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The press release is one of the hardest-working tools in your content marketing. To get the most from it, the content has to be structured to grab readers' interest and hold their attention. So dust off the old PR textbook and revisit the inverted pyramid.
Lead with the news, then the details.
The inverted pyramid is a writing structure used by public relations professionals, journalists and other writers to prioritize information for the reader. It leads with the most important, most newsworthy information first.
That means the release opens with a strong lead supported by solid facts, specs or proof points, with a minimum of fluff and no pile of adjectives that add nothing. The lead paragraph should express everything you want your target audience to know, concisely, usually in four to eight sentences.
In most releases, the lead should focus on "what's in it for me" from the audience's perspective. If you're introducing a skid steer with 30 improvements, use the lead to highlight the few that matter most and explain what they mean for contractors.
From there, the rest of the release paints a broader picture of the news, adding information in order of importance. That structure lets an editor trim the release from the bottom to fit the space available without losing the point.
For a press release to be effective, it has to be read and understood by your audience: editors, customers, investors and so on. Editors are busy people on deadline who receive hundreds of releases from companies like yours every month. They don't have time to comb through each one to find the news.
The inverted pyramid minimizes the time an editor spends hunting for the newsworthy angle. It shows that you know what you're doing and respect their time. And they'll notice that your release doesn't include unnecessary positioning statements or jargon. Leave the marketing speak out so they don't have to take it out. The easier you make it to publish your news, the more often it gets published.
If an editor decides your release is newsworthy and runs it, their readers respond to the same structure. The lead draws them in and carries them through the rest.