Shhhh! You Don't Need a Press Release

I know of a lot of businesses that spend more time writing press releases than they do pitching them to journalists.

This is because writing a press release isn’t something most small businesses do very often. As a result they can spends weeks and months going backwards and forwards over what to write, how to write it, getting it proofed, changing things and making a pretty PDF.

They then email it to a handful of generic mailboxes at a handful of media outlets, dust off their hands and think their work is done.

This is a huge mistake.

Your priorities should be in this order:

  1. Building a list of contacts at media outlets relevant to your business

  2. Coming up with a good story idea

  3. Pitching to the journalists

  4. Writing a press release

If you don’t have relevant contacts AND a good idea, then there isn’t any point even writing a press release.

But even if you do have a good idea and contacts, you don’t always need a press release.

In my role I write a press release about 50 per cent of the time. Half the time I just write a pitch email.

A pitch email is something like this:

“Hi Journalist,

I am doing (INSERT SOMETHING INTERESTING HERE) and thought it might be relevant/of interest to your audience/listeners/viewers.

We have people you can interview/video footage/photos and you can find out more here (INSERT LINK TO WEBSITE OR SM CHANNEL).

If it’s something you might be interested in, then please give me a call on (INSERT PHONE NUMBER) or drop me an email.

Thanks,

Alison’”

Your pitch doesn’t HAVE to be via email. It can be over the phone or social media.

Sending an email like this will take you just a few minutes. This is a much more efficient way of targeting journalists that doesn’t require spending hours writing a press release.

It’s also a better way of approaching people when it comes to a breaking or developing news story that you might want to comment on.

So, if you have been putting off writing that press release then stop worrying about it!

Focus on finding contact details, coming up with ideas and writing a pitch!