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Marketing 101: Your First Press Release

"Press Release".  This sounds much, much more scary than it really is.  Writing a press release is actually pretty simple.  In this essay we are going to illustrate the process, give examples and then conclude with a sample press release that I just wrote for the Drupal project's 4.0 release.

Overview

In October, 1987 I wrote my first press release.  At the time I didn't really know what the heck I was doing -- it was my first real business and our first product.  So we went to a trade show, brought a laser printer with us and figured that we could find an example press release at the show (yes, we were actually that "green" or that much a newbie; I seem to specialize in learning through pain).  Sure enough, we went to the press room, managed to steal several press kits, took them back to the fleabag motel we were at, hooked up the old 286 box and HP LaserJet, got out WordPerfect 4.2 and whipped out our first press release.  Looking back now, I have no idea how it really was.  Still, we got some press coverage from that trade show based on that lowly little press release so it most not have been all bad.

The Format

Fundamentally, a press release is formulaic writing.  Every good press release shares a similar format -- and for a good reason.  The goal of a press release is, well, press coverage.  Every editor on the planet, for every medium, website, news show, magazine, newspaper is regularly deluged with press releases and this standard format helps them make sense of them quickly and easily.  When you differ from this format, and you are NOT a well known, giant organization like Microsoft, IBM or a similar entity, you will simply not get press coverage.  A well known company can pretty much do whatever they want.  As always, a little guy needs to follow the standards (it's really very similar to technology standards this way).

The standard format for a press release consists of these elements and, I think, every one of them needs to be there, with any exceptions note:

• Title
• Subtitle
• Date Line -- Location, Date, Summary Sentence
• Follow up to Summary Sentence
• Body of the press release -- generally a paragraph or two followed by a quote from someone, perhaps a customer, perhaps someone at the company.  Sometimes there are multiple quotes.
• An About the Organization statement
• Trademarks
• Follow up information including URLs
• Contact info for your company and your PR agency if any

Here's an example press release with most if not all of these: Sample Sun Press Release

How I Write a Press Release

The way I write a press release is pretty simple and starts with #s 1, 2 and 3 below and then #4 starts the writing process:

1. It's not art.  It's not James Joyce.  It needs to be clear and simple.
2. It's a formula.
3. Don't take more than an hour or two from start to finish to write a press release.  This does not include step 10.
4. Go into an editor or word processor.
5. Open an existing press release that is similar to the one you want to write.
6. Save it to a new file.
7. Start at the top and rewrite it line by line right straight through to the bottom.
8. Write the quotes in the press release if any.  That's right -- no one ever really says those quotes in a press release -- but you always thought that anyway, didn't you.
9. Spell check it, edit it, etc.
10. Now, if there is more than one person in your organization, make _damn_ sure that you either didn't leave anybody that should be mentioned or that if there was an opportunity to share the credit you do.  NOTE: This is a personal belief not a rule but, to me, it makes tons of sense.
11. Run it by 2 or 3 people for a sanity check.  Make sure that the quote(s) in the press release do not offend anyone.  When my first partner and I were running NTERGAID, he often thought my press releases were just too damn honest.  A compromise  was negotiated.
12. Repeat steps 8 to 12 as needed.

Samples

Press release samples are now all over the web.  You don't have to skulk around trade shows to steal them like I did back in the dark ages.  Go to any web site for almost any company and look at the News or Press or Media sections and you can find them.  It's very helpful to look at the press releases from companies that get good coverage or get coverage that you like. 

The Drupal 4 Press Release

I'll be following this article up with a press release for Drupal 4 which I am supposed to be writing for the Drupal project.