How to write a press release (please!) 2020 insights

By @SimonCocking. For your benefit and ours, here are some tips on how to make it easier to get yourself media coverage with a more appealing press release.

Four years later this piece still seems to be appreciated by many people. We now have over 160k real followers on twitter and a larger audience than when we wrote this, but the ideas remain relevant, enjoy, and the Panda video still makes me laugh.

We love startups, we’re here to help. Irish Tech News is growing, and growing. We are getting more and more press releases. Some are great, some are, well, here are some notes to help you, and us. Thanks a million!

How to write a press release (please!) 2020 insights

1. Yes to great images, at high resolution. No to pixellated, pdf embedded images. If you can’t be bothered to promote yourself well, why should anyone else.

2. Answer the who, what, why, when, where, how questions. We have had press releases that leave more questions unanswered than a murder mystery book.

3. No caps in title, ITS SHOUTING, if your title and story are compelling enough you will entice people’s interest. Not by shouting at them. Please don’t mention yourself, in CAPS, 14 times either, it’s spam, for us, for the reader, for everyone. NB someone sent us this in the last 48 hours, it just doesn’t work for anyone.

4. No long, boring, quotes from politicians. If your product is good enough, then you tell us why. Politicians are always going to say nice, long, roundabout things about everything, you, your product, everything and the weather too. Side note, personally the worst thing you can do is to get a politician to launch or open your event, they never stick to time nor the subject and everyone ends up looking at their watches.

5. What problem have you solved? Tell us please. You launching a startup or a product is not actually that interesting to anyone else. Unless you can tell me why you’ve done something interesting / helpful / useful to me, or someone I care about, somewhere in the world.

6. Use simple language. You may want to show how smart you are, but using jargon, and TLA’s (three letter acronyms, or 2 or 4 LA’s) just loses your audience. It’s actually smarter to be able to explain your product in plain English. If you can’t, then maybe just use images or funny videos.

7. Less is more. 500 – 700 words is plenty. Possibly even too much.

8. Give us a headline. We may not use it, but at least you’ve given us an idea of what your 3 second pitch is, yes our attention span is getting shorter and shorter.

9. We like explainer videos. So do our readers, include links to them. And if you don’t have them, point that smartphone back at yourself, and make even a basic 60-second one. You never know, it might just go viral and your company end up being sold for $1 billion.

10. Please give us your social media details, and for accounts that you actually still use and care about. People will read these articles about you, and some will even click on the links. It may sound weird, but we have the data to prove it.

11. If you hadn’t guessed already, humour is great too. Don’t sweat it, better to be clear, but if you can be funny, you might just make our day too. Thanks.

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