Taking your ad and turning it into paragraph-style prose is not a press release chances are it will only lead the publisher to call and invite you to run it as a paid ad. A press release is for news or for information about a topic the audience needs to know.
Any press release that reads too much like an ad will likely lead a media person to forward it to the advertising department.
For example, here’s a headline that sounds too much like an ad:
“Financial Planner Chet Thompson Saved Families $600,000 On Estate Taxes Last Year”
This headline is attention-getting, but for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t tell the media person anything other than that Chet Thompson is a good financial planner. This isn’t news. But that same headline can easily be rewritten to sound more “newsy”:
“Estate Planning Tips Saved Local Families More Than $600,000 Last Year”
This same information is now a headline that will grab a media person’s attention. It suggests questions that their readers will be interested in: What tips?
Rememberyou are never the news. News is information. As much as possible, keep ego tripping out of a press release and focus on the information that will help improve the lives of readers/listeners/viewers.
works with people in professional services who want to build their practice and accelerate their growth. The president of Ned Steele’s MediaImpact, he is the author of
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