How to write a press release

by Jaimie Abbott

You don’t need to be an expert PR agent to be able to write a successful press release that gets picked up by the media and then published all around the world. In fact, I have shown so many people how to do this themselves. They’ve gone off and run with it, and they’ve pitched their stories to the media and then the press release has landed them tens of thousands of dollars in media coverage. You can do this yourself without any media background!

Why we do this?

Press Releases are so powerful in giving you coverage around the world. It can lead to free publicity, grabs the attention of the media, and it’s great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It works when someone goes to Google and types in ‘Accountant Sydney’ and you’ve written a couple of press releases which have made the media with those keywords in it or you’ve got the press release on your website, it’s going to make you show up more often. Of course, people then will be able to find you really easily.

So what’s the first thing we need to do when we sit down and write our press release? We need to come up with our hook and our hook is the angle that’s going to draw people in, in the opening headline or opening paragraph.

How do we come up with our hook? This is how.

Our news values:
Conflict
Impact
Novelty
Human Interest
Proximity
Prominence
Currency

This is a bit of a checklist which I say to people, “Sit down and work out which of these news values I can use in putting in my press release to make it sound very newsworthy?’

Is there conflict involved? Are you going against the government of the day? For example: There were claims today that people were saying X whereas I actually find Y. People love a little bit of conflict!

Does this have any impact on people lives? Is there a novelty factor involved? Was it something out of the ordinary? Is there a human interest factor? Proximity? So if this is going to affect people in Sydney, I’m going to be targeting a Sydney newspaper here and not one in Perth. 

Is someone prominent involved and how current is this? So think about things that are going on in the world and how you can link your angle to them.

I use the example of Squid Game on Netflix. That was a really popular TV series in 2021. Back then, you could have thought of something to do with Squid Game, which you can put into your press release. I remember Megan and Harry’s wedding. People, my clients and myself were writing press releases to time with that. So start thinking about what’s happening in the world today and how you could perhaps draw your angle into that story.

5 Ws and H

The other thing you want to think about is what you need for a press release. That’s the five Ws and the H- the who, what, when, where, why, and how. This is the foundation for my training. If I’m teaching someone how to do public speaking, I always make sure we include these six elements into their speeches. It’s the same with your press release, because these are all the questions that journalists are going to ask, or your audience wants to know. So let’s make it easy for our journalists because they have very strict deadlines and lots of competing demands. 

Let’s put all these elements into our press release as we want them to just pick up the press release and run with the story, right? That’s the ideal situation here. Let’s make it as easy as possible. Journalists receive hundreds of emails, email pictures, and press releases every single day. I was a journalist in newsrooms in Sydney and regional areas in Australia and my inbox was always flooded with everyone trying to pitch their story or promote their business product service. So you really want to be able to grab their attention in the opening line.

ST words

So when I say ST word, I mean a word that ends in the letters S-T. Examples are: first, last, largest, greatest, fastest. If you put one of these into your opening paragraph, viewers/listeners/readers love that and you’re going to draw the journalist in as opposed to not using one of those words.

Your Headline

The other really important element, in fact is probably the most important element of your press release is your headline. Because sometimes if you don’t have a catchy headline or a newsworthy headline, people will delete it, or journalists will delete it. So you might want to come back to it and write it at the end, and you want to think about a hook, thinking of those news values before. What’s something that I can use in my opening headline to grab attention.

First Paragraph

The second most important part of your press release is your first paragraph. It is very important because a lot of people won’t read past this. So you want to make sure it’s no more than 30 words. You get straight to the point without our hook, our most newsworthy angle and if you can use an ST word in that opening paragraph. Here’s an example of exactly that, an example of a press release I wrote for my real estate clients and this media press release went around to Australia for an amazing coverage. Look at the opening paragraph:

One of Australia’s grandest homes. A stunning beachfront housing area that has sold for $8.7 million and has become the highest selling residential property ever in Newcastle.

Teaching you how to write a press release is just one of the elements that I teach in my new Public Relations Pro course. It’s a six-week course which covers all of these modules, including your PR strategy as part of the PR 101 element. We do a media release workshop. We’ll talk about how we perfect our pitch. I’m going to give you step by step guides, including templates and scripts on how you can do this. I’ll give you a template to write your bio. And we’ll talk about blog writing because blog writing has been so powerful for my business and for other clients that I’ve had over the years in being able to get their name out there. I’m also going to throw in over $5,000 worth of bonuses. There’s pitch template, we’ve got press release examples, cheat sheets, eBooks, and workbooks. You don’t have to start from scratch.