How to write a company boilerplate that journalists will actually use

Most PR guides leave out one thing: journalists rarely rewrite your boilerplate. They copy it. Under deadline pressure they need one sentence that says who you are, and you have already handed it to them. If that sentence is vague or full of heavy jargon, it is either cut or, worse, printed as it stands. So when writing a company boilerplate, think of the person who will copy it.

Journalists use a boilerplate in three main ways. The first is fact-checking. The dateline above a release says where and when the news happened, while the boilerplate says who you are. It is the first place to check the company name, year of founding and location before a story is published. The second is the background line, the sentence that appears mid-article, such as "Founded in 2015, the Leeds-based company now works with more than 2,000 employers." This often comes straight from the boilerplate. The third is later coverage. Months on, when your company is mentioned in a roundup or market report, a writer may open an old release for a small detail.

According to Tech Digital Labs, the biggest improvement in the press releases it works on is usually not adding information. Most of the work is removing the promotional language that a newsroom would strip out anyway.

There are five steps to writing a boilerplate, whether you are starting from scratch or fixing one that is years old. Step one: write a single sentence on what you do, containing three things: your name, what you provide and for whom. If it will not fit in one sentence, do not go further, because everything else depends on this line being clear.

Step two: add the facts a reporter would otherwise have to find on their own. That means when the company was founded, where it is based, and one or two figures showing your size. Whatever you choose should be current and something you can prove if asked. Step three: write in the third person and present tense. Instead of "we" or "our", write "the company" or your name. Keep verbs in the present, that is, "provides", not "has been providing". News copy is written this way, so a journalist can drop your text into an article unchanged.

Step four: trim it to 80 to 120 words. Remove adjectives, product lists, mission statements and everything a reporter would not quote. For a standard press release boilerplate, 80 to 120 words is right. It fits in one paragraph and is read quickly. Step five: the reporter test. Give the draft to someone who does not know your company. Give them thirty seconds, then ask them to say in one sentence what you do. If they can, you are done. If they hesitate, or repeat one of your heavy words, go back to step one.

Consider an example. The "before" boilerplate of a fictional company, Quillon, calls it the world's leading and most innovative payroll solution and claims it helps customers reach their full potential with a revolutionary platform. It ends with a sales email and an invitation to book a free demo. The "after" version says Quillon Payroll is a cloud payroll and HR platform for small and mid-sized businesses in the UK and Ireland. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Leeds, and it processes payroll each month for more than 2,300 employers and about 85,000 employees. It has 120 staff.

What changed? Claims such as "world's leading" and "revolutionary" went, because nobody can verify them. "We" and "our" became the third person. The sales email and the demo offer also went, because they do not belong in a news document. In their place came what a reporter needs: the year of founding, location, market, two real figures and a direct description of what the software does.

These are the mistakes for which editors send a boilerplate back: hype words such as "disruptive", "game-changing" and "best-in-class", which are cut almost every time; writing in the first person, because an editor has to rewrite the sentence at every "we"; outdated facts, such as an old office address or last year's customer count; a long list of ten products and fifteen awards; and jargon nobody outside the industry understands.

When should a boilerplate be updated? When a fact in it becomes wrong. Typically this happens at a rebrand, a funding round, an acquisition, an expansion into new industries or markets, or a new product line that changes the company's business. When you update, do it everywhere at once: the website, the LinkedIn page and the media kit. A journalist who sees two different versions will not know which to trust. Even if nothing big has happened, it is worth a look every six months, because figures drift and nobody notices until a journalist prints an old one.

The answers to common questions are the same. A boilerplate should generally run 80 to 120 words, so that the main facts fit and it does not become a second press release. Include the name of the CEO or founder only if that person is deeply tied to the company's identity, such as a well-known founder; otherwise keep the name for the main body of the release. And if the company is public, then yes, give the exchange and ticker symbol right after the company name, for example "(NASDAQ: XXXX)".