description that you use everywhere you're asked what it is that you do.

Your boilerplate appears at the end of your press release and is the only place in your press release where you mention, in a matter-of-fact way, precisely what your business does.

Kathryn Beach writes original content for her own websites and for clients who pay for her ghostwriting services. Find out more about writing press releases on her website.