Creating your article
Before you create an article for your press release, consider your target audience and what you aim to achieve by publishing the information.
For example, if you provide a consumer service or product, you need to include details not only for your end-user, but also for the journalist or publisher who will hopefully be re-publishing your article.
The ’story’ has to be newsworthy, with a definite ’hook’ – a reason people will take notice and find it relevant.
You should not just write an ‘advertisement’. Don’t make wild product claims, use hyped-up marketing language or promote any ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes (they probably won’t get through our moderation process anyway!).
Your article should be factual and to the point, with no grammatical errors – spellcheck it in your wordprocessor before you start. If you do this, make sure you save it as plain text first, before pasting it into our site (sometimes errors may be produced by the change of Word to Web format).
Get your main points into the first paragraph of the article. Journalists want to know the ‘who, what, where, when, why’ of the story in the first 25 words if possible. Around 250 words should be enough to say everything you need.
We provide the structure of the press release for you to complete. Ensure you fill in all the sections of our publication form so that your information is presented in a clear predefined format, making it easy for journalists, webmasters and publishers to use. Be sure to include your phone number and be available to answer questions after publication!
Make sure you use relevant keywords in your article, especially in the title – this will make it easier for searchengines as well as human readers to pick up on the relevance of your release. Keep the title short enough to make sense when posted on Twitter (which has only 140 charcters in total, including the web link to the article).
Speaking of which, we post summaries and links to all listings on Twitter as they get published. They get included on our Facebook page too. If you have an account on either of those secial networks (or any others) consider promoting your listing by re-Tweeting our message or posting a link to it in your status.
Don’t forget the ‘Email This Listing’ link on the foot of your press release can be used to send a page link to any email address. Alternatively, the ‘PDF text version of this page’ feature will enable you to save the PDF document to your computer and then forward it to anybody (or to print it out and post via snail mail).
Finally, if you still find the prospect of creating your press release a bit daunting, we have an article creation service you can call on. For a one-off fee of £50, we’ll produce your press release for you, illustrate it with graphics you provide (or we’ll licence some) and publish it on our site. You’ll also be able to use the article on any other sites or publications you like. Use our contact page to make an enquiry.
