Editors of periodicals, radio stations, and TV news channels get hundreds if not thousands of emailed press releases every day. There are 3 rules you must absolutely follow if you want them to read your press releases and publish your news item. 1. Use correct formatting. See the bottom of this article for that information. 2. Never send a press release that will be read on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or the day after a holiday. 3. Write an eyeball-grabbing headline. The headline is also the subject line of the emailed press release.
Following Rule 3 is harder than you think. Not only does the headline have to be exciting, but the best part must be within the first 12 words. You have a nanosecond to get an editor's attention. Getting your notary commission and opening your business is important only to you and your mother. Editors and the general public could care less. But your business is exactly what you want the public to read/hear about. What's a notary to do? The trick is to think of an exciting or touching way to describe your service. I have been writing press releases for years. I can knock out a good one in 20 minutes. But I usually take several days to play around with a headline (let simmer in the back of my mind) to make certain I have a real "grabber."
Here is a recent personal story: I don't do loan work (except for HUD-backed Reverse Mortgages) because I make more money doing general notary work. Plus I became disgusted with refi LOs who banned me from their companies because they blamed me for causing their bait and switch loans to fail because I showed the borrowers where they could read the answers to their questions. I don't care if I burn my bridges with the loan industry. So I have been putting pro-consumer information on my website this year. Next month I will start teaching seminars on how homeowners can learn how to get good loans and how to make certain the loan terms and costs they were promised are the same ones in the final docs. (I am very careful to not give advice.) So I wrote a press release to let the general public know about my seminars.
Like any novice press release writer working on a headline, I started playing with words like Seminar, Pro-consumer, Help, Learn, and Home loans. I knew they were wrong, but I had to start with something. Four days later I had a great one. I emailed the release to everyone on my list on Thursday. The next morning the main talk show host for the only news radio station in my two huge counties phoned me to ask if I would spend an hour with him on air during the afternoon commute. He told me to pick the date. Here is the headline/subject line for my home loan seminar that got his attention: LENDERS HAVE BLACKLISTED ME SO I AM BLOWING THE WHISTLE - WHAT LENDERS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR HOME LOAN
Here is the first paragraph in the body of the press release that created the segway between the headline and information about my seminar. Note that the paragraph starts out with the name of my town. Rural areas and small towns are always hungry for news about local people.
Bellingham notary Laura Vestanen states "Many lenders want notaries and title companies to rush borrowers through the signing of final home loan documents so bait-and-switch tactics are not noticed. I have always refused to "play along" and thus have been black-listed by many lenders. As a notary, it is my job to ascertain that people understand the documents they are signing before I notarize them. I became so disgusted by the corruption in the industry I decided to stop doing loan work and instead give seminars to educate borrowers."
Just, put your mind inside the head of a bored editor and you, too, can write headlines that get you in the news. Good luck! Laura
STANDARD PRESS RELEASE FORMAT
Please note that Active Rain's spacing shows double-spaced lines at inappropriate places. The top 5 lines should be single spaced. So should the 6 "for more info" lines. Then one line before ###. The lines below that are in bold should be in bold in your release. Note that the headline in the release is in all caps. Use your headline as the subject line for your email. But in the email subject line, use the proper mix of caps and lower case. The three # at the end are how newswriters and editors say "The End." Use the symbols or they will think part of your email is missing and they will delete the message.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Your name
voice your phone number
fax your phone number
your email address
HEADLINE
Dateline: Name of your city, State (2 letters), date you are sending out press release
Body of message goes here. Use short paragraphs. Virtually all editors will cut out parts of your announcement. If you are lucky, they will just cut off the top and bottom. That is why you should put your website address somewhere in the middle of the body of your message, not at the end. Don't forget the http:// part.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Your name
voice your phone number
fax your phone number
your email address
your website with http://
###
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