Journalists and editorial teams receive hundreds of press releases every day. Ninety per cent of those are poorly written and never picked up. How do you avoid a similar fate?
The most important rule of all: only write a press release when you genuinely have something newsworthy to share. The goal isn’t to send as many press releases as possible; it’s to send meaningful ones. Be aware that you are communicating with a critical audience. If you send two press releases in a row that journalists find irrelevant, they won’t open your third one, and you will have lost them.
It’s why you shouldn’t hesitate to push back when a manager or client insists on sending out a weak or unconvincing message. If you simply follow their instructions and your press release ends up in the bin each time, you will be the one held responsible.
An unofficial rule of thumb: a press release ideally shouldn’t exceed one page in Word. If you can’t summarise your message concisely and powerfully, you are not on the right track. Keep in mind that a newspaper article rarely exceeds 500 words. Writing significantly longer releases makes little sense, as most media outlets simply don’t have that much space.
How can you know whether your message is truly concise and powerful? The litmus test: remove every fourth, eighth and twelfth word from each sentence of your press release. If the result no longer properly conveys your message, you have a strong sentence that contains no unnecessary words. If you can remove a quarter of your sentence and the meaning remains unchanged, you have been wasteful with words.
A good press release is like a sales pitch: your first two or three sentences are the most important. That is where you need to capture and convey the essence. Study the structure of newspaper articles and TV news reports, and analyse how they grab their audience’s attention in their introductions. The key principle: don’t bury the lede.
A good press release tells a story, but it does so in reverse. You don’t build your press release chronologically as you would a traditional story. You reverse the timeline. You don’t begin with “once upon a time” and only reach your conclusion at the end. Instead, you start with the outcome and then work your way back.
If the background of your message dates back to, for example, 2022, place that information at the end, not at the beginning of your press release. What happened in 2022 is old news.
In addition, never use the past tense in your press release. Again, that would mean telling an old story, which is not news. If you do need to include facts from the (recent) past, use the present perfect tense as a workaround. A simple but effective linguistic technique 😉
Always try to liven up your press release with quotes, be it from the CEO, a spokesperson, or an external partner. This will instantly make your message more direct, human and authentic. Make sure that these quotes feel genuine. Putting quotation marks around an unnatural-sounding sentence achieves nothing.
Start your press release by adding a date. It may seem like a minor detail, but it demonstrates professionalism and prevents potential misunderstandings. It is striking how many organisations, both large and small, fail to apply this simple rule. That kind of forgetfulness can hurt an otherwise strong text.
At the end of the press release, include your contact details. And don’t stop there. Ensure that the person who can provide further information is fully available to the media on the day of release. Otherwise, it may be better not to send the press release at all. Journalists have limited time and little patience. If they needextra input and can’t immediately reach someone, they will often move along to something else.
The most important metric is of course – was your message picked up by the media? A second strong indicator is whether excerpts have been copied in full, word for word. Journalists, especially those working for online media, often don’t have the time to rewrite press texts, verify facts, talk to additional sources, or make follow-up calls. Some online journalists are expected to file up to 10 news articles per day. That’s why you should write your press release as you would want it to appear in newspapers, online or on TV.
