Any sort of good press release writing advice is going to tell you not to offer a press release if you don’t have anything real to say. It will tell you to hit the biggest notes with your press release, to keep it concise, to keep it direct, and to avoid the click-bait notions of mystery or gaining intrigue. These are all good pieces of advice, but the Internet is loaded with horrible advice. It is horrible because, without proper testing, it looks like good advice. Here are just a few snippets of awful advice that are masquerading as good advice.
- Keep It Brief
This is terrible advice. It is a complete misunderstanding of the “Keep it concise” advice. Use enough words to convey your message, which in some cases is going to require lots of words. Telling people that you have a new batch of games consoles being delivered requires only a short press release where keeping it brief is a good idea. If you have just invented a way to turn any blood into universal donor blood, then that requires quite a bit of explanation or at least a very good lead and link to your primary website.
- Use Attention-Grabbing Headlines
No, no, no. Do not do this. This is not the 1950s. There are thousands upon thousands of press releases every day and people can recognize “Attention-grabbing headlines” instantly. They know to ignore them. People know what clickbait is and they are sick of it. If you create an attention-grabbing headline, all you are doing is scaring people away. Create an honest headline instead.
- Include Some Good Quotes
Nobody on the planet believes positive reviews anymore. We all know they can be easily faked and the same is true of quotes. Even if you quote the president, and even if that quote is amazingly positive, nobody is going to believe it. You are making yourself seem less credible whenever you add quotes. Just keep it to the basics. Unless the quote is directly related to the topic, like your press release is actually about a quote, perhaps a negative quote you are trying to do damage control for, then leave quotes out of your press release.
- Eradicate spelling and grammatical mistakes
Why are so many tips articles and videos still giving this advice? Are we living in 1990 when spellcheckers were something we saw only on Star Trek? Are these people writing their press releases in crayon? Who are all these people giving out press releases with poor spelling and grammar? There must be a lot of them if tips articles and videos are still telling people to avoid them.
Getting Help From Professionals
Perhaps the best advice for your press release writing is to disseminate it very widely, to disseminate across all the platforms at the same time, and to keep things very concise by sticking to the major points you wish to convey. What you need to do is get help from professionals who deal with press releases all the time. You need help from people who know what works and what doesn’t. You need help from Star Media PR Group.
