OUTREACH – How to – Write and Distribute a Press Release
Purpose of this SQ How To: Explain the process of writing and distributing a press release for any customer.
Applicable to: Lead Outreach & PR Exec. Content Team are beginning to do this too.
Customers: Any who have a newsworthy event/story to tell
Timescale: Several hours to write. Up to 1 day to duistribute.
Introduction
The purpose of a press release is to concisely share factual news or upcoming events of interest to a local, industry or national audience. They are the easiest way to build brand awareness in a local area through locally based news publications.
First Steps
If a newsworthy story is presented to you by a customer or account manager, the first thing you must do is weigh up if the story is genuinely of interest to a wider audience. If you find yourself questioning if anyone outside of the customers company would be genuinely interested in the news, it’s best to raise this with the account manager or customer, than waste time writing and distributing a press release that will get no coverage.
If you are confident the story is genuinely newsworthy, follow the next steps:
- Gather as much information on the event/story as possible. This can be from the account manager, the customer or the internet.
- Weigh up if the story would be best suited to a local, industry or national audience.
- Make a start on writing the press release tailored to the audience you chose in step 2!
Writing of the press release
Once you have plenty of information on the story, you should be well placed to start writing up the press release. If at any point during the press release you find yourself thinking you’re missing any information, get in touch with the account manager or customer. It’s always best to be completely informed when writing a press release.
Below you will find a link to a press release template on SharePoint, which gives you a paragraph by paragraph overview of what should be included in each section of the press release:
Don’t forget to add at least two relevant images to the press release! The better the picture, the more likely the story is to be picked up. In PR, pictures are a key part of getting a story picked up.
Distribution of Press Release
Now for the fun part – distributing the press release. You will need to start building contacts to send the press release out to depending on the audience you were targeting for the press release.
- If the press release has been written for an audience local to the customer, you will need to find all local news outlets through Google, or by asking the customer for these.
- If this press release has been written for industry-based publications, you can manually source contacts, ask the customer for any relevant industry publication contacts, or you can use Vuelio (see How to Outreach guide).
- If you are targeting national news organisations, you can find contact details online, or you can use Vuelio to source these contacts (see How to Outreach guide).
Once you have gathered all your contacts, you will need to draft up a template email to use. Here is an example email template for a press release that we used for Banks Lyon in the past:
“Good Afternoon (Insert name),
I’m getting in touch with you on behalf of Banks Lyon Jewellers.
They have just announced they will be official stockists for prestigious watch brand IWC across the North of England.
The Jewellers, who have branches in Lancaster and Kendal, will be the only stockist of IWC ranges between Glasgow, Manchester and Leeds.
Please find attached the discussed press release along with some accompanying images.
If you require anything else, please let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
Thank you,
Matt”
Once you have your press release, contact list and template email, you are now ready to start sending out your press release. Just remember, don’t forget to attach your press release and images to your email!
Monitor Progress of the Press Release
You’ve sent your press release out to your contacts and several days have passed. But you still haven’t heard anything back from any journalists. Fear not, journalists are exceptionally busy people and generally won’t get back in touch with you once you have sent your press release over to them.
Unfortunately, you will have to manually check each publication you got in touch with to see if your press release has been featured. This can be a time-consuming process, so I’d suggest you wait at least 3-5 working days before checking on the progress of your story. If it hasn’t been picked up by a publication during this time, it’s best to give the journalist one last chase up to see if they will feature the story, if not, they’re just not interested!