In my first FOSS Project Marketing Howto article, I wrote about the importance of using your project's home page as an effective marketing tool. So let's examine a few press releases to learn how to write our own.

Just as I referred to a handful of websites to demonstrate effective home page design, I'll point out some good press releases to demonstrate how to write your own. Say, isn't that how hackers learn to hack - by seeing examples of other people's code and building on that? Maybe I should change the series to "Hacking Marketing".

Writing a press release should not be taken lightly. After all, you really want the release to draw the attention of editors and journalists to publish your release and maybe even follow up with a story about your project. So, while you don't want to write a press release that says, "we hacked some code today", you do want to send out those that say, "we released version 3.0 of our project today". Let's see an example or two.

Not long ago, the Free Software Foundation issued a press release announcing its alliance with environmental groups to reject Windows Vista. On the other hand, Mozilla's announcement of the Thunderbird 2.0 release simply told the world a new major version of it's e-mail client was available. The OpenOffice.org wiki shows a press release for version 2.3 in the making. The fact that the OpenOffice.org release is not yet ready for publication should be kept firmly in mind throughout. It's important to examine releases like these to see what we can learn.

The FSF press release is significant since it announces the alliance of a technology-oriented ideological organization with a handful of environmental groups to reject Windows Vista. The combination of these groups represents a fairly unique (if not first-ever) alliance. Environmental issues weigh heavily in the minds of many, and the combination of DRM and environmental concerns will certainly encourage many environmentalists and freedom lovers to consider finding alternatives. Other FOSS community organizations need to take into account the significance of their own activities.

The Mozilla and OpenOffice.org releases represent more of a development project, announcing releases of new versions of their software. While the Mozilla announcement covers a major release, the OpenOffice.org announcement covers a minor release. At the Ohio LinuxFest, I cautioned against doing what OpenOffice.org has done, so allow me to qualify that cautionary statement. OpenOffice.org is a sizable project and version 2.3 contains several significant improvements. Additionally, it contains security updates which are important for users to know about.

All of these press releases contain some basic elements:

• Title (or Headline)
• Teaser (or Lead/Lede)
• Opening paragraph
• The body of the release
• A basic "about" statement
• Contact Information

There are a few points to bear in mind concerning these elements. Keep the title and teaser short, sweet, and to the point. Oh, and don't get too corny, either. The teaser should give the reader a basic idea of what your release is about, without giving away the whole story. The FSF and Thunderbird press releases are good examples here. The incomplete OpenOffice.org release mentions offering "an easier upgrade path for MS Office users" - a point that is not addressed (yet, anyway) in the release itself. Thus, although significant, the statement is utterly useless, since it assumes too much of the reader.

The opening paragraph should generally be straightforward. I don't suggest starting off with a quote (not in most cases, anyway). Simply get to the point of your message. In the body of the release, you can go into the details about the most important changes - user interface changes, security enhancements, and new features are ideal points to cover. If your project is one of those "Yet Another" types, explain how your project solves the problem uniquely from the other 99 projects. Also, I recommend against embellishing your project in a press release. While doing so seems to have worked for Microsoft for some 20 years, it builds mistrust over the long term.

Save the "About" paragraph for last. I've seen some of these that are more like two paragraphs. In most cases, this is unnecessary, and you can just keep it to one. That will save you some writing and your readers some useless eye-strain. As in the case of the OpenOffice.org 2.3 example, there are occasional exceptions to the rule. And don't try to tell all about your project in the beginning. Just creat a generic About paragraph that you can use anywhere, and paste it into your website, press releases, etc., and simply edit the text as necessary to fit the specific situation.

Finally, don't forget the contact information. Remember, you want your release to not only get published, but also noticed. You want it to get noticed so that people will take interest and try to contact you and download your program and/or get involved in your community. Some of the key people you want to see that contact information include journalists such as myself. We like to use that contact information to follow up with you so we can hack your press release into an actual news story.

Finally, remember that editors/publishers are not obligated to publish your releases, or to write about your project. Some news sites did not carry my announcement about Blue GNU's launch. Although you may wonder why, or even feel bad about it, don't take it personally (even when it is personal). Not everyone will think your release is news. That's fine. At least you made the effort.

If your press release gets hacked into a news story, you should be really proud; that means your release got noticed. And it got noticed by a journalist who turned it into a story, which means people are more likely to read about your project than if it is left as a press release. For those who didn't make it to Columbus, The more who read about your project in the news, making the news multiplies your word-of-mouth power by an order of magnitude. And you haven't spent a dime on advertising.