This is an update of a post originally published on February 11, 2014.

It’s a small thing, really, the company boilerplate that appears at the bottom of every press release^[1]. That part that’s headed with: About (Startup Name).

So why does the press release boilerplate capture so much attention? Why do we hem and haw over this language? Why do we rend our garments? What does rend mean anyway? [Editor’s note: to tear]

via GIPHY^[2]

Writing press release boilerplate sounds simple – after all, it’s just a straight-up, factual description of a company and what it offers the world, right? But there is more than one way to approach it, and those ways are often wrong.

Sometimes boilerplate takes on the role of product brochure and corporate history. Often it’s filled with braggadocio. And far too often they’re, well, far too long.

But if it’s hard to know what’s wrong, it can seem even harder to know what’s right, as most startup marketers don’t read boilerplates on a daily basis, which is why we’re on the hunt for examples when it comes time to write our own. However, we at Propllr are not like most of us. That is, we read all kinds of boilerplate. And we write it, too.

Here, we’ll offer some press release boilerplate examples you can learn from, as well as a formula for building your very own (very strong) boilerplate.

What Goes into a Press Release Boilerplate?

There’s no one example of how to do a press release boilerplate correctly. What you decide to include will ultimately depend on your company’s communication style and its current phase. For this post, I looked at a ton of boilerplates and found the most common content features are…  

• Bragging: Words like “leading,” “best,” “biggest,” “amazing,” and “most.”
• Benefits: The “so what” that summarizes the benefits the company offers (more abstract than products and services).
• Aspiration: A high-level view of a company’s ultimate goals.
• Products and Services: A catalog of the company’s offerings.
• History: Dates when a company was founded or acquisitions were made.
• Size: Details about revenue, funding, geographical reach, client numbers, employee headcount, etc.
• Long vs. Short: Some are long, some are short, few are in-between.
• Funding: Not a common element, but a tally of venture capital raised to date.
• CTA: A call to action for prospects.

When you read as many boilerplates as we did, the great ones start to stand out. And in my totally unscientific opinion, the best boilerplate contains the following characteristics: