The Anatomy of a Press Release


Writing Your Press Release

The next step to writing your press release is to define your objectives for writing it. Understanding your goals and audience will help you position your press release for maximum results. Are you trying to get your application noticed by various reviewers or bloggers? Are you trying to build your brand and drive traffic to your website? Perhaps you are trying to generate revenue for your application and you want to create news that will cause readers to go to your product website or purchase your application.

The beauty of an electronic press release is that you can include web links, video and graphics in very compelling ways to capture your reader’s attention. The online press release can come to life in ways that a printed press release cannot. Depending on the type of application you have written, you will want to consider different options for your announcement. If you are launching a new game application, a video is a great way to get your reader to take a look at how your game is played. At a minimum you’ll always want to include your product web page and a link to the Application Store so people reading your news release will click over immediately to your application on the Application Store and buy it right away.

The Anatomy of a Press Release

All press releases have some common components: the headline, the body, company information, and contact information. For an iPhone and iPad application press release, you will want to have a headline, body, company website, and a link to your application.

Writing Your Headline

Your headline is the first component of your press release and will be displayed at the top of your press releases’ webpage. The headline is where you attract the reader’s attention and entice them to read on. This sentence or two must be crisp and provocative. This is your hook to get the reader pulled in. If you fail to capture the reader in the headline, the chances of them reading on are slim.

You also want to make sure that you are using keywords or phrases in your headline that will be picked up by search engines. These keywords will help your press release to be pushed along when prospects perform a search. For example, the phrase “new iPhone/iPad game” or “new iPhone/iPad application” works well to help your headline to be picked up by Google, Yahoo!, and others. Here are a couple of examples of good and not so good headlines:

Not so good headline:

“iPhone Developer Announces New iPhone Game”

Good headline:

“New, Highly Interactive iPhone Game RasterBlaster HS Math Hits iTunes Application Store This Week”

Not so good headline:

“Scientific iPhone/iPad Application Ready to Sell on Application Store This Week”

Good headline:

“Science4School Group Releases New Chemtastic iPhone/iPad Application for High School Students on Application Store”

Not so good headline:

“New iPhone/iPad Application Helps People with Their Bills”

Good headline:

“New MoreMoney iPhone/iPad Application Helps People Manage Their Finances and Save Money Instantly”

Hopefully you see the differences between headlines in the three examples. You have to approach writing the headline from the standpoint that your reader knows absolutely nothing about your application. Often when writing, we take leaps in our explanations because our minds tend to fill in the blanks. You must assume that your reader will not fill in any blanks about your application. You must clearly state what you’re announcing.

Use the name of your application in your product announcement. If someone does a search for educational games, for example, your application’s press release and product website are more likely to show up because you have seeded the search results. Notice that your headline should not be lengthy.

Most headlines are 20 words or fewer. Again, this will challenge your writing skills to see how crisp you can be in creating a headline that is eye-catching and includes your application’s name, your brand’s name (if you have one), and some keywords to help those search engines find you. Your headline must also be a lead in to your summary which will be discussed in the next section. The headline is the setup for the entire press release.

Your reader must be able to grasp immediately the essence of your announcement so that they want to know more about it and will read on, at least to the summary section. If you can get a reader to read the headline and the summary, they are most likely to read the body of the press release as well.

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Note: This article was sent to us by: Lewis G. at 05072010

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