From the Editor’s Desk is a monthly series that highlights editorial tips, best practices and other useful tidbits of information, written by a member of Marketwire’s own editorial team.

As a member of Marketwire’s Editorial team, I read our clients’ press releases before they are distributed and have noticed that some of the most common mistakes have to do with times and dates.

Here are a few “time-sensitive” mishaps to avoid when writing your own press releases: (more…)

When evaluating a media monitoring service, there are many factors to consider: your scope of coverage, which provider to choose and the service tier that best fits your budget. However, while it may not seem to be a difficult choice, one of the most important decisions you will make is selecting the best keywords for your new monitoring account – keywords that will deliver the most relevant and targeted clips.

Choosing the right keywords and phrases is essentially a balancing act. If you pick terms that are too broad, they will return hundreds (or thousands) of clips per day, leaving you with a virtual stack too large to read through. However, if you pick terms that are too narrow (for example, just your company name or your name) – and you are not in the news at the moment – you may find you get very few or no daily results. In both of these cases, having too many clips can be as dangerous as having too few – both will leave you disappointed with your monitoring provider and its system capabilities. (more…)

At Marketwire, one of our most lauded competitive advantages is the consultative approach that we use in our daily interactions with clients who want to distribute their company news. Marketwire sales, customer service and editorial teams are available to help at every step of the way – from writing the release to submitting it for distribution – to ensure as best they can that your press release is set up for success.

But, because you’re dealing with the media (traditional and social), analysts and bloggers who are on constant information overload, a proper foundation for your press release is an absolute must, to even hope for a glance from their journalistic eyes. They need easy-to-read, digestible and newsworthy content in order to go through the dozens, even hundreds, of press releases they receive on a daily basis. (more…)

As print media struggle to compete with other news sources such as blogs and online outlets, feature stories are growing in popularity because they attract and engage readers. Some newspapers are even writing news stories in “features style” to lend a human element to breaking events. And these ready-to-go stories are boons for overworked journalists, especially if they include photos and illustrations. (more…)

Press releases, a.k.a. news releases, are a staple of many public relations efforts and continue to provide traditional and social media audiences, as well as consumers, with a wealth of information on products, services, people and events.

Press coverage (both traditional and online) and attention across social networks can be more effective than any other type of advertising, and a well-written press release can garner great rewards for your company by increasing sales, driving qualified leads to your website or drawing attention to important causes and events.  Writing releases smartly and strategically is extremely important: editors and bloggers alike read press releases quickly and with a well-trained eye, and if they can’t find what they are looking for within the first paragraph (sometimes even within the headline itself), they are more likely to disregard it altogether.

How do you compose a well-written and well-structured press release to grab the attention of your audience?  The steps below can help. (more…)