Newsrooms can be an unforgiving place, with demanding hours, shrinking resources and grueling deadlines. If you have an exciting piece of news to announce, there are many ways you can make the job of a reporter much easier. There are also ways you can do the exact opposite. To make sure you stay in the good books, we’ve compiled 10 essential tips on what to do – and what not to do – when sending out your next press release.
1. Give it time
For journalists, there’s nothing worse than calls, messages and emails asking when your press release will be published. While the urge to follow up and ask will be strong, it could have the opposite effect. Timing is usually out of their control and can depend on several factors like breaking news or simply a backlog of unpublished articles.
2: Images help, a lot
This might sound basic, but images are often just as important as the story itself. A good image will go a long way to helping you to get your story published. Not including an image slows down the publishing cycle and means you will ultimately lose control of the final product. Think carefully about the image you send and try not to include watermarks or a whopping big corporate logo. It simply won’t’ get used.