The “Swiss Cheese” Press Release: How to Act Quickly When News Breaks Part 1
When breaking news hits, you often times don’t have the time to develop an entire press release and if you do, you risk missing out on a lot of great media opportunities. TV outlets especially move quickly when news breaks. For example, when the Brexit news was announced and the market took a dive, several of our clients had interviews that same day – many of which were booked within two hours of the announcement.
So what’s the best way to prepare for breaking news without knowing exactly what the news will be? If you want to be a source to the media each time the market drops, try creating what we like to call a “Swiss Cheese” press release. This kind of release allows you get the “meat” of your ideas down on paper but allows you the flexibility to go back and add in additional content to help better relate it to the current news cycle.
Here are some tips for creating your own “Swiss Cheese” release:
- Create an outline. Press releases have a unique structure and special format to follow. Create the outline of your release, and highlight areas that will need to be updated once you’re ready to send the release out, like the title and date.
- Hold off on writing introductory paragraph. This area you will want to go back in and fill out once news breaks. Your introductory paragraph should include the nuts and bolts of the news topic you’re addressing.
- Draft your tips. Regardless of what makes the market drop, your advice will likely remain the same. Start by drafting the tips you typically give your clients when dealing with market volatility.
- Write your quotes. Your quotes can also be something you draft ahead of time. They may be more generic when you write them in advance but you can edit them to be more specific before distributing.
- Check your work. When news breaks, you’ll want to move fast but you’ll still want to double check your release as there could be a tip or piece of advice that may no longer be applicable. Before distributing your release, give it a final review and be sure to update any parts of the release where there is time sensitive information.
So what’s next? Check out part two of this blog to find out!
