Paul Woods

Over recent weeks I have been working with one of the new starters in my team to bring her up to speed on how to write a press release.

At first I just said… “Here is a great story about our organisation, I feel it is pretty newsworthy, can you have a crack at putting a release together that we can send out”.  Bad move!  The copy that she gave back to me just didn’t feel right.  Putting myself in the shoes of a journalist or editor, I couldn’t really see what the newsworthy story was!  It was buried down in paragraph four… after three paragraphs of credibility building copy (which was pretty good mind you, just out of place).  Obviously there was a problem with how the “story” we were trying to tell to our audience (the journalist) was structured.

It is pretty easy, especially when you are starting out in MarComms or PR to focus too much on who you are, and not on the important part – what the story actually is, and how it affects your target audience! 

There is a  tool which can help you structure your press releases to ensure maximum impact… the “Inverted Pyramid”.

The idea behind the Inverted Pyramid is to put the most important facts at the beginning of the piece, and then the less important supporting ideas further down the copy.  A good test to see if your copy is following the inverted pyramid is to read the entire release, except for the last paragraph.  Still getting the message across?  Try only reading half the release.  If you can still understand exactly what the message is that you are trying to get across, then you are on the right track.

There are many other things to take into consideration when writing a press release, and here is a great resource that lists quite a few.

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