How to Write a Great Feature Release that Reporters and Audiences Want to Read

Writing a feature news release is an effective way to share a different side of your story. Telling this story successfully can help you get noticed by media.

What is Feature news?

One of the most common types of news is Feature news. Feature news takes a human-interest approach to telling a story whereas business news is designed to launch a product or drive a direct sale. Feature news seeks to humanize a product, situation or event. Feature stories are often tied to calendar events such as Mother’s Day, Black History Month or summer activities. 

Feature news pieces are extremely popular because they use storytelling to pull readers in and create a bond. They demonstrate products in action, present solutions to timely issues or showcase merchandise in entirely new ways. Feature stories don’t sell, they evoke. 

Business Wire distributes thousands of Feature stories every year. Here are our top tips for writing a successful Feature release:

• Multimedia: Feature news is visual-first content. The fastest way to lose coverage opportunities is to skip this step. Every media outlet today needs useful – not salesy – multimedia to supplement the story being told. Find or create multimedia elements that tell your story and connect to the holiday/event at hand. Pitching a Mother’s Day angle? Include multimedia content that shows the story you are telling and add it to your news release.
• Pick the right assets: While high-quality multimedia is a must-have for today’s visual audiences and reporters, the type of multimedia you provide can directly impact your goal. The most common types of multimedia are:
  • Images
  • GIF files
  • Videos
  • Interactive Media
• Headline: Feature news stories have eye-catching headlines. From two to 22 words in length, they often use humor and wordplay to catch attention. They are written to attract a reporter’s attention by being directly relevant to their readership.
  • Make sure to include your most relevant terms at the beginning of your headline; the first 5-7 words of your headline are the most visible across most platforms. To maximize impact, use Google Trends to identify your news releases’ most relevant terms.
• First paragraph: In under 30 words, your first paragraph should continue the story your headline tells (rather than repeating it). Jump directly into your narrative to keep the attention of the readers your headline attracted.
• Second paragraph: Now is the time to identify your story’s source or expert, using their words to expand your story. This is important as many reporters won’t read past this part of a feature story unless it is attributed to someone (or something) tangible. Feature stories include quotes that humanize the story being told. Write your quote first, then list out the name, title and organization of the quote source.
• Third paragraph: This is a terrific place to bullet out features of the product, service or offering that your story supports. 
• Fourth paragraph: If you have statistics, research findings or you want to show how your story has affected people, this is the paragraph to do so. Third-party quotes are often added to this paragraph to provide additional context.
• Fifth paragraph: Close your story. By now, your audience is engaged and ready to act. Be sure to include information on where to get more information as well as hyperlinks to important landing pages.

Creating a successful Feature news release is an art. Once you find the human side of your story, craft the story textually and visually to ensure it both appeals to and reaches the widest set of end audiences possible.

Looking for some interesting examples of Feature stories? Check out the links below. 

Examples:

• Travelers Reveals Biggest Boating Blunders
• Tofurky Debuts Limited-Edition Ugly Christmas Sweaters to Celebrate Roast Anniversary
• What’s Keeping Mom Up at Night?
• Forty Percent of Moms Fake Reactions to Mother’s Day Gifts They Don’t Like, According to a New Survey
• Volunteers Travel to Kuwait to Serve their 100,000th Steak Dinner to Deployed Members of the Minnesota National Guard
• Bravo Zulu!
• MR. PEANUT Passes Away at 104 Years Old, Sacrificing Himself to Save Friends Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes in New Super Bowl Pre-Game Ad

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