Hey, PR pros: Would you like to see your story in The New York Times? Then why not write like the Times?

We recently analyzed 100 headlines from PR Newswire and compared them to 100 headlines from a recent issue of The New York Times. (We skipped the sports pages.) Here’s what we found:

• Average headline length. Times: 8.6 words. PR Newswire: 11.2 — 37% longer than the newspaper of record in the United States.
• Median headlines length. Times: 9 words. PR Newswire: 11 — 22% longer than the newspaper of record.
• Longest headline. Times: 14 words. (There were two.) PR Newswire: 33 — 136% longer than the newspaper of record.
• Shortest headline. Times: 4 words. (There were four.) PR Newswire: 4. These are too short for good search engine optimization. Google prefers headlines of 5 words or longer.

How long is too long?

I usually recommend that you keep your news head to eight words max. That’s the number people can easily understand at a glance, according to research by The American Press Institute.

But I’m willing to be flexible. What if, instead of capping heads at eight words, we followed The New York Times’ approach? Let’s write headlines that:

• Average 8 or 9 words
• Never grow longer than 14 words
• Sometimes have as few as four words

Here’s what New York Times headlines look like:

A Coronavirus Epidemic Hit 20,000 Years Ago, New Study Finds

The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think

Alzheimer’s Prediction May Be Found in Writing Tests

How Can I Tell My Mother-in-Law to Buzz Off?

Once Again, the Earth Is Being Wrung Dry

That not only makes your headlines look more inviting, but also allows readers to get your news in a single gulp.

What not to do …

But here’s what PR pros tend to write instead:

Dr. Reed V. Tuckson to Deliver Keynote Address at 2015 Digital Health Summer Summit Co-hosted by Center for Digital Health Innovation at UCSF

Magnetic Materials Market Developing at 8.9% CAGR To 2020 — APAC To Be The Fastest Growing Region Due To High Demand From Electronics & Auto Industry

LIFE TIME FITNESS SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Announces the Investigation of Life Time Fitness, Inc. Over the Proposed Sale of the Company to Leonard Green & Partners and TPG Capital — LTM

At 23, 26 and 33 words, respectively, these are paragraphs, people!

Solution: If you need all of those details up top, put half your headline in the deck.

Stuffy head?

I recently worked with a PR firm whose headlines were 21% longer than the combined average of three of its top targeted media vehicles.

Instead of stuffing your headline with so many words, why not steal a tip from the Times? Keep release headlines as tight as those you find on the front page of the publication you seek to sway.

Learn more …

Hit the right readability targets with these resources:

• What’s the best press release headline length? Get the ideal length of a release headline in characters including spaces.
• What’s the ideal press release length? Write news releases that get media coverage — and that are worth reading. WWBWD? (What would Business Wire do?)
• What’s the best length for a blog post? Learn how to write social media posts that get read.
• How long should email newsletters be? [Data!] Boost opens, reading and click through rates.

The post How long should a press release headline be? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Front-loading your headlines with your topic word just makes sense if your readers are going to encounter those headlines in online lists — a search engine results page, for instance, or your online newsroom.

That’s because readers look at only the first two or three words of the headline when scanning lists (Rev Up Readership members only; join Rev Up Readership). This technique is so important that usability expert Jakob Nielsen ranks it the No. 1 thing you can do to improve the ROI of your website.

But what’s the topic?

Too many communicators (and, let’s be honest, their reviewers) believe that the company or its product or service is the topic. But the real topic is the reader or what they reader can do, as these Silver Anvil Award-winning headlines demonstrate:

Blood Cancer Patients and Advocates Visit Capitol Hill to Inspire Continued Support for Be the Match

July 18 Legislative Day event aimed at delivering more cures to patients in need

— Be the Match Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Teens Get Opportunity to Celebrate With an Idol

State Farm and Grammy Award Winner Kelly Clarkson team up for teen driver safety

— State Farm Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Parents and teen drivers dangerously disconnected

New State Farm survey reveals an alarming gap between parents’ and teens views on driver safety licensing laws

— State Farm Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Color Your Easter with Eggs

HGTV Interior Designer Sabrina Soto Offers Easter Decorating Tips to “Dye” for

— Edelman and The Egg Board Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Before spring planting, expert says, “Dig a little. Learn a lot.”

— Natural Resources Conservation Service Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Cover Crop Mixes — They Just Work Better

— Natural Resources Conservation Service Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Survey: Cover crops deliver strong harvest amid drought

Agency focuses on helping farmers build resilient farms through soil health

— Natural Resources Conservation Service Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

JOIN THE TEEN DRIVER SAFETY CELEBRATION SUPPORTING NEW DRIVERS

Communities commit to drive safe in support of new drivers during National Teen Driver Safety Week

— State Farm Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Hey! Even the IRS is getting in on this approach. Here’s a recent newsletter headline:

10 Million Taxpayers Face an Estimated Tax Penalty Each Year; Act Now to Reduce or Avoid it for 2017; New Web Page Can Help

Don’t write about us and our stuff. To catch your reader, write about the reader and the reader’s needs.

The post Best press release headlines focus on readers appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

The internet coffee pot. Word of the year. The Dust Bowl.

Details like these grab attention and help readers see your big idea.

To use this approach, take a tip from William Carlos Williams, and turn ideas into things —like these PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winners do:

Choose one image to stand for the whole.

Marie Hatter chose a single detail to stand for her point atop the Cisco blog post “Internet of Everything“:

So choose an example to stand for the whole.

Internet of Everything? Too big.

Internet coffee pot? Just right.

Binge watching in a detail

Netflix uses the same approach for “Netflix Declares Binge Watching is the New Normal”:

What we think about binge watching? Too broad.

Binge watching as runner-up to word of the year? Just right.

Bringing dirt down to size

PR pros for World Soil Day bring soil health down to earth in their Op/Ed “Soil Conservation: The Next Generation”:

All the soil in all the world? Too big!

The top six inches? Just right.

Go tiny.

For a specific-details lead, choose a part — a tiny part — to illustrate the whole.

The post Use concrete details in your press release lead appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Quick! Which of these paragraphs would you rather read? This 11-word paragraph, from The New York Times?

Until then, Mr. Stratton waits and continues his daily balancing act.

Or this 146-word paragraph from an Amazon release?

Paragraphs are visual cues.

That’s the problem with long paragraphs: Readers make decisions about your message based not on what you said or on how well you said it but on what it looks like after you’ve said it.

“Long paragraphs are a visual predictor that a story won’t work.”

— Jon Ziomek, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism

And paragraph length is one of your message’s most important visual cues.

“Long paragraphs are a visual predictor that a story won’t work,” says Jon Ziomek, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism.

So how long is too long for a paragraph?

Write like the Times.

We turned to The New York Times to find out. We analyzed 99 stories in a single edition of the paper. (We skipped the sports pages.) On that day, the Times’ paragraph length:

• Ranged from 9.6 to 67.5 words long
• Averaged 36 words per paragraph.
• Weighed in at a median of 37 words per paragraph.

Why are PR paragraphs so long?

PR pros: Take a tip from the Times and make your paragraphs short and sweet. Avoid long PR paragraphs like this 108-word paragraph from an SBA release:

And this 126-word paragraph from Fabletics:

If your paragraphs are 100 and 200 words long, readers will skip them. Instead break up longer paragraphs into shorter paragraphs.

Still concerned about the old hard-and-fast rule of thumb for paragraph construction for academic writing that you learned in English class? A good paragraph has a topic sentence, three developing sentences and a concluding sentence?

This ain’t academic writing! Good writers write press release and blog-post paragraphs that get read. Need a line break? Hit return more often. (Add that to your style guide!)

Make ’em punchy.

While you’re at it, why not break up your copy with some super-short paragraphs like these from the Times, which weigh in at …

16 words

And yet Mr. Monis had repeatedly come to the attention of community leaders and the authorities.

14 words

Its broadband package is also the home to the sports broadcaster ESPN in Britain.

13 words

Glen Hauenstein, Delta’s chief revenue officer, was running with the theme last week.

12 words

In February, the activist investor raised its bid to $21 a share.

11 words

“No matter what I did, I couldn’t find peace,” he said.

9 words

Apple could pay more than $350 million in damages.

Now, those are paragraphs that go down easy.

What’s your average paragraph length?

How long should the lead paragraph be?

“‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ The creation of the universe has a 10-word lead! So why do you need 40 words to say that your chief accountant has just completed the necessary certification? The answer, of course, is you don’t.”

— John McIntyre, copy desk chief of the Baltimore Sun

Yet PR pros keep cranking out leads like this 99-word one from an Amazon release:

How long should PR leads be?

Keep your release and pitch lead to 25 words — a couple of sentences — or so.

Longer, and it starts looking too thick to encourage readership.

Shorter, and news portals might not recognize it as a lead paragraph — or your release as a release. Google News, for instance, rejects releases that are nothing but bullet points and one-sentence paragraphs. Advisory releases often get rejected for this reason.

To avoid this, start with a “real” paragraph that includes at least two sentences.

Limit the background in the lead.

One way to take the lead out of the lead: Limit the background to no more than six words.

Background information is any parenthetical information — information that appears between commas, parentheses or dashes, like this phrase — including:

• People’s titles or ages after their names: (“Chris Smith, 29, proofreading guru, says …”)
• Boilerplate descriptions of your company or products (“RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, is now available …”)
• Stock exchange symbols (“Apple Inc. (AAPL) today announced that …”)

That doesn’t mean that these things aren’t important or that you won’t include them in your piece. Just be selective with what and how much you put in the lead. Then move the rest down.

You want your lead to clip along quickly. But background information slows the top of the story down.

If the verb is the story in news releases (and it is), the story (weak though it may be) in this Guardian release got buried under 28 words, 20 of them background information:

Now, that story is a far cry from the creation of the universe. But that lead is nearly six times as long.

Start with a bang.

And make the most of those first few words. Otherwise, you’ll lose journalists.

“If the copy doesn’t excite me within 20 words, I won’t read the rest of it,” says one editor quoted by Jack Appleman, president of SG Communications.

Here, by the way, are the first 20 words of that Amazon release:

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced that it has contracted with EDP Renewables to construct …

Snooooooooooooooze.

The post What’s the ideal paragraph length for press releases? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Are you still using the fact pack — cramming who, what, when, where, why and how into the first paragraph of your news release? Are you still married to the dated “XYZ Company today announced …” approach?

These conventional formulas to release leads are formulaic, old-fashioned and — let’s face it — dull. Both approaches slow the story down, appear unsophisticated and are too stereotypical to stand out from the competition.

Instead, choose from these three more effective approaches.

1. Benefits leads

Launching a new product or service? Focus on how it solves customer problems instead of on the product or service itself with this model, which I developed for my clients:

Here’s how it looks in action:

2. News leads

Do you have news to report? Instead of covering the five W’s and the H, appeal to reader interest by leading with the two most interesting elements to readers:

• What — as in “What happened?”
• Why — as in “Why should I care?”

Here’s how it works:

3. Feature leads

Feature leads show instead of tell. They attract readers by illustrating your key message instead of just stating it. Feature lead approaches include:

Description. This lead helped win support for the nation’s first statewide menu labeling law, in a Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy:

Startling statistics, like this lead from a Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign by Visa:

Compression of details, as in this lead for an H&R Block survey story by Fleishman Hillard’s John Armato:

Other feature lead approaches include anecdote, analogy, wordplay, concrete details, human interest and examples.

Surprise and delight your readers.

Whichever approach you use, write a lead that appeals to your readers’ self interest or that makes your story interesting.

Can’t do that with a fact pack.

The post 3 types of press release lead paragraphs to try appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Tick tock.

In the time it takes you to wash your hands, buckle your seat belt or start the dishwasher, your favorite journalist can finish reading your news release.

That’s right: Nearly 70% of journalists spend less than a minute reading a news release, according to a recent study by Greentarget. The rest spend one to five minutes.

So if your release is longer than 200 words, seven out of 10 journalists won’t finish it.

Why so short?

No wonder reporters don’t linger over your release:

• 45% of journalists surveyed get 50 or more releases per week.
• 21% get at least 100 per week.
• 40% get 10 to 50.

These folks are drowning in an ocean of content. Plus, years of media downsizing and increasing demands on journalists to produce digital content mean that their time is even more constrained.

As a result, “releases that are too long” is the fourth biggest pet peeve of the journalists surveyed by Greentarget. (“Releases that are poorly written” — ouch! — is No. 3.)

So how can you write a press release that’s short enough for everyone from small-business owners to search engines to love?

To reach these folks, you need to send a press release that’s attention grabbing — and no more than one-minute long.

How long is a one-minute release?

So how short is that?

To find out, you need to figure A.R.T., or average reading time.

Writers measure copy in words, inches or pages. Readers use a different measure: time.

So instead of using writer-centric measures, think like your reader and measure in time, suggests Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at The Poynter Institute and author of Writing Tools.

Clark figures the average adult can read 200 words per minute. So to find A.R.T., divide your word count by 200.

So if your release is 400 words long, it will take two minutes to read.

You can also start with A.R.T. and divide by 200 words per minute to get your word count.

So if you are aiming for a one-minute release, you’ll want to limit it to 200 words.

200 words?

200 words.

Reduce the piece.

Journalists’ A.R.T. is just one reason to reduce the length of your release. If your release is:

• Longer than 700 words, Google News may reject it for being too long.
• Longer than 500 words, portals may truncate your release.

Plus, reading online is onerous. Releases of 200 words or so are easier on real readers’ eyes.

But don’t make it too short. If your release is:

• Shorter than 125 words, Google News may reject it for being too short.

Releases are too long.

Yet despite these guidelines, PR pros persist in writing really long releases.

We ran a quick sample of PR Newswire releases and found that they weighed in at a median of 600 words. That’s a three-minute read.  They ranged as high as 1,723 words — about a 9-minute read.

Some PR pros on the other hand, are finding ways to drastically reduce the length of their releases:

• Nokia cuts its earnings release to 41 words.
• Pizza Hut famously introduced a new product with this 19-word release: “‘There’s bacon. In the crust! You’re welcome, America!’ said country music superstar and Stuffed Crust pizza aficionado Blake Shelton.”
• Christopher S. Penn boils his releases down to tweets.
• And I’m nuts for this one-word release.

How long are your releases? Would they be twice as good if they were half as long?

How to write a short pitch.

J.W. Elphinstone’s “Business Watercooler” feature for the Associated Press is just 200 words long. Why, then, do PR pros send her product or service pitches that are longer than that — even PowerPoint presentations with 30 slides?

Call it “AKK,”The New York Times’ acronym for “all known knowledge.” Your job isn’t to forward everything there is to know about your topic; your job is to find a tight story angle on the topic and to write an effective press release or pitch for the media.

So keep your pitches short. How short?

1. Keep it to three paragraphs.

Your pitch should be, at most, three paragraphs, suggests Peter Shankman, creator of Help a Reporter Out, or HARO.

That’s maybe 100 to 150 words. Include:

• The story angle. Focus on how this story will affect the journalists’ readers. Keep it the length of a social media post — a sentence or two. (Signal this in the subject line — in 40 characters or less.)
• What makes this story different. In the body copy, use bullet points or a couple of paragraphs to explain why your news story is a good idea for this outlet’s target audience.
• Contact information. Don’t forget important information like your email address and phone number.

Then “Best, Your Name” and out.

2. Make it 150 words.

The most effective pitches are short — 100 to 150 words. To keep yours fast and efficient, answer these four questions:

• Why you? Target the journalists and bloggers you pitch. Start with a personal greeting, and slant your story to their media outlet, column or segment.
• Why this? Give just enough detail to demonstrate that this story is different and worth covering.
• Why now? Create a sense of urgency. Show that this isn’t a generic, evergreen story but a story that should be covered right now. Make your lead timely or link it to a hot topic.
• Why us? Give an indication of authority and credibility. Without blah-blahing your spokesperson’s whole bio, show that she’s a credible —maybe even controversial — figure.

3. Think cocktail party.

When Barbara Goldberg, vice president of New York PR firm Belsito & Co., pitches a story, she thinks, “How could I get a friend at a cocktail party interested in two minutes or less?”

To promote the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, for instance, Goldberg pitched this story:

Too many of us know someone who went into the hospital for treatment of a common infection or even elective surgery — and never came out. The culprit is severe sepsis, which is treatable in most cases but needlessly remains one of the nation’s leading causes of death. It strikes two out of every 100 hospital admissions in the United States and kills 215,000 people each year, more than lung, colon and breast cancer combined.

4. Pass the one-leg test.

When expert PR professionals pitch by phone, they do so while standing on one leg. When their foot hits the floor, their pitch comes to an end.

So test your pitch. Read it aloud while standing on one leg. If you can’t finish before the second foot drops, you need to cut some copy.

Or time your pitch. Rick Frishman, president of Planned Television Arts, recommends that you limit your pitch to:

• 30 seconds of spoken word for print
• 10-20 seconds for radio and television

If your short pitch is good enough, he says, you’ll buy more time to sell your story.

Tease, don’t tell.

The job of the pitch is to pique the media’s interest, not to deliver all known knowledge. So just because you know it doesn’t mean it has to show up in the pitch.

Remember, you can always link to the full release for details. But don’t include the full release in your pitch.

And, please, no PowerPoint presentations.

___

Sources: “Why Your Release Might Not Make It In to Google News,” BusinessWired, March 24, 2010

Rebecca Corliss and Mike Volpe, “How to Be Smarter Than Your PR Agency: New Research on News Release Best Practices,” HubSpot, May 20, 2009

“Perfect Email Pitches: Master PR Scribes Reveal How to Craft Copy That Turns Heads and Earns Media Ink,” Bulldog Reporter’s PR University teleseminar, Sept. 18, 2008

“Turning complex into catchy,” Media Relations Report, September 2004

The post What’s the best press release length? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

What’s the least important element in a release — less important even than the dateline or the boilerplate?

Quotes, say one in four reporters surveyed in a study by Greentarget. According to Greentarget’s research:

• 13% of journalists never use quotes from releases.
• 31% rarely use quotes from releases.
• 28% use quotes from releases only when they’re on deadline and can’t get an interview.
• 28% use quotes from releases regularly.

What’s their beef?

• 50% complain that the language doesn’t sound natural.
• 34% say the quotes aren’t substantive enough.
• Only 9% have no complaints about the quotes.

“Please don’t make me wade through a bunch of boilerplate, taglines and patting-ourselves-on-the-back quotes to find out if the news release is relevant,” begs one journalist surveyed by Greentarget.

Another writes: “I dislike press releases that have ‘spin.’ I just want the facts. Not a sales pitch, not canned quotes about how fantastic the person/company/event is.”

‘Don’t sound natural’

“Most quotes in press releases sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown cartoons: ‘Wah wah wah wah.’”

— A frustrated PR pro

These aren’t unreasonable complaints, considering the wah wah that passes for quotes in releases these days.

Here are three quotes from releases posted on PRNewswire recently. (I could show only one in my PR Tactics column, because these suckers weigh in at more than 100 words each — 20% of my word count. Think about that for a minute.)

Wah wah, indeed.

Transform the wah wah.

How do you get the wah wah out of your release quotes? Make quotes:

1. Short.

While PR quotes measure in the triple digits, journalists use much shorter quotes. In fact, the average length of a quote in a recent issue of The New York Times, not including attribution, was between 19 and 20 words, according to a 2015 Wylie Communications analysis. The most common length: seven words.

So “peel the quote back to one great sentence,” counsels Jacqui Banaszynski, a chaired editing professor at the University of Missouri.

How about:

“Hot rodders, racers and other street performance enthusiasts will now be able to do something better [we can’t figure out what from the release], thanks to our merger,” Callahan says.

2. Rare.

Don’t use quotes to convey basic information, as in this release on the Hip Hop Hall of Fame:

“The program curriculums are currently being designed and prepared to launch first class this fall with all classes online in 2016,” stated Pierre Voltaire, the Educational Program Coordinator Consultant.

Instead, paraphrase.

3. Personable.

Clearly, no human ever uttered the words, “MSDP provides the ideal partner for Holley, a Lincolnshire portfolio company that is the leading manufacturer and marketer of performance fuel and exhaust systems.” Just as no human has ever sought “customizable, comprehensive literacy solutions.”

Write quotes that sound human, not like a computer spit them out. Here’s one to model, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the New York Daily News about the declining health of 9/11 rescue workers:

“I’m begging for someone to help me,” Valenti said. “I do not want to die.”

4. Creative.

Quotes should sound like more than just the most basic parts of human speech. Make your executive seem eloquent — even interesting. Here’s a New York Times quote by former New York mayor Ed Koch on political consultant David Garth:

“I said, ‘Listen David,’” Mr. Koch recalled, “‘You want me to kill my mother? Tell me what time and where?’”

Now, that’s a quote that reporters won’t shoot down.

The post Why CEO press release quotes suck appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

It’s counterintuitive, but true: The product is never the topic. The program is never the topic. The plan is never the topic. The topic is never the topic.

The reader is always the topic.

So put the reader first: Next time you find yourself writing a press release, write to and about your target audience, not about us and our stuff.

Here’s how to do it, stealing an approach from the lead of a PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winning release by the California Milk Advisory Board:

Dairy farmers throughout California — the nation’s No. 1 milk-producing state — will have an opportunity to learn the basics of cheese making in a comprehensive, one-day seminar being offered during February and March throughout the state. Sponsored by the California Milk Advisory Board …

Note that this release:

1. Starts with the reader. “Dairy farmers throughout California …” See what happens when you begin your lead with the stakeholder, instead of with your organization’s or product’s name? You push the benefits toward the front of the lead.

2. Follows up with the benefit. “… will have an opportunity to learn the basics of cheese making …” We still haven’t mentioned the organization or offering. Why? Because the reader benefit is more important.

   Notice how putting the reader first forces you from passive voice into active voice.

3. Only then introduces the product or service. “… a comprehensive, one-day seminar …” The product or service is best placed, as in this release, after the end-user and benefit. In fact, the second paragraph is high enough for the product name.

4. Ends with the organization’s name. “Sponsored by the California Milk Advisory Board …” Trust me, if someone cares about your release, they’ll get to your organization’s name.

   And journalists, bloggers and others are more likely to read or run the release when you focus on their audience members instead of on your organization and its stuff.

   Notice how much more newsworthy and interesting this approach is than the traditional product announcement release, which is dated, formulaic and — let’s face it — dull.

   Now you do it:

You’ll wind up with something like this:

The 2,000 commuters who now spend an hour each day driving from Sunrise Beach to Osage Beach will soon be able to make the trip in 15 minutes.

The reason: a new, $24 million bridge that Community Transport Corp. will build this summer.

Here are three other ways PR pros made the reader the topic in their PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winning campaigns.

1. Write to and about you.

The easiest way to write about the reader, in PR as well as in other pieces, is to use the magic word: You. That’s what PR pros did for these award-winning leads:

It’s on you. You have the power to save a life. That’s the message going out to [City] residents — especially those in the African American community — who will be asked to become potential marrow donors at a donor registry drive hosted by Be The Match®.

The [date] event is part of a nationwide effort during African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month.

— Be The Match media advisory

The billion dollar-a-year tax increase, Amendment 66, is like the latest “As Seen on TV” product. It’s full of promised innovation and life-changing outcomes, but post-purchase you realize you just spent a lot of money and nothing is actually better.

— Vote No on 66 campaign op-ed

Your school is invited to join Celebrate My Drive (CMD) 2013, an opportunity for students and communities to come together to celebrate [this year’s] class of new drivers. The first year behind the wheel is the most dangerous for teens, and it’s an issue we know is important to your school.

— State Farm Celebrate My Ride news release

2. Use the imperative voice.

Here’s another approach to leading with the reader: Use the imperative voice.

We learned in third grade to call the imperative voice the command voice. And it can be a command: Do the dishes. Make your bed. Clean your room.

When we use it, though, it’s the invitation voice: Grab a spade … prepare your senses … dig a little … learn a lot.

As spring temperatures go up, it’s an excellent time for farmers, ranchers and gardeners to focus their attention down to the soil below them. A spring check-up of your soil’s health gives clues of your ground’s ability to feed plants, hold water, capture carbon and more.

No fancy equipment required. Just grab a spade or shovel and prepare your senses to dig a little and learn a lot.

— Natural Resources Conservation Service news release

Working late again? You’re not alone, according to a new study by University of Arizona germ guru Dr. Charles Gerba. You have plenty of bacteria keeping you company.

The study, the first of its kind to measure normal bacterial levels inside offices across America, found paper isn’t all that’s piling up on desks. In fact, the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

— Clorox Silver Anvil Award-winning release

3. Use a placeholder for ‘you.’

I actually prefer to avoid you and the imperative voice in media relations pieces. For one thing, who’s you — the reporter or the end reader? For another, I still like to retain an objective, third-person voice in PR pieces.

The solution? A placeholder for you: Community members. New drivers. Farmers throughout the state. Teens who commit to safe driving.

That’s how these Silver Anvil award-winners set up their stories:

Community members of all ages are invited to join Celebrity Chefs Nicolas Come of Nicolas’ Garden and Adam Pechal of “Restaurant THIR13EN” and “Tuli Bistro” fame, as they co-host the inaugural “Farm-to-Fork Family Food Feud,” game on Saturday, September 28, 2013, at 11:00 am.

— Nicolas’ Garden news release

Parents of teen drivers believe teens are obeying the letter of the law when it comes to graduated driving licensing (GDL) laws. As it turns out, what parents think — or hope — and what teens report actually doing don’t match up according to a new survey conducted by State Farm.

— State Farm news release

During National Teen Driver Safety Week, new drivers across North America are rallying their communities to commit to safe driving. Car crashes are the number one killer of teens in the US and Canada. Students in more than 3,000 participating high schools are celebrating the joy of driving while at the same time working to reverse this startling statistic.

— State Farm news release

A growing number of farmers throughout STATE have “discovered the cover” — and for some very good reasons. They’re increasingly recognizing that by using cover crops and diverse rotations, if s possible to actually improve the health and function of their soil.

— Natural Resources Conservation Service op-ed

Teens who commit to safe driving could have the chance to bring Grammy Award winner Kelly Clarkson to their hometown for a free concert this coming school year. As part of the company’s Celebrate My Drive® program, State Farm is teaming up with Clarkson and offering teens across the U.S. and Canada the opportunity to learn more about safe driving, win grant money for their school, and be one of two schools to win a free concert by Kelly.

— State Farm news release

Get ready, racing aficionados, zombie slayers, sports fans, warriors and entertainment lovers. The Xbox team is planning one of the biggest entertainment premieres of the year to celebrate the launch of Xbox One with Xbox fans around the world, when it launches next Friday, Nov. 22.

— Xbox Silver Anvil-winning promotion

Stop wasting their time.

Next time you’re ready to send a press release, it will probably look at first glance like a news story:

The California Milk Advisory Board announces a comprehensive, one-day seminar on cheese production.

But if you want to write an effective press release … if you want to engage editors or reporters — and their readers — in your story, take a tip from these Silver Anvil winners: Once you’ve written a press release, make sure you’ve put the most important information — how readers can use your product or service — up top.

It’s more important than the contact information. More important than press release distribution. Way more important than including a quote. Even more important than the press release headline.

So focus on the reader and the reader’s needs, not on us and our stuff.

The post Write leads for your PR target audience (Examples!) appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..