Writing the Lead: The Who, What, Why, When and Where of a Press Release
Every press release contains a lead in which all the keywords you will state are mentioned.
Both the final audience and the reporter must realize your press release topic based on the "lead". Lead can be a paragraph or a bit more than that.
In the lead, provide a summary of news and a concise explanation about what the audience will read in addition to keywords.
Your press release's lead must be as brief as possible and it shouldn’t exceed 150 words.
Your news leads are influential on getting identified by Google and on the search engine optimization (SEO).
Lead must be compelling. On many occasions, if your lead is not written carefully and elegantly, the audiences won't continue to read the rest of the text, and you will be the loser.
In formulating the press release, consider five principles:
1) Who: that is, who or what company is formulating the press release? Here, you should clearly state the company's name or explicitly introduce a part of your company. Declare the company's name in the first section after the headline.
2) What: that is, on what topic are you writing the news?
3) Why: that is, why are you releasing such news? Why should the reader read it? What reasons do you have to write this press release? Is it for an opening ceremony? Have a reason about which you have already thought and intend to notify others.
4) When: that is, when did the press release has happened? Determine the date of the press release in the first paragraph.
5) Where: that is, where is your company, and where is the location of the event you're talking about? If your company is located in Chicago, you must clarify whether you are talking to the entire country or only looking at Chicago? Your location has nothing to do with this process. What matters is that where the event you're talking about is located.
These five issues must be addressed at the beginning of the press release and the whole material on them shouldn’t exceed 150-160 words. This paragraph contains the popular keywords of search engine optimization and your main points; based on this part, people decide whether to keep reading the rest of your text or not. Most of the time, when you don’t have this first paragraph, people don’t read the rest of the text. That is, if you don’t start the first part appealing enough, no one will practically read the rest of it and you will be the loser.