PR Your Self delves into practices for earning media coverage without a Publicist By Melissa A. Vitale Be sure to check out the other posts in this series: PR Your Self: Social Media is your Bestie, PR Your Self: What's in a Media Kit? & PR Yourself: Why a Press Page is so Important If you've ever written and published a press release on a wire service, you may have heard the term "Boiler Plate." In this instance, a boiler plate doesn't have to do with food or cooking. Instead, it's basically a company's "About Me" that follows any press release. Boiler Plates are also handy to include at the bottom of email marketing, cold outreach, and I often use them at the bottom of my client's press invites. A boiler plate is typically five to eight sentences that answers the questions of who this company is and what they do that makes them worthy of attention. The details included in a boiler plate are facts about the brand or individual that you'd like everyone to know: potential customers, potential partners, potential investors. In a boiler plate, you are going to want to answer the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW if any of those questions are relevant. While this is a guideline, not every question necessarily needs to be answers. Where may not be important if the brand is a product that can be shipped world wide. Your goal is to answer all the questions a journalists may have about the brand in the boiler plate. Top Line: The top line of your boiler plate should include a broad strokes overview of the company. This is not the time to get into the nitty gritty. Journalists and consumers just need to know whether or not the paragraph that follows is going to be relevant to them. You'll want to set the tone for the information that follows. If you remember back to writing classes in high-school, this is your introduction or opening statement. For my boiler plate, I would start: "Founded in 2017, Melissa A Vitale PR is a Public Relations Practice specializing in Plant and Intimate wellness brands with a focus on education over sensation." The Meat: Your Boiler plate really doesn't need to be longer than eight sentences and even then, that's only with short sentences. The reader will stop reading at a certain point because boiler plates aren't supposed to be a long-winded story or report. With one sentence for the opening and one for the closing, your meat should be about three to six sentences max. Because you have limited time to share all the wonderful things about your brand, you want to be concise and only focus on the most important aspects. While I'd never recommend a brand to slice up their story, there is a way to combine multiple facts about a brand into one sentence. Isolate the 10 most important features of your brand, including your call to action for customers or clients and your competitive advantage. Find the repetitive and similar aspects, then find a way to meld those two points into one succinct thought. With a limited attention span of the reader, you'll want these sentences to be more powerful than if you were writing a pitch [which we'll cover in a future blog post in this series]. This is addressing anyone who could be a stakeholder in your brand: a customer, investor, potential partner, celebrity endorsement etc. Each sentence you write in the body should be impactful. If you're a consumer packaged goods company, you could list a bit about the prowess of your product, along with the price range of the products. This is not the time to individually list products or even launches unless they were noteworthy. If there's patenting and proprietary intellectual property, these descriptors should be included but may not warrant an entire sentence depending on how transformative the IP is. If the patent is an update to an existing product, maybe not, though if it's a brand new, life-changing product, it may require a dedicated sentence. If you do any charitable partnerships, this would be a good time to include that as journalists, partners and customers are more likely to form loyalty to brands that align with their personal morals. Final Closer: The closer is going to be the easiest sentence to write: and it's going to be where to find your brand. You'll want to list your website and any social media accounts. If you have a newsletter, you'll also want to include the subscription link. For my boiler plate, I might write something along the lines of: "Learn more about MAVPR's services at www.melissaavitalepr.com and follow along at @MelissaAVitalePR in instagram, @MelissaVitalePR on X/Twitter, and connect at @MelissaAVitalePR on LinkedIn." For examples of Boiler Plates, all you need to do is look at a few press releases. Because every industry structures their boiler plates differently, look at press releases from companies that are in similar spaces as your brand. Don't think this counts as cheating (unless, of course you're copying someone's boiler plate and just changing the name and details, in which case, this is plagiarism), most publicists writing a press release or boiler plate for a new industry will often look at press releases and boiler plates in that industry to make sure they're using a format that is familiar to the journalists they are targeting. You don't want to write a boiler plate that a beauty company would use for a motor oil company as the editors and journalists you're speaking with likely will have questions that aren't answered. Once you have a Boiler Plate, you're ready to write your first Press Release, which I will cover in a future blog post. While a boiler plate isn't the highest priority when it comes to launching your own PR campaign, having one BEFORE your start your solo PR efforts will save you time if you plan to write press releases, or if a journalist asks you about your brand: all you have to do is copy and paste, saving you time and effort. For plant and intimate wellness brands hoping to distinguish themselves in their industry and cement their name in history, become a client:
https://www.melissaavitale.com/become-a-client.html To learn more about Melissa A Vitale PR, view Client Case Studies: www.melissaavitale.com/case-studies.html
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