There are times when we are involved in creating or editing press releases, either as part of a press/media kit or to publicize an event or newsworthy accomplishment of a client. Writing a press release takes some skill and knowledge and a decent amount of discipline. Skilled writing, knowledge about what “the press” wants and discipline to write concisely, clearly and without unnecessary hyperbole are all necessary for your press release to turn into real publicity.

 

So what is a press release anyway? A press release is a written document that you distribute to various media outlets. The press release contains the details of the information you are intending to publicize (event, milestone, new product, new office, etc.). The press release expostulates the significance of the event and provides quote-worthy information so that an editor or reporter has the information at their fingertips to create a story.

 

Press releases are even more important than ever, because the number of full-time reporters is significantly reduced. Therefore, local, regional or niche papers and magazines don’t have the ability to research and write as many articles but they still want content. A well written press release makes an editor or reporter’s job much easier by providing well-written copy for them to utilize.

Sometimes it may feel that a press release is something written and sent out “into the world” with no promises of action. Indeed, just because you write a good press release is no guarantee that a major paper will pick it up and create an article. On the other hand, if you don’t write it, they certainly won’t and by writing the press release, you can manage the message. Indeed, if your release turns into an article, you get publicity without paying for advertisement…not too shabby.

Finding out who should receive any press releases and developing a relationship with them will also make this process go more smoothly. They can often tell you their specific interests and even upcoming themes and ways you could tailor their press release.

Tips for Writing Press Releases:

• Make your headline noteworthy. It needs to pop and entice the reader (some editor somewhere) who gets a gazillion press releases.
• Get the W’s in the first paragraph: Who, what, why and when shouldn’t be hard to find, but right up front where you need them. In fact, the first paragraph should be your cleanest writing.
• Develop the story in the next paragraphs, including quotations from significant people as well as “quotable quotes”, well-written copy that has legs and is eminently quote-worthy.
• Make sure that you provide some depth, like the vision for how a new product or new office came to be, or the background of a performer and their previous work. This helps the editor or writer find a hook or maybe even gives them the information to riff on in their own rewritten story.
• Proofread from the printed page. It’s not just your mother or your English teacher talking. There is something about reading printed materials as opposed to a screen that makes proofreading more accurate. So before you send it out, print it for yourself and look at it slowly, making sure that all names are spelled correctly, that any dates and times are accurate and that there are no spelling or grammar errors.
• Get a second reader’s opinion. Have a colleague or buddy read the press release and quiz them: What’s the essence of the press release? What’s the message? What are the details? What do you think the interesting part of the story is? If your second reader is confused, go back to the drawing board.
• Send it out in standard press release form, easily found on templates and online forms. Be sure your name and contact information is at the top of the release.

Spending time and money to create an excellent press release makes more economic and marketing sense than creating a poorly written or poorly crafted one.

 

 

Job Perk: doing something different every day.

At K2M, no two days are the same. Yes, there are some patterns. We tend to post weekly blogs on Mondays, so our writing and editing cycle reflects that. We work on bills and invoices at the same time every month. But, one of the great joys and sometimes frustrations is how different each day is. Just in the past week, we have been involved in these projects, some big and some small:

• Managing the public relations and marketing aspects of a large corporate gathering. This was the culmination of several months of work in collaboration with the staff of our client. On the day of the event, it was the little things and the big things that needed our attention: the signs and banners we brought, the media press kits that we assembled, meeting the reporters from local and national papers, schmoozing with the clients, making sure the breakfast was served on time, getting the giveaways organized, escorting the speakers and helping to introduce various stakeholders to each other.
• Creating a new TV commercial. We started with a script and a “jingle” and now we are in the process of watching as those two are matched up with voices and drawings.
• Social media posting. This is a daily activity to make sure timely and relevant posts are on our clients’ media channels while we constantly write new ones for the future, too. We are able to pre-post a lot of what we write, so that we can be ahead of the curve. Our goal is always to be a week ahead of all of our postings.
• Working on proposals for new potential clients. This means getting to know some new people and their companies and trying to make a plan to develop a long term productive relationship.
• Staff meetings: With a variety of clients, we now have 100 different projects that we manage! Some of these tasks are recurring. Some are long-term, some are short-term. We have divided each of our projects into tasks with dates and notated who is responsible for what. We have regular meetings to go over the next ten days of tasks. In an ideal world, these staff meetings would be combined with a long, relaxing pedicure, but that doesn’t happen very often.
• Writing for clients: This past week, this included writing and editing some materials for print publication, creating collateral for several different clients and creating articles for publication in trade and business journals.
• Website revision: Websites can look fusty if you’re not careful. Adding blogs regularly helps. But, we also are adding new content in other places in three different client websites right now. Content matters in Google searches and for overall  freshness and relevance of the website.

We like staying busy, and we’re not going to complain when there’s too much work to do!

 

We are almost at the end of the NCAA basketball season. Spartans fans saw their team make it all the way to the Final Four, where they came up short against the Duke dynasty. It’s been bracket bonanza everywhere, with office pools, hometown supporters and just inveterate gamblers taking part.

We at K2M have our brackets of winners and losers. We call it: what annoys us most. Just so we’re not too personal, we decided not to include how our spouses, parents, partners, children, and siblings annoy us. That would take up way too much room. No, we focused on the Elite Eight Extra Irritating Elements of our Existence, those aspects of modern life that just plain bug us.

Here they are:

Bracket #1: Home phone spam vs. Email spam

Winner of most annoying: Home phone spam

Our email spam is the lowest it has ever been actually. We are rarely hearing from Nigerian princes and less people than ever think we need erectile dysfunction medication.

The home phone, however, seems to be used exclusively by political organizations and occasional telemarketers. Our real friends text or call on our mobile. We occasionally consider getting rid of the home phone and are only dissuaded when the cable and internet providers tell us there is no financial reason to do so (they’ll just raise the internet rate if we get rid of the phone). So, now we are getting lots of calls about Michigan roads.

Bracket #2: Inaccurate traffic report on AM vs. mispronunciation of local roads on Sirius traffic and weather

Winner of most annoying: inaccurate AM traffic reporting

We must acknowledge that traffic reporting is not the most stimulating to participate in or to hear, but when you’re hitting local roads, you need to know about 696, 75, 96, 94 and the Lodge plus those local roads. It seems that every time we get on the road, first we encounter a traffic snarl and then later it shows up on the AM reports. Sirius seems to get the news a touch earlier, but they really don’t know how to pronounce “Gratiot” at all. And “Lahser” gives them some trouble, too.

Bracket #3: Working from home vs. working from the office.

Winner of most annoying: working from home

Working from home allows us to wear what we want, eat our own leftovers, multitask, feel comfortable and that’s great. But those same things also really do distract us. If there’s no kid’s laundry to do at the office, we will do it when we come home. Now, when we go to the office and stuff doesn’t work (internet, wifi, the fax machine, or the copy machine), we are plenty motivated to head right back home. If we want to work at an inefficient place, we know where to find it. We live in it.

Bracket #4: Registering our kids online or with written forms.

Winner: registering using written forms.

Let us say that there are super-cumbersome registration forms for our kids: any financial aid form seems to have been written and HTML coded by a mean spirited accountant of the worst order. This includes the FAFSA, by the way. Registering for summer camps runs the gamut from somewhat easy, to “oh my God, please just take my kids off my hands, why is this still going on?”. We also see our kids in the college admissions world registering for the ACT and SAT (which takes at least 30 minutes and feels like it’s super important), and of course the Common App takes hours. But, filling out medical forms especially immunization records when you receive a perfectly decent computerized one from your pediatrician makes us want get extra meningitis shots for ourselves. And, we love that the names of the vaccinations on the “forms” are not the sames as what they are called on the immunization records. One will say chicken pox, another will say varicella, one will say tetanus, another will say Td.

Final Four:

Home phone spam vs. inaccurate AM traffic report

Winner: Home phone spam

Working from Home vs. Registering using written forms

Winner: Registering using written forms

 

Finals:

Home phone spam vs. Registering using written forms

The winner: Home phone spam!