Having been on the receiving end of thousands of press releases during my years as a reporter/editor, I know what does and doesn’t grab my attention when it comes to crafting the perfect press release.
Here are five press release features that have driven me crazy over the years:
- ALL CAPS: Unless you’re Kanye West on a mega-rant, please avoid using ALL CAPS in any and every release. They don’t make the info more potent, or exciting, they just leave me feeling annoyed (though not Kanye-level annoyed).
- Missing critical bits of info, or not having it up front where it can be easily found. Specifically, the who, what, where, when and whys. Don’t tell me in the last paragraph about what makes this event important to readers, or how they will benefit – say it at the top.
- No PDFs, please. Send in a Word doc, because the writer can then easily copy and paste the pertinent information out of the release.
- Too much sales pitch, not enough concrete information. Flowery language, insincerity, hyperbole … all of that makes it hard to read, and even harder to believe. Stick with the facts: this product is good because a), b), and c).
- Avoid exclamation points! Like sparkly nail polish, they just come off as tacky. Just because you throw one at the end of a sentence, doesn’t make the point anymore intriguing. In fact, it can even have the opposite effect. Exclamation points are the written equivalent of yelling in someone’s face – so if you’re going to do it, make sure there’s a really good reason, like “Fire!” as opposed to “My product is the best!”
There are other more obvious mistakes: punctuation problems, use of first-person voice (use third, as they do in newspapers), not making the most of quotes, etc. Check out Indie Game Girl for the perfect press release template (see above) – it’s geared toward the gamer biz, but the format is fluid enough to work as a standard press release for almost any industry.
Comments are closed.