The Art of Effective News Communication

With advertising and marketing budgets getting tighter, we need to look for other ways to reach our audiences. If, like me, you come from the small business and non-profit world, you no doubt are already a pro at looking at creative solutions to get the word out about what you do and what services you provide. In future articles, I plan to touch on some ideas on promoting your organization or small business through community outreach. But for now, let's start with one tried and true way to communicate with the general public and our specific audiences through the news media. The News Release.

Almost anyone can write a news release and send it out. But there's an art to making sure it doesn't end up in the trash. It starts with a well-written, informative, brief, and newsworthy press release. So here are my tips and what I like to call "building blocks" to a well-written, effective news release.

• Heading/Company Logo. These typically go out on your company's letterhead. But you can easily create a template specifically for News Releases, that have these components in place so that you don't have to recreate it each time.
• News Media Contact Information. This contact is typically the person that handles media relations or is the company's spokesperson.
• Date (Release or Embargo Date). This lets the media know when it's okay to release the news.
• Headline. The headline should let anyone reading it know immediately what to expect.
• Introduction (Lead).
• 5 W’s & 1 H
• Call to Action. (This one is optional because you won't always need it. But giving the public a reason or motivation to act is a good thing, especially for event releases.)
• Public’s Contact Information.
• The End.
• Photo Caption (if needed).
• Boilerplate.

I'll go into more detail on each bullet, starting here, and will include a news release with the components highlighted in my next post.

Your Logo: Like your boilerplate, your logo is a great branding tool, so any correspondence, including your news release, should be sent out on letterhead or a News Release Template that features your logo.

Contact Information: Give complete contact information for the person in charge of your media relations. This is the person who a reporter will call to field all questions about the release. You want to give as much contact information here as possible. office & cell phone and Email at the very least.

One of the biggest pet peeves among reporters and editors has to do with contact information. I can't stress enough how important it is to make it easy for a reporter, editor, or producer to reach the contact person. So make sure that whoever is listed as the contact on a news release is available and reachable. It doesn't help to include a cell phone number and e-mail address if the person is too busy to return calls and check e-mails. Typically, the contact information listed at the top of the release is for the media only. The contact for the general public should be listed in the body of the copy, if it's appropriate.I'll go into more detail on other components in my next article. 

I'll go into more detail on other components in the next article.  As always, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you think.