Even in today’s digital friendly marketplace, a good old-fashioned press release distributed over the wire by a PR agency or reputation management firm is one of the most effective ways to reach a mass audience of journalists and the public. According to Yahoo! Reporter Nick Newman as quoted in a recent article in Forbes, journalists prefer a press release where it is easy to pull out the main theme and newsworthy lead. “Press releases are an efficient way to get news out to reporters, but often the language used is very dense and tedious to get through. I sometimes read an entire press release and can’t pull out the key takeaway.”
It is increasingly important that firms and those crafting their press releases highlight only specific, actionable details in the headline and the release. Most don’t want to read an entire story of useless information. They want to pull the tip out and add it to their research for a story, or use that tip to create a new story based on the subject of the release.