The power of the press for reaching out to your larger community is a given, and a well conceived press strategy should be part of every company’s plan – but this is especially true if you represent a non-profit organization. I’m guessing that many of you send the occasional press release to local newspapers, and you may also post your news on your own website.

If you are working with limited time and resources and don’t have a dedicated PR professional on your staff, then you especially need those efforts to pay off in positive, upbeat stories about your work.

Are there basic rules to sending out a media alert or press release that will have a better chance of bearing fruit?  I’ve outlined my top 7 tips here:

1) Develop a template for these that will save you time when you are developing them. Make sure you already have a page blank handy that is set up with your contact information, organization name and logo,  It should have a place for:

• The title of the release – it can be creative, but please make sure it says what the topic is. Don’t make the reporter or editor receiving it have to search to know what it’s about.
• The date, and city/state where you (or your news) are located.
• The press contact: Always include the name, title, telephone # and email address of the person that should be contacted for an interview or for more information.
• At the end of the release, include a brief “about us” paragraph or two about your organziation; and include your website URL. This should ideally be the same paragraph every time, for consistency, make it a “boilerplate” part of your template. You can always add a line or two that describes the specific department or program that the release is about, to tailor it.

2) It’s not the great American Novel. When you write the release, remember that you are writing for news outlets. It’s OK to include background about the human interest side of your story. But remember that you are writing the release so that it can be useful to reporters and editors – who will want to use the information in their own work, with their own voice. Give them great material to work with, but don’t fall in love with your own words. Be succinct.

3) Edit yourself with a checklist – does it have all the facts they will need? What happened, when, where, to whom, and why is it news? If you are covering one of your own programs or events, did you remember to say that you were the sponsoring organization?

4) Can I quote you? If a reporter or editor really wants to do in-depth work on your topic, they will call you and others for interviews, and will use their own quotes.  But a really good quote or two is gold for a time-pressed editor; so make it a consistent part of your style to include these. They are also your opportunity to provide perspective beyond the facts.

5) Get ready to lose control. Once the press release has left your desk and been sent to news publications, it is in their hands. They have no obligation to use everything you sent, verbatim. They will more than likely take the pieces from the release that work for them within their story. An ethical reporter will not mis-communicate the facts of the story. But your perspective and point of view may not end up in the final cut.

6) Know your reporters.  Particularly if local news outlets are important to you; but for national outlets as well. If you are doing this right, you won’t simply be peppering the landscape with your alerts and releases, hoping something sticks.  That isn’t worth your valuable time or theirs. Make sure your release topic is relevant to the new outlet, and especially to the reporter, that receives it. Less is more; develop a short list of reporters and editors that you will place your release with; and get to know what their preferred beat is.  What topics and issues do they typically cover, and how? Don’t add them to your send list if you know nothing about them. (Google works great when you want to check out past articles from a new publication or reporter/editor.)

I ran across an interesting blog post on the NonProfit Communicator blog. Lisa Bertagnoli does a good job of explaining what to do – and what not to do – to get her attention with a release.

http://communitymediaworkshop.org/npcommunicator/people-to-pitch-lisa-bertagnoli-freelance-writer/

7) Don’t forget the web.  You may be accustomed to sending all of your press releases to local newspapers; but is it really national news? Does it have regional implications?  Apart from your own website (where you should be posting every release you create), there are some good and inexpensive news services like PRNewswire.com that will post your article on their site and distribution it to news outlets with a wider scope than you probably have. You may gather greater attention to your work by strategically posting selected, very important stories on such a service.  And with well-planned key words, the release may get more attention from even your local reporters; when they receive in their Google alerts.

8) Have a plan.  You can easily inundate your local press outlets with way too many stories that don’t interest them, in which case, they’ll turn you off.  On the other hand, if this isn’t in your comfort zone, or you are a busy person wearing multiple hats, then you may not remember to make strategic use of media exposure. Don’t wait until you are reacting to a negative story; create a calendar and a plan for sending selected news items on a recurring basis that feature the positive, relevant work that you do.