I believe the seeds of great press releases really come from the preparation work done before you even think of the idea for your press release content.

The first thing to think about is – who are the people I am trying to reach?

One of the most common complaints we hear from journalists about the press releases they get is that the people writing those releases haven’t thought about the ultimate consumer of their communications – the reader. A journalist’s job is almost entirely dictated by the whims of the reader. The objective of any publication, whether online, print, trade or consumer, is to appeal to a closely defined audience. Think about the audience you want to appeal to, and the sort of publications serving this audience. Get into their collective mind, and you’ll create ‘copy’ (that’s journalist speak for a bunch of words drawn together to form all or part of an article) that appeals to the right people.

Start to think about your audience right from the start of the whole process. As you get better at writing press releases you’ll do this automatically. If you have several different target audiences that your story is relevant to, you can even consider drafting subtly different releases for distribution in each sector. This maximises the chance of your story being picked up by publications with widely different audiences.

Go to the next in the series: Press release writing and distribution part two: finding a great story

Check out all the posts in our full blog series on press release writing and distribution