Publishing news about your business is a great way to expose your brand to a larger audience, as news stories are often shared on social media. They also provide fresh content to your website, if you have a dedicated news section or blog, and we all know that search engines love fresh content! This will subsequently help to increase your online visibility, the more you post.
So – how do you write a news story about your business?
A news story is, as I said last week, different from a press release (which contains the bare bones of the information you’d send to a newspaper), and also varies from a blog (often produced in a more personal/informal style). It should ultimately be written as it would appear in a magazine or paper, and should therefore be polished and precise, engaging the reader and supplying them with interesting information.
Pictures to accompany the article are also preferable, and if you can interview a colleague or employee, or a relevant expert as well, then so much the better.
As a freelance journalist myself, here are some of my top tips for news writing:
1. Consider the five ‘Ws’ – who, what, why, where and when
2. Keep sentences brief – 23-26 words is ideal!
3. Use short, punchy words
4. Use active verbs rather than passive
5. Include quotes where possible
The inverted pyramid – keep the most important facts at the top!
Structure of a news story:
1. Main news line (what happened – hook your reader!)
2. Further information
3. Quotes
4. More detailed background info
You can end your story with a clear call to action for your business if you wish, and it’s important to remember that fact is more important here than chronology. That is, your readers are more interested in knowing how your firm raised X amount, for example, rather than finding this out halfway down the article. Keep the most important information at the top, and work your way down. 🙂
If you need help writing news stories for your business, just get in touch and I’ll be happy to put all this into action for you!