The right tone for a press release

Newsboy As a blog, the kind of writing you will find here can range from the wildly informal to the un-wildly stolid - depending entirely on what the piece is about, and the mood of the writer. A press release, however, is an entirely different beast, as it serves a different agenda. While it may be used as a tool for increasing exposure for a business or a product, there is a quality to a press release's tone that must be observed, and if care is not taken when you write one yourself, you may find your story ignored all but completely.

The core value of a press release is its newsworthiness. They are not, however, to be confused with actual news stories. Instead, they are designed to get the attention of journalists, informing a large number of them of some important happening, and inviting them to actually craft the story around it. For this reason, if you are taking the writing of your press release into your own hands, consider who your real audience is - because it isn't your customer this time. It is the newspaper journalist, or the radio news producer, or even the blogger, who read the newswire looking for appropriate content to write about themselves. Let them create the stories that will bring you new traffic. Because customers don't read press releases. They read the news.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)