A short live-stream excerpt in which TJ Walker explains how to write an effective press release. Walker outlines actionable tips: craft an instantly interesting headline, include a concise summary, provide strong quotable sound bites, list clear contact information and media credits, optimize for keywords and social media, and produce a video version of the release to attract TV bookers.
Chapters
The Perfect Press Release now we live in an era where some PR mavens say, oh, press releases are out of date. Don't use a press release. Waste of time. That's not entirely true. Press releases can still be effective if you follow some basic rules. Number one, make sure you have a headline that is instantly interesting to the reporters you're sending it to. Ideally, it's something that's already trending and the reporter has to do a story on it and they need your perspective. It could be something that's new, specific to your organization, but make sure it's incredibly interesting. And then you need just a couple of sentences summarizing what the issue is. But then what you need is a great, fantastic quote sound bite from you that really has juicy sound bite elements. And as you've heard me say before, if you want to know all the ins and outs of sound bites, just write to me tjediatrainingworldwide.com and I'll send you a couple of my books that have extensive chapters on creating sound bites. But you need a nice paragraph 34 sentences where you've got absolutely mouth watering, delicious sound bites in them for the reporter. Most press releases don't have that. Most press releases have a generic TJ Walker said quote I am pleased to announce blah blah blah and it's something completely uninteresting and unquotable. Next, you need to give reporters a chance to find you and make it easy. Give them your cell phone, home phone if you want to give that office phone, email, Twitter handle. Let them know where you are and that you are available. Finally, I would add this isn't common practice. I would add your media bio, TV producers, radio producers. They don't want to experiment with someone who is going to be scared, tongue tied and shaking and drooling in front of a camera or microphone. So list your most prominent media appearances. If you've been on lots of national TV and radio, list that. If you've been on local TV and radio, list that. Finally, make sure your press release is optimized with your keywords and promote it everywhere in social media. Because even if traditional reporters don't call you from this, people in your own social media network can find it. And also what you should do is create a video where you're saying the very same things from your press release in a video. Quite often that is what will get the attention of TV bookers. So do not rely on just a text press release. Do a video press release as well. Do that and you could get some excellent coverage.
