How to write a press release that gets picked up

A press release that gets picked up follows the newsroom order: headline with the news, dateline, a lead answering who did what and why now, fact paragraphs with numbers, one genuine quote, a boilerplate, and a media contact.

Desks decide in seconds, assistants quote the clearest source, and readers skim. The structure below serves all three. Use it as a template for your own draft, or hand your facts to our team and approve the result within 2 business days.

What does the headline have to do?

The headline has to carry the news in one line a stranger understands. Name the actor, the action, and the scale: who did what, and how big. Skip adjectives, skip puns, skip the company slogan. A desk reading fifty releases picks the one whose headline already reads like a published title.

Weak headline: a local roastery reaches new heights of flavour excellence. Strong headline: Northwind Coffee Roasters opens third roastery and doubles wholesale capacity. The second states facts a reader can repeat. Write yours the same way, then check it against this bar: would it survive unchanged on a news page. If yes, keep it. Our examples page shows a full sample release built on exactly this pattern.

Why does the lead paragraph decide everything?

The lead paragraph decides everything because many readers never pass it. Pack it with the five facts: who, what, when, where, and why now. One or two sentences, concrete nouns, at least one number. The lead is the release in miniature, quotable on its own by journalists and AI assistants alike.

Compare the approaches. A slow lead warms up with background about the industry and the journey so far. A working lead opens with the event: Northwind Coffee Roasters opens its third roastery on 12 May, doubling wholesale capacity to 40 tonnes a month and adding 14 jobs. The background belongs in paragraph three. The news belongs in paragraph one. When our writers draft your release from the brief, the lead is where your strongest fact goes first.

How do you build the body so desks keep reading?

You build the body so desks keep reading by stacking facts in descending importance. Paragraph two proves the lead with detail: the site, the investment, the capacity numbers. Paragraph three adds context: founding year, growth so far, the customers this serves. Paragraph four carries the quote. Later paragraphs carry availability, pricing, event dates, and links.

Each paragraph should survive deletion from the bottom up. Desks cut from the end, so nothing load-bearing lives in the final lines. Keep sentences short, keep one fact per sentence, and attach a source to every number. A body built this way reads clean on all 500 pages it lands on, from flagship to regional.

What makes a quote worth printing?

A quote worth printing sounds like a person, not a committee. One genuine sentence beats three polished ones. The founder says what the milestone cost, what nearly went wrong, or what changes for customers next. Real stakes, plain words, first person.

Bad quote: we are thrilled to leverage synergies as we embark on this exciting journey. Good quote: we roasted past midnight for six months to earn this space, and wholesale customers get fresher beans within 48 hours from May. The second carries detail no writer could invent, which is precisely why desks print it. Supply one honest line in your brief and the release writes itself around it.

What belongs at the end of the release?

The end of the release belongs to the boilerplate, the contact, and the links. The boilerplate is three sentences about the company: what it does, who it serves, how far it has come. The media contact is a name, an email, and a phone number that gets answered. The links are your 3 URLs, placed where readers and search engines both find them.

Keep the boilerplate stable across releases so coverage compounds into one recognisable story. Update the numbers each time: headcount, customers, towns served. Consistency here is how repeated campaigns build an entity that search and assistants recognise.

Where do most DIY releases go wrong?

Most DIY releases go wrong in four familiar ways. The table shows each fault beside its fix.

Every PressMoose draft passes these four checks before it reaches you, and your approval is the final gate before anything ships to the network.

How long should each part run?

Each part should run to a simple budget that totals near 500 words. Headline one line. Lead 40 to 60 words carrying the five facts. Body paragraphs 40 to 70 words each, four or five of them, facts in descending importance. Quote 30 to 50 words in a human voice. Boilerplate 50 to 70 words stable across releases. Contact two lines.

Budgets beat targets because desks feel shape before they read words. A release that looks right gets read. A release that runs 900 words gets skimmed and cut, often in the wrong places. Write inside the budget, approve the locked text, and let the network carry a story shaped for the journey.

How do you fill the template fast?

You fill the template fast by answering ten questions in your brief: the announcement in one line, the date, the place, the people, three numbers with sources, one quote, the customer benefit, the boilerplate facts, and your 3 links. Ten honest minutes, plain words, no prose styling needed.

Our team turns those answers into the 500-word release, structured for desks, search, and assistants, in your inbox within 2 business days. You request edits until it sounds like you, then approve. From there your story goes live within 3 to 5 business days, and the report proves every placement. The template does the thinking. The process does the rest.