Writing for Public Relations

Public relations isn't about selling, it's about informing the public or selling ideas. Learn why reaching your audience can often take more than that one single press release and how you can be more effective in your public relations efforts.

A press release is one of the most basic building blocks for public relations. It's also one of the most misunderstood and misused things in the business. When should you write them? When should you use a different tool? How long should they be? What are the other options? These posts will help you make your communications with the press and...

There's an old saying: "Half of advertising is wasted -- it's just that nobody knows which half." It's hard enough to figure this out when you're talking about advertising and marketing, when at least you can measure things directly through sales. Yet there are things to learn from new thinking on what works and what doesn't.

How do you write a fact sheet? It's not just a collection of numbers. There are good reasons to pick and choose which facts you use, and which order -- and different types of fact sheets, whether you're explaining the size and significance of a problem or announcing the price and specifications of a new product.

What are talking points and how do you write them? Talking points are a persuasive product, but they're not meant to be read word-for-word. They're an internal document to keep people on the same page and can be used as seed material for other products and events.

A statement is quicker, easier and often more useful than a press release. Say there's a big news story. Your company just got bought by a bigger rival, you're the quarterback for the Raiders and got traded to the Giants or you're a big-time author who switched publishers. Sending a press release would be silly and pointless, because people already know what happened.

How you structure an oped matters more than anything else. A beautifully written oped that uses the wrong structure will fail. An oped with pedestrian writing -- but the right structure -- will succeed.

The words of your piece may be golden -- but nobody will read them if you've got a boring headline or a stale first sentence, also known as a hook, intro or lede. Here are a series of posts on how to killer headlines and hooks, including the hard, straight-news headline and intro and variations on soft headlines and intros.

Whatever you write, it needs a headline and a killer first sentence. If readers aren't grabbed by your headline, it doesn't matter how beautiful and emotional your writing is -- they won't read your story, blog post or oped. Writing killer headlines and intros is an art and a science. It's smart to spend time crafting the perfect headline and intro, because if they don't work, nobody's going to read the actual piece.

For anything you write in public relations, your headline and intro (first sentence, also referred to as lead, lede or hook) need to work in harmony -- not just with each other, but with the other elements of the piece. It makes sense to give editors more options by mixing and matching your headlines, subheadlines and hooks. You don't necessarily want a hard, traditional news headline and on top of a hard subheadline and a hard hook.

Everybody needs to know how to write a hard intro (first sentence, also called a lede, lead or hook). Writing a hard headline is a similar skill, and in public relations you've got to work just as hard on your headline and first sentence as the story itself. Reporters and editors swim in a sea of press releases and opeds. Readers have millions of web pages and blogs they can choose from. If you've only got two seconds to grab the attention of a reader, how can you stand out?

An inherent problem with public relations is you're usually writing headlines and pieces in Word, on an 8.5" by 11" inch page -- but that's nothing like how it'll get published in a newspaper. No matter where it gets used - a blog, a newsletter, on radio or TV -- it'll get shortened and smooshed beyond recognition. The solution: cut your headlines and paragraphs in half. Break them up into smaller bites. Editors and readers will thank you.

Use a statement when reporters are already covering a story and want quotes, or when you want to comment on a breaking story. They can be used alone or as part of a story kit -- you could pair a statement with a fact sheet and photos, for example. Since statements are first-person, the natural language of persuasion, they're also more useful when your goal is to persuade rather than inform.

Letters to the editor are a lot like statements. They're fast, they get published more often than other products and they're persuasive instruments written in the first-person. Because they're persuasive and in the first-person, they're also great practice for the toughest things to write: opeds and speeches. Use them as a response to breaking news, as a rebuttal, as a thank you or as a c…

Opeds are not where you break news. It might be a week -- or three weeks -- before a newspaper publishes a piece, though it's still important to write and send opeds quickly. There are three main types of opeds: (1) Responding to a story, (2) Rebutting an editorial and (3) Rebutting another oped

Word counts in public relations and journalism used to be hard and inflexible. Today, things are changing fast. When your words -- or photos, or video -- could be used in so many places in so many ways, many of the old rules are getting tossed out the window as we speed down the uncharted waters of social media, blogs and the internet. So which...

Opeds and speeches are the toughest things to write. Unlike stories and press releases, there’s no simple formula like the inverted pyramid. While they're tough to write, opeds are also one of the most powerful things you can write, because the opinion pages are well-read and, unlike a news story designed to inform, opeds are built to persuade, to get people to act.

How can you get media attention with your press releases and publications? Learn 10 Tips that will create BUZZ in this weeks guest article by Marisa D'Vari.

The style of writing used in journalism -- the inverted pyramid -- is a horrible way to attract readers. It's fine for informing people quickly. For persuading an audience, or keeping their attention, it's terrible. The design and structure is simply wrong for the job. Whenever you can, use narrative tools to keep your audience interested.

Getting on TV and the radio is hard, especially when you have no advertising budget. Public Service Announcements (PSA's) are a great way to get exposure while helping a good cause. If you're a non-profit organization with zero budget for advertising, PSA's may be one of the few ways you can get a steady presence on TV and radio. If you're a...