5 steps to telling your story fast
Journalists spend, on average, less than a minute reading news releases, according to a study by Greentarget. You can reverse-engineer that to less than 200 words.
So how do you write a one-minute release?
I worked with a PR pro in my PR-writing workshop to boil down an 800-word release to 200 words or less with these five steps:
1. Tell what happened in an 8-word headline.
XX earns honors from Institute for Medicaid Innovation
2. Summarize the impact in a short deck. Bonus points for emotional language, like “feed the hungry” instead of “reduce food insecurity.”
Programs fed the hungry, provided street medicine for the homeless
3. Show how your program changed lives in the lead. Try a triad: Summarize three outcomes in quick sentences. Make people the subject of every sentence.
4. Transition to the body in the nut graph.
5. Write a quick list for the body. Keep the focus on people who benefited from your programs, not on the programs themselves. Make it scannable with bold-faced lead-ins:
- Program A. Californians were able to meet with their doctors online thanks to $XX4 million in grants.
- Program B. Specialists delivered care to the homeless with $XX million in grants.
- Program C. Parents got help raising healthier children with $XX million in grants.
- Program D. Hungry Californians learned to get more out of their food stamps with $XX million in grants. Plus, elderly neighbors received meals at home via an online food bank delivery program.
6. Link to more details in the conclusion.
Would your release be twice as good if it were half as long?
How can you write PR pieces that get read?
Journalists spend, on average, just one minute reading a news release. So how can you get the word across in your PR piece?
Learn a simple formula for getting the word across to journalists in 60 seconds or less at NOT Your Father’s PR Writing — our PR-writing workshop.
There, you’ll learn how long your PR piece should be … how to write paragraphs people will read, not skip … how to write sentences that readers can understand … how long journalists think your first paragraph should be.
Plus: Find out how to stop doing one thing that reporters and editors say gets in the way of their covering your story.
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