I followed their story recently on the the BBC’s ‘Inside John Lewis’ programme, which followed the creative process employed by Adam & Eve for the John Lewis christmas campaigns. It also featured an insight into setting up their online stores and the intricate planning that underpins the site and user experience.

It’s a great advert and I love how they integrate all their brand messages, right down to their shop window displays which are some of the most attractive on the high street.

I’m not going to tell you how to come up with a great story (well, not for now anyway, i’ll leave that bit to you) but I am going to show you how to write it, and crucially, how to tell the world about it.

The 5 technical parts to an effective press release are:

Title
Summary
Body
About The Company
Company Contact Details / Individual Contact Details.

Title:
Include your keywords in this, which can be achieved through your keyword research, using tools such as Google Trends and SK Tool. This should be no more than 100 words, ideally a short and snappy headline should suffice.

Summary:
Give a synopsis of the entire press release in one paragraph. Try to keep this within 250 words.

Body:
Write your main content, again including keywords outlined in the title. Using quotes from the people involved can help create a captivating and relevant article.

About The Company:
In one paragraph summarise your company, perhaps referring to large clients or an overview of your entire product / service range.

Press Contact:
This is the important part, as the reader has read this far and, if successful, will entice them to take further action, perhaps to visit your website or enquire about more information. Include standard information such as writers name (or management contact), address, telephone number, fax number and your website. Don’t forget any social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Now you have a perfectly crafted press release, it’s time to shout about it. The first port of call should be to post it to your website, and then disperse this message on any immediate social network sites such as ‘Facebook’ and Twitter.

You can then distribute your press release to newswires. This can be through paid services, such as the highly recommended PRWeb.com, where your press release can be distributed from as little as £80, or you can utilise some free websites, which I have found useful in the past:

www.onlineprnews.com
www.dbusinessnews.com
www.seenation.com
www.pr-usa.net
www.openpr.com
www.i-newswire.com
www.prlog.org
www.przoom.com

Of course it’s all about finding the time to write and distribute your killer press release, and might be worth hiring the help of an expert digital agency or pr specialist.

I’m talking about a great tool called Social Mention (http://www.socialmention.com/).

It basically allows you to search what people are talking about on the web. From a business point of view it’s great to understand what customers are saying about your product or services online. It can also be used from a research perspective, helping you understand what customers are talking about in your market place.

The benefit is that you can then identify these sources and start talking to your customers directly, passing comment or adding to their opinions. It can be an invaluable tool to large businesses who can identify and poor customer reviews and deal with them at source.

What I love about this software is that it analyses the tone of the messages and highlights whether the sentiment behind the search is positive, neutral or negative. The scope of the search is also incredible, searching blogs, micro blogs (such as twitter), comments and even audio / video websites.

It’s well worth a visit and can help you gauge your brands reputation in an instant, as well as keep a close eye on the competition.