Newsroom fax machines and reporters’ inboxes are flooded on a daily basis with press releases from companies, government agencies, non-profit groups, and even average citizens trying to get their neighborhood plight noticed. If you send in a press release that’s riddled with grammatical errors, buried in a convoluted e-mail, or completely irrelevant to the reporter’s coverage area, you might as well be tossing your press release down a sewer drain. If you deluge a news organization with unprofessional or uninteresting releases, your chances of ever getting favorable news coverage are zero-to-slim.

But when done correctly, a good press release will grab a reporter’s attention and force their curiosity to want to learn more about your announcement.

“I want to be a trusted resource for that media so I’m trying to give the journalist all the information when they need it so they don’t have to go anywhere else,” says Gillian Pommerehn, director of public relations for Crosby Marketing, which is based in Annapolis, Maryland, and whose clients include the U.S. Department of Agriculture and DuPont.

The trick, professionals say, is knowing how to format a good release, where to send it, and what information to include. The release is the face of your company that you’re sending out into the world, so it’s not a task to be taken lightly. Don’t forget: With most press releases now available online through wire services or your company’s website, customers or clients may also be reading them, not just reporters.

“Really good, clean, crisp, grammatically correct writing is so important in creating a positive impression of your company,” says Lauren Selikoff, chief marketing officer for Allison & Partners, which works with Samsung and Michelin and is based in San Francisco. “This is not a task to turn over to the intern.”

Here’s some tips to help you craft your message.

Writing a Press Release: Mind the Message

One thing comes to the mind of any good journalist when they receive a press release: Why would I care? The “news” in your news release has to be obvious, or else your notice will be on a fast route to the recycle bin.  The first step is figuring out exactly what message you are trying to get across, and how it qualifies as news.

“The hardest thing for people who are new to PR to grasp is you really have to take your ego out of it when it comes to finding something the press is going to write about,” Selikoff says. “What’s newsworthy to a publication’s readers is often completely different than what you are trying to get across.”

That means your release needs a good headline. That can be something saying how your new product is going to make life easier, or how it relates to a news event. Your headline should be an attention-grabber, so reporters can see right away how the announcement affects their audience.

Dig Deeper: The Art of the Press Release

Writing a Press Release:  Seek out Examples

If you’ve never written a press release before, you’re in luck: The Internet is chock-loaded with examples and models you can use. More than likely, someone has already composed a press release on the same topic that you can use for inspiration. Don’t copy — but do soak up their style and manner of ordering the content.

PR professionals recommend checking out press release distribution services such as PRWeb and PR Newswire to find a model on which to base your release. Searching Google for announcements related to your business — promotions, new product launches, new branch openings, etc. — is also likely to produce an example you can copy.

Dig Deeper: How to Manage Your Own PR

Writing a Press Release: Mastering the Structure

Experts say press releases should be no longer than one page. Every press release has a basic structure:

Top:
Put the words “For immediate release” at the very top of the page. The headline — the key to grabbing attention — should be centered on the page, and usually written in bold or capital letters. Under that, put a subhead, often in italics, that elaborates on the headline.

The headline and subhead are the prime places to work in keywords that will help search engine optimization and draw traffic to your release once it’s online, says Leyl Master Black, managing director at San Francisco’s SparkPR, whose clients include Bing and Barclays.  For instance, she says, if you’re launching an e-commerce platform, you want the words e-commerce, platform, and software to appear in your headline and opening paragraphs several times.

First paragraph:
Black and others say you should assume no one is going to read beyond the first paragraph, which makes it the most important. Many releases also take up a journalistic style, beginning with a dateline, or the city and state the news is coming from.

“You need to have the theme and anything that is newsworthy summarized very concisely and neatly,” Selikoff says. “The remainder of the press release is kind of fleshing out the story. But the main story has to get across in the first paragraph.”

The old standard is that a release should be similar to a story the journalist would write. Reporters often stick to a structure known as the inverted pyramid, which means the most significant parts or the story should be at the top, with everything getting less important as you go farther down the page. This ensures that even someone who just reads the top of the release will get the most important information, and makes it easier to cut text from the bottom for space.

Quotes:
Experts recommend that your release should also include at least one quote in the body. The quote should come from someone knowledgeable about the announcement being made, such as a product manager if you’re announcing a new invention, or a top executive if announcing company wide changes. The quote can also be used to explain how your announcement makes you stand out from other competitors, even if you don’t mention them by name.

“The quote is where you can add context to your announcement and offer an opinion about it,” Black says. “The quote is where you can talk about why this is important to the industry.”

Selikoff also warns against using a canned quote talking about how great your company is. Use a quote that provides some insight instead. It’s also helpful to know some publications’ standards on using quotes from a release. While blogs and very small publications will often use information directly from a release, and re-use quotes you include in the release in their story, major publications most often will not.

Boilerplate information:
The last paragraph is typically a standard set of information about your company, including your mission, when the company was founded, awards it has received or other achievements. This provides basic background information the journalist or the public can use to put the release in context and understand more about who you are.

Contact information:
You don’t want to pique a journalist’s interest only to have that person scrounging and searching to find who to call for more information. Contact information can either be at the top or bottom of the page and should include the name, e-mail, and title of whomever the media contact for the story is. Usually, it will be your company spokesperson or a dedicated staff person familiar with the topic who can answer reporters’ questions.

“There is a certain format for press releases that media are accustomed to getting, ” Pommerehn says. “It’s Important to kind of keep that format.”

Multi-media:
You’ll most likely be sending out releases through e-mail and posting them on your company’s website, so experts say you should consider including some digital features, such as video and audio. It’s also an opportunity to link back to other company information available online — previous press releases and related matter such as customer testimonials or performance reports — that will give the news media additional context.

Dig Deeper: The Power of  Press Releases for Small Businesses
http://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/2009/01/the_power_of_press_releases_fo.html

Writing a Press Release: Target Your Distribution

The first rule of sending out a press release to know which reporters you’re trying to reach.

“Not only is the press release itself important, but who you’re communicating with is very important,” Pommerehn says. “It’s a major pet peeve for journalists when the PR person or the person doing the press release does not do their homework.”

If it’s a local news event, find out who in the local media covers your neighborhood or issue. Do some research on bigger news organizations to find out which reporters or producers cover your industry. Some media organizations have designated e-mail addresses or fax numbers to which all releases are directed.

Professionals say to be mindful of what kind of organization you’re reaching out to as well: a reporter at an environmental magazine, for instance, might be turned off by a flood of paper-consuming messages coming from the fax machine.

Most journalists expect press releases to arrive by e-mail these days. Put your document in the body of the message because most reporters won’t open an attachment from someone they don’t know.

If you have a public relations budget, you can also send your release to a wire service for broad geographical distribution. Small companies can distribute through PRWeb.com for as little as $80, Black says. Other services such as Businesswire.com and PRNewswire.com are pricier but will expose your release to a broader audience.

Don’t’ forget that media organizations run on tight deadlines. Pommerehn says the morning is typically the best time to send a release for most publications while late morning or early afternoon is better for television and radio outlets.
Advance notice helps too. If you have an event you are trying to get covered, waiting to send notice until editors are rushing out of the door on Friday evening could lead to a missed opportunity for media exposure. Editors will have to scramble to fit it into their story budgets for the weekend, leaving a bad taste in their mouth about your company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A_bHceFdUg [Embed video]

The event was truly original and like no other mobile show we’ve attended before. Congrats GetJar team, for your first of many successful awards ceremonies! We look forward to seeing what your fun and imaginative minds will come up with next.

To check out the list of winners of The Gettie Awards, click here.

What Tongues are Wagging About

• Ton of AAPL news
  • Shipping 1.2M iPads/Wk
  • 600k pre-orders for iPhone 4 early this week
  • Scoble says TheDealMap and Goby are way more valuable than FourSquare or Gowalla
  • Facebook revenue topped $800M in 2009
  • Twitter’s first Promoted Trend Topics advertiser is Toy Story 3
  • Nielsen: Social media hits ¾ of Internet population

Events: E3 Gossip

• Activision is getting a lot of love for their event at E3; they had HUGE stars there, amazing musical acts that tied back really well to their products. Captured quote – “They took a risk but it worked out really nicely.”
• “OnLive Launches Ground-Breaking ‘Cloud Gaming’ Service – Industry expresses “cautious optimism”
• Great article on an E3 news recap: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/10-Things-to-Take-Away-from-the-E3-Gaming-Show-747353/.

Key things are:

• • Overall nothing shocking unveiled, game companies focusing on sequels and no new IP
  • MSFT unveiled a new Xbox 360 that’s smaller, has more memory and better wireless connectivity
  • MSFT also has three top exclusives with Halo Reach, Gears of War 3 and Fable III
  • Motion gaming is big with MSFT’s Kinect and Sony’s Move both making big splashes
  • 3D technology seen as risky-but-obvious moves for both Nintendo (with the 3DS) and Sony (PS3  will be 3D capable)
  • Virgin launched Virgin Games

Awards:

• Pioneer Awards (Due 08/9/2010)

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

• SXSW 2011 Panel Picker (Due 7/9/2010)
• March 11-19, 2011
• The PanelPicker is a two-step online system that allows the SXSW community to have a significant voice in programming Interactive, Film, and Music conference activities (panels, presentations, discussions, demonstrations, etc.) for 2011.

• Tony Blair and Bill Gates were spotted having dinner at Carvallo Point this week. Possible Khosla Ventures meeting?
• Celebrity Twitter: Boku Muscles up with Andreessen Horowitz to chase mobile payments opportunity. http://wp.me/p4P8c-vW8 from @gigaom – Om Malik
• R-rated: Yahoo!’s CEO Carol Bartz tells Michael Arrington of TechCrunch to ‘F’ Off, in an interview at TC Disrupt
• Twitter cracking down on companies like Tweetdeck and Seesmic that amalgamate social media streams – sets specific guidelines about where ads can be placed
• Apple surpassing MSFT in valuation (on and off); iPhone is kicking RIMs butt in the enterprise according to latest stats; $99 cloud-based Apple TV launching

Events:

• Dot.com Gala
• It was “very light on stars” – most of America was watching the American Idol finale
• Highlight was McNealy’s Top 15 Reasons for the Internet
  • TC Disrupt
  • TechCrunch replaced the TC50 to focus on “disruptive innovations in media and technology” and connects New York start-ups with potential investors. TC50 is officially discontinued

VC & Portfolio Cos:

• Former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is joining Khosla Ventures, the VC firm, as a senior adviser.
• Four months after stepping down as chief executive of RealNetworks, Rob Glaser has found a new line of work at Accel Partners

Press Riffs:

• Global Corporate Venturing, a new monthly publication for the in-house venture capital teams at large companies that take minority stakes in smaller, more nascent businesses has recently launched. The PDF magazine will be sent at the start of each month, with a major analysis on a different economic sector each month: healthcare in June, IT in July, etc. There will also be a website regularly updated for more topical news on the same subject. This is the first dedicated news, analysis and comment title specifically for corporate venturing and will complement the existing venture capital titles and other financial services publications. Please send news and ideas and contacts to James Mawson at jmawson@globalcorporateventuring.com

• Engadget Introduces ‘Alt’ – it’s a new spot on the Engadget site where the reporters can cover content that might be a little outside of the norm. Content that’s just hovering on the fringe of what Engadget would consider mainstream gadget and tech news.

Awards:

• 100 Largest Private Companies in the Bay Area (Due 5/28/2010)
• Top 100 Web Sites 2010 (Due 6/15/2010)
• Connected Marketing Awards (Due 6/16/2010)
• iStage (Due 8/6/2010)
• Adobe MAX Awards (Due 8/13/2010)
• Mobile Excellence Awards (Due 8/31/2010)
• AlwaysOn Global 250 (nominate asap)
• EFF pioneer awards

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

• ApacheCon (Due 5/28/2010)
• November 1-5, 2010
• Atlanta, GA
• ApacheCon (now called “ApacheCon North America”) is the Apache Software Foundation’s annual conference. It’s a highly technical audience, and a fantastic opportunity to get visibility with potential future hires and collaborators.

• Technology Services World (Due 6/18/2010)
• October 18-20, 2010
• Las Vegas
• Technology Services World – produced by TSIA (Technology Services Industry Association) – addresses IT services industry issues.

• Ad:tech (Due 6/23/2010)
• November 2-4, 2010
• New York, NY

• Ad:tech London (Due 6/23/2010)
• September 21-22, 2010
• London, UK
• ad:tech – London also recently opened its CFP.

• LeWeb (Due 6/30/2010)
• December 8-9, 2010
• Paris, France

• SC World Congress (Due 6/30/2010)
• November 10-11, 2010
• New York, NY
• SC World Congress – produced by SC Magazine – addresses various IT security issues.

• NewTeeVee Live (No deadline available)
• November 10, 2010
• San Francisco, CA
• “Television Reinvented” is the overarching theme at this online video event produced by GigaOM. Online video is a particularly hot market segment with tons of upstarts and competition, so speaking opportunities at this event (arguably the most influential in the category) will be especially coveted.

• · Just as he hoped to clean up his image, Mark Zuckerberg is to be portrayed in a Hollywood film, called The Social Network, as a ruthless and untrustworthy sex maniac.
• · The Onion’s latest tech parody takes on ad-supported phones from Google meant to drive down the device’s cost – watch the video here.
• · Google officially unveiled Google TV at its Google I/O conference today. We’ve heard lots of rumblings about Google TV over the last few months, but today the product was demonstrated before a live audience.
• · Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers’ names and other personal details, despite promises they don’t share such information without consent. Danah Boyd stirred more uproar by suggesting Facebook should be regulated because it has become an indispensable utility.
• · After being available on Android and BlackBerry for some time, Seesmic is now available for the iPhone—just two days after the official Twitter app popped into the App Store.
• · At Thursday’s Google I/O keynote, VP of engineering Vic Gundotra repeatedly ripped into Apple, exulting the virtues of an open platform and contrasting it with a “Draconian future, a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice.”

Events:

• Mashable party was well attended with all the familiar faces. Quite a few entrepreneurs were pushing business plans for Twitter for SMBs… a few are sending them on if you’re interested

VC & Portfolio Cos:

• • Venture firms have lost an average of about 1 percent annually
    over the past decade, according to Cambridge Associates.
  • Maples’s $25,000 investment in Twitter four years ago had
    multiplied by 26 times as of September, and his $500,000 stake
    in textbook rental company Chegg may be up even more.

Awards:

• · Web Awards (5/25/2010)
• · Mobile Star Awards (5/25/2010)
• · Mobile Messaging Awards (5/27/2010)
• · InfoWorld Enterprise Architecture Awards (5/31/2010)
• · Most Powerful Women in the Channel (5/31/20100

Upcoming Events/Speaking Opps:

• · Social Developer Summit (Rolling Deadline)

o San Francisco

o June 29, 2010

o The Social Developer Summit will bring together social application developers to discuss the challenges, solutions, and best practices for building applications in the rapidly expanding social Web economy. Industry experts will share tips and case studies for building high performance social Web products.

• · Fortune Brainstorm: Tech (6/15/2010)

o July 22 – 24, 2010

o Aspen, CO

o Fortune’s Brainstorm: Tech is a “think tank” type of tech gathering where the publication assembles the “smartest people [they] know” to “inform editorial coverage throughout the year.”

• iPad Game Summit (Open)

o June 28, 2010

o South San Francisco, CA

o iPad Game Summit – produced by Engage Digital Media – looks at gaming trends and opportunities specific to the iPad.

• · Internet Week (Various speaking opps)

o June 7 – 14, 2010

o New York

o Internet Week is comprised of dozens of events at our HQ and spread throughout New York City.