Composition and use guide

Here are a few basic ideas to make your Media Release successful. And a couple of rules.

First the rules.

1. Headlines. Use capitals for the first word in sentences and for proper nouns. Do not put the ENTIRE HEADLINE in capitals, nor The First Letter Of Every Word. Do not put a capital after a colon viz: Like this. The reason for this is that your release, if forwarded using our "Tip a friend" feature, is more likely to be identified as spam by strict filters and blocked if it uses the techniques we recommend against. This means that journalists' researchers may find that releases are not delivered and journalists who send releases to themselves for filing or action may not receive them. And because we cannot run any risk that our domains may be regarded as spammers, this rule will be strictly enforced. Releases that are not in compliance will not be passed for publication.

2. Do not use HTML, including forcing fonts or inserting images, etc. and do not change the input format - your document will be presented in the biznewsselect.com section of www.chiefofficers.net in text format with hyperlinks. You may, however, insert divisions in your release separated by headings in bold. To make an entry bold simply bracket it with

3. It is entirely your own responsibility to make sure that any statutory or regulatory information required to be present in your releases is, indeed, present in your releases.

4. If your account is limited by number of releases, then publication of the same release in more than one platform (i.e. both www.chiefofficers.net and www.bankinginsurancesecuries.com) will result in both notices being charged for. If you have an account limited by time but with no maximum number of releases, substantially similar releases for multiple platforms will be rejected.

OK, that was the rules! Now to the guidelines bit.

You want your releases read by as many journalists as possible. And you want those journalists to base articles on them. But equally, you want those releases to permit contact with your company. And whilst quality of readership is important, equally so is the fact that media releases is a numbers game: the more people read and understand your release with ease, the greater its effect will be. So all of our guidelines are designed with one thing in mind: to make the releases accessible to the most people possible so that they can decide whether it is relevant to them, and what action to take.

Journalists want to think about the substance, not the form. So it is important that they are not distracted having to think what you mean. Clarity in every respect is all important.

1. Common format: Town/City, State (in full) (if required) and country. e.g. Miami, Florida, USA. Far too many press releases assume that readers know where somewhere is. That automatically limits your market to people that do know. They may know where KY is, but equally, they might at first glance mistake it for a lubricant.

2. Dates and times: Note the format described above. .Times should be set at GMT (not current UK time - it's far too complicated to work that out). Releases are timestamped with the GMT time when they are posted to the biznewsselect.com section of www.chiefofficers.net.

3. We don't nanny you with a defined length for your teaser. But there are a few good sense guidelines that will help you get the most from your release.

a) put the name of your company and the primary point of your release in your headline.

b) remember that the headline plus the formal parts (place, time, our link) will take up an estimated 100 characters.

c) remember that some search engines place greater weight on information at the top of the page being indexed. In some cases, this may be the first 400 characters or so.

d) 100 (approx) having been used, make the next three hundred characters count. Don't waste space saying "My company, the leading.... in the world" - no one pays any attention to such claims and they just clog up the valuable space that search engines are most likely to index.

e) if you can keep your teaser to around 300 characters, then it will have more impact.

4. Don't use hyperbole. If your release is "Ted's Cars are the best in town," your release will end up in the bin. No journalist (frankly, not even most bloggers) will act on such a release. Your release should be clear and fair. There are "tombstones" which are basic statements of facts e.g. an announcement of a meeting and there are informative releases. Think of it like this: does my release contain anything of any newsworthy value?

5. Remember to allocate the release to the correct section.

6. Remember that some words mean something completely different in some versions of English. Whilst "fanny" is a mildly rude word in American, it is seriously offensive in English. Also, in common American usage, "to protest" something is to argue against it. But in almost all other forms of English, it means exactly the opposite! American: "he protested his innocence" means he argued that he was not innocent; but in other forms it means he argued that he was innocent. There are similar problems with numbers: in most European languages (including English except in financial writing) a billion is a million to the power two. It is not "a thousand million." A thousand million is "a milliard" or "a thousand million." Similarly, a trillion is a million to the power three, a quadrillion, quintillion, etc. follow the same pattern. Even the US Department of Defense recognises this confusion and defines its terms for clarity.

Some more examples:

- remember that "meter" is a device for measuring a quantity of a substance or distance. "a metre" is a measurement of distance. One uses a meter to find out how many metres have been travelled.

- an Inquiry is an official investigation; an enquiry is what the rest of us do.

- a check is a review of something; a means of payment is a cheque.

- if someone is responsible for monitoring e.g. an industry, he conducts supervision, not oversight. "oversight" to miss something that one should have seen.

- "licence" is a noun; "license" is a verb. Similarly "practice" and "practise" in e.g. "he practised law in a law practice." But this is even more complicated - for if someone is doing something over and over to improve, like a racing car driver before his qualifying session, that is "practice."

Again, we emphasise that these notes are to help bring your releases to the widest possible audience. We have not, for example, considered it necessary to refer to different spellings - readers are sufficiently sophisticated to work out those for themselves (although a personal plea for "adviser" instead of "advisor" might be made here!)

7. Currencies are often a source of confusion. There are dozens of dollars, a few pounds and many of the world's PCs cannot register the euro sign. You know what you mean, but often your readers will have to do a double take to wonder what currency you are referring to. So please use the accepted short form instead of symbols. Use AUD, USD, GBP, and euros or the correct format for your currency. After all, there's no point in you announcing a million dollar deal and someone working out that million in their local currency that might be worth, say, one eighth of yours. Again: remember that many journalists will want to cut and paste sections from your release - and the easier you make it for them, the better your releases will be received.

Lastly, for an effective release, identify a need, explain how to address it and explain why your product or service meets that need. Case studies, stories and interviews (even interviews with yourself ..Mr X of Company Y said "the new XoVac has been proved to lift dust mites from pillows, helping to reduce allergies."

And always fall back on the five W questions: who, what, when, why and where? And then deal with the "how."

When you click on "Create Media Release" you will get a reminder of these points and a couple of other suggestions to help you make a success.

Copyright Vortex Centrum Limited, publishers. No reproduction permitted.