Are Your Press Releases Worth It – Or a Waste of Time?

Press releases can be a powerful weapon in your marketing and public relations arsenal. Just be sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot with them.

I can’t count the number of press releases I’ve written over the years in my career as a business writer–and it’s almost as hard to count the number of times I’ve had to explain to my clients why it’s critical for their releases to be well-written, accurate and actually contain news.

Thanks to the internet and search engines, press releases can work harder and do more than ever before. You can design releases to target a range audiences: the media, existing customers, prospective customers, investors, suppliers, and more. And you can send out thousands of them with a few clicks.

But if your press releases are sloppy, inaccurate and clearly self-serving, you’re wasting your time–or worse, you’re damaging your reputation.

Henry Stimpson wrote a great post on how to write a bad press release. It’s short, funny and absolutely spot-on! Read it: 13 Ways to Fail in PR: How to Guarantee Your Press Releases Will Be Completely Ignored. Pay special attention to #13: “Apply a similar philosophy to your website, brochures, advertisements, email, newsletters and presentations…” To this I add: social media.

For 13 ways to succeed, just do the opposite of Stimpson’s list.

My advice for writing press releases that are worth sending:

• Have a clearly defined purpose and audience for every release.
• Write with the audience in mind.
• Use correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar.
• Avoid jargon and buzzwords.
• Write a headline that is both catchy and clear.
• Use a subhead to further draw in the reader.
• Lead with the facts–no hype, no selling.
• Keep it short.
• Include complete contact information.
• Proof read and fact check. Then do it again.

Jacquelyn Lynn is a business writer and ghostwriter who creates written content in the form of books, ebooks, articles, blogs, press releases, social media copy, white papers and more.

One Response to “Are Your Press Releases Worth It – Or a Waste of Time?”

1. allen says:

   February 21, 2012 at 6:59 pm

   Great article!!!

   Reply