It is easy to sit down and whip up a 350-500 word press release and submit it. But how easy is it to actually write one that has some compelling copy and will grasp an audience? Do you really want to write a press release just to see it get lost in cyber world? I am going to give you 5 important tips to always follow when constructing a press release for yourself or your company.

Tip #1 – Create an Outline
There is nothing worse than starting to write and an immediately hitting a roadblock after one sentence. Put together an outline of your thoughts and how you want them to flow throughout the press release. This will allow you to keep things on the straight and narrow and not let your thoughts go off on tangents. It will allow you to properly organize your thoughts before you get them onto the screen and submit them. This will also allow you to increase your efficiency and speed if you have a position where you need to submit many press releases.

Tip #2 – Make it News Worthy
Make sure whatever you are writing you would want to read yourself. If whatever you are writing sounds dull and boring and is not compelling to you than think about what your readers are going to feel when they lay their eyeballs on your press release. If it is not news worthy make it newsworthy. Tweak the writing so that it so exciting the reader can’t wait to read the following line. Let your imagination flow and take your reader on a trip. Everything in life tells a story and the stories are what make things move and prosper.

Tip #3 – Don’t Beat a Dead Horse
Don’t announce something has already been over announced. Nobody wants to read about the wheel anymore. Nobody wants to read about the new wheel either. I know sometimes there is only so much new information you can write about for overused and sold products but all you have to do is take a different approach. Writing is art so make it controversial. Controversy is what grasps peoples attention so go start writing and create a stink for people complain about.

Tip #4 – Don’t Cram Info
Keep your press release focused and in check. Don’t try to cover too many bases. If you try to announce too much into one release you are going to lose your reader entirely and jeopardize your release not getting picked up by anyone. Keep it to one topic and subject and focus on it. Press releases should be around 500 words and that is not enough room to write about too many different event or things going on in your company.

Tip #5 – Don’t Forget your Hyper Links
If you are distributing your press release and you have not hyperlinked your anchor text you better before you submit your press release. This is valuable link building that cannot go unnoticed. Hyperlink with your link 2-3 anchors texts and make sure your links work. Double and triple check to make sure they are pointing to the right pages that you want before you submit.

If you follow these simple tips you should be on the right track to have a solid online press release campaign.

Back when we were all younger and learning about things like writing papers in school, teachers always made an effort to say that you should always try to capture your thoughts in a draft and to put the pieces together, and then go back through and clean things up a bit. When it comes to press release writing, you’ll find that this is a remarkably good idea.

Revisions in press release writing are about a number of things. There’s the need to ensure that you properly formatted the press release that you wrote. There’s the need to make sure that spelling and grammar are correct within your press release. There’s also a need to make sure that you’ve not only managed to get your news out there a bit, but also you’ve made sure that your press release was newsworthy and would help to get the attention of the reader.

You may find that when you go back through your press release you can say something more effectively by writing it a different way. You might find that you typed in a comma where you meant to put a period – even little revisions like this are important to press release writing. Simply by taking the time to go through your press release writing and to create a second draft, you’ll find that you can have a dramatic impact on the work that you’ve done.

When you are writing press releases to market your business and you recognize that there are going to be circumstances in which you are writing about anticipated results, one of the things that you’re going to find is that it’s important to add “Safe Harbor” statements. When you make statements about what you expect will happen within your press release writing, it’s important to let readers – whether or not they are members of the media – know that there is the potential that it won’t work out quite that way:

(source) the words “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “may,” “intend,” “expect” and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated, expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations of the Company and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.

By acknowledging that there are uncertainties and focusing on the goals that you’ve set, you’re likely to find that you are in a position in which if economic situations change or a competitor makes advances more rapidly than you thought that they would, you won’t find yourself having as much to explain. Press release writing that takes into consideration the possibility that things might not work out helps to protect your business from criticism and potential bad press.