NewsCactus Blog

The traditional approach to creating a press release is to use the inverted pyramid writing style and answer the five W’s — who, what, when, where, why and how.

The release format would include:

• Contact information
• Headline
• Sub-heading
• Dateline
• Lead sentence/paragraph
• More details
• Quote
• Boilerplate

For a variety of reasons, this format is becoming ‘old school.’

Everyone is busy, including journalists. New press release formats get to the point faster and highlight key points easily. They also include links to supporting resources and accompanying multimedia files.

The social media release is gaining popularity, as well as housing your corporate news in a social media newsroom.

The NewsCactus online newsroom is equipped with social media bookmarking functionality. Its modules and additional links also fit the bill for social media releases.

A social media release is designed to be more authentic, to create a dialogue and provide open access to information by anyone. It should foster and support a sense of community.

A social media release should include:

• Contact information
• Headline
• Sub-heading
• Quick facts
• Multimedia elements
• Dateline
• Lead sentence/paragraph
• More details
• Quote
• Boilerplate
• Keywords
• Tags/bookmarks

And when you write a release, stick to the conventional wisdom in KISS — keep it simple stupid. More often than not, less is more. Write so the announcement is something you’d actually be interested in and read if you were someone else. Don’t use industry jargon or buzz words, rather write in language that’s easily accessible for your intended audience, and be sure you know who that audience is when you set out.