Six ways to make your press release catch a journalist’s eye

Experienced journalist Helen Nugent visited Tecmark’s offices in Manchester to deliver a workshop to the outreach team to help assist client content marketing campaigns.

Helen has been working as a journalist since 1998 and has had her work published regularly in a wide variety of publications, including national newspapers. She is also the founder of culture and enterprise online magazine Northern Soul.

For the outreach team, this was a great opportunity to see through the eyes of the sort of person who receives the content that they are generating and outreaching on behalf of clients.

Here are six key learnings from the session:

1. Find new ways of writing press releases

It doesn’t just have to be about the words. Use graphs, tables, interactives. Stand out from the crowd.

2. What do journalists look for in a press release? 

They want brevity, concise copy, a PR that tells a story, a short headline, useful background information, notes to the editor and most importantly, clear contact details

3. And what is a turn off?

Long headlines, badly written copy, the real story is buried in the copy, a lack of background information, poor (or no) contact details and old data

4. Keep on topic

Provide details of the subject in the email and make sure it’s short and to the point.

5. Put the most important info in the first paragraph

Don’t bury it further down the copy, and don’t repeat yourself.

6. Never be worried about over explaining

The more information you can provide about jargon used or the context of the press release, the better.

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