How to Write a Company Boilerplate: Facts, Length, Platform Versions and a Template

What Is a Company Boilerplate?

A company boilerplate is the short, standard “About” paragraph that appears unchanged at the end of every press release and in press materials, telling a reader what the organisation is, what it does, where it is based and where to find out more.

It is the paragraph journalists copy when they need a one-line description of you, so every fact in it should be checkable. Our guide to writing a press release treats it as one of the fixed parts of a release, and our definition of a press kit lists it with the fact sheet. Real examples show the pattern. Microsoft's boilerplate in its July 2026 releases begins: “Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers” (Microsoft). 3M's, in the same release, starts “3M (NYSE: MMM) is focused on transforming industries around the world” and ends with a link to 3M.com/news.

How to Write a Company Boilerplate at a Glance

Time: two to three hours for a first draft and approval (our estimate). Tools: a document, your approved facts, a word and character counter. Cost: none. Skill level: beginner to intermediate; the hard part is internal agreement.

What You Need Before Starting

• The company's legal name, trading name and, if listed, exchange and ticker.
• A one-sentence description of the product or service and the customer, agreed with leadership.
• Headquarters city, founding year and one scale fact with its source (customers, employees, countries) that you are willing to update.
• The URL you want people to visit, ideally your newsroom; see how to create an online newsroom.
• A named owner who will review the text on a set date.

Step 1: Collect the Approved Facts

Start with facts, not sentences. A boilerplate is reused for years, so an error in it is repeated in every release and in every article that copies it.

Process: list each fact with where it comes from: registry filing for the legal name, annual report for headcount, signed customer count from finance. Mark any number that changes. Expected result: a fact list with sources. Verify: legal or finance signs off the numbers. Common mistake: using a figure from an old pitch deck. Our report on how fact-checkers work shows how quickly unsourced numbers are questioned.

Step 2: Write the First Sentence: Name, What You Do, for Whom

The first sentence must work alone, because it is often the only one used. Put the name first, then what you make or do, then who it is for.

Process: use the pattern “[Name] ([ticker, if listed]) [verb] [product or service] for [customer]”. Both Microsoft and 3M open this way, with the ticker in brackets after the name. Mistral's boilerplate in a July 2026 Microsoft release opens with a category instead: “Mistral is a pioneer company in generative artificial intelligence” (Microsoft and Mistral release). Expected result: one plain sentence a reader can repeat. Common mistake: opening with a mission statement that does not name a product or customer.

Step 3: Add One or Two Sentences of Evidence

Follow the first sentence with facts that let a reader place you: where you are based, when you were founded, and one measure of scale.

Process: pick facts a journalist could check. Mistral's boilerplate says it is “Headquartered in France” with a presence “in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore”. Cision's gives numbers: its products “enable over 75,000 companies and organizations, including 84% of the Fortune 500” (Cision). Numbers like these are only useful if you keep them current. Expected result: one or two sentences of placeable facts. Common mistake: listing every product line.

Step 4: Remove Unverifiable Claims and Jargon

Cut anything you could not prove to a journalist who asked. Words such as “pioneer”, “cutting-edge” and “the global leader” appear in real boilerplates, Cision's and Mistral's among them, but they are claims, and an editor may cut them or ask for the source.

Process: for each adjective, ask what fact sits behind it, and use the fact instead. Remove internal terms and acronyms. If you plan to reuse the text on Google, note that its guidelines say descriptions should “Focus primarily on details about your business instead of details about promotions, prices, or sales” and must not “include URLs or HTML code” (Google Business Profile Help). Expected result: text with no claim you cannot source. Common mistake: a superlative the company cannot support, which invites a challenge.

Step 5: Edit to Length

Aim for the length real boilerplates use. The four we counted ran from 50 to 80 words.

Process: count words and characters. If you are over about 80 words, cut the least checkable sentence first. If you are under about 40, check whether a reader would know where you are based and what you sell. These figures are our observation from four releases, not a rule. Expected result: a press boilerplate of roughly 50 to 80 words. Common mistake: a 200-word paragraph that duplicates the release.

Step 6: Make the Short and Platform Versions

Write a family of versions from the same facts, so that every profile agrees.

For the one-line version, Wikidata's guidance is a useful discipline: descriptions “are not full sentences, but small bits of information. In most cases, the proper length is between two and twelve words” (Wikidata). Google's Organization markup has a description property, “A detailed description of your organization, if applicable” (Google Search Central); our guide to adding Organization schema markup shows where it goes.

Expected result: one master file with the one-line, press and platform versions. Common mistake: rewriting from scratch for each platform, so facts drift.

Step 7: Publish Everywhere and Set a Review Date

Use the same text, or the agreed short version, everywhere you describe the company.

Process: add the press boilerplate to your release template and newsroom page, then update the profiles: Google Business Profile, LinkedIn company page, Crunchbase and, where notable, Wikidata. Keep executive bios consistent with it; see how to write an executive bio for media. Put a review date in the master file. Expected result: identical facts across channels. Common mistake: updating the release template but not the profiles, so search engines and journalists see conflicting descriptions.

Boilerplate template

About [Company name]
[Company name] ([Exchange: TICKER], if listed) [makes / provides]
[product or service] for [customer]. Founded in [year] and headquartered
in [city, country], the company [one checkable scale fact, with date
if it changes]. Learn more at [URL].

How to Verify It Worked

• Stands alone: someone outside the company can read the first sentence and say what you sell and to whom.
• Checkable: every fact has a source in the master file.
• Fits: each platform version is within that platform's limit and rules.
• Consistent: a search for your company name shows the same description on your site and main profiles.

Common Problems and Fixes

What Not to Do

• Do not use claims you cannot source. Consequence: editors cut or query them. Correction: replace each claim with the fact behind it.
• Do not change the boilerplate in every release. Consequence: inconsistent descriptions in coverage. Correction: one master text, reviewed on a schedule.
• Do not copy the press version into fields with different rules. Consequence: rejected edits, such as a Google description with a URL. Correction: use the platform versions from Step 6.
• Do not leave old numbers in place. Consequence: outdated facts repeated in articles and profiles. Correction: date any changing figure and review it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Methodology

This guide is built from four published boilerplates in three press releases (two Microsoft releases from July 2026 and Cision's May 2025 release), Google Business Profile Help, the YouTube Data API reference, Wikidata's Help:Description page and Google's Organization structured data documentation, read on October 10, 2026. We counted words and characters ourselves from the text on those pages; four examples are a small sample chosen because the pages were readable, not a representative survey. We could not confirm a description limit on LinkedIn's or Crunchbase's help pages, so we state none. The steps, the template and the review schedule are our recommendations, not a published standard.

1. example Microsoft, 3M and Microsoft announce strategic partnership to advance AI data center infrastructure and enterprise transformation, July 15, 2026: About 3M and About Microsoft. Read October 10, 2026.
2. example Microsoft, Microsoft and Mistral expand strategic partnership to give enterprises and regulated industries frontier AI they can control, July 21, 2026: About Mistral. Read October 10, 2026.
3. example Cision, Cision's 2025 State of the Media Report Reveals a Tipping Point for Trust, Technology, and PR-Journalist Partnerships, May 7, 2025: About Cision. Read October 10, 2026.
4. official Google Business Profile Help, Edit your Business Profile, business description guidance and 750-character limit. Read October 10, 2026.
5. official YouTube Data API, Channels resource reference, channel description maximum length. Read October 10, 2026.
6. official Wikidata, Help:Description, length guidance for descriptions. Read October 10, 2026.
7. official Google Search Central, Organization Schema Markup, description property (page last updated September 8, 2026). Read October 10, 2026.