Friday, February 27, 2009

The five worst crimes that get press releases rejected

By Tony Hetherington

Over 95% of press releases fail and get rejected, discarded and deleted. Are yours making these five classic clangers?

Nothing but a sales spiel - This is last thing an Editor wants to see is a sales or selling pitch masquerading as a news story. It's attempting to cheat the system and ends up in immediate rejection of that release and potentially each future one that is submitted.

Left to the wrong people - I hate press releases that are written by public relations people as they usually have one thing in common " they know so little about the product or service that theyre announcing that it shows. Their words are based on the briefest of meetings with the people who know and care passionately about the new launch and then suck out all that passion and replace it with a we know best attitude. This phenomenon is so much worse if youre a small company hiring a 3rd party PR company. The result is a press release that will disappoint those who commissioned it and those who read it.

Put off doing it " Some dont realise that a press release is both one of the best forms of web marketing but also one of the most cost effective and dont do a release even though they may have a great story to tell. The most common reason for this is that they think that a press release is just for the big corporations with large PR departments.

Waste money on extras - There are too many ways to waste cash whether it's getting a PR release written for an inflated price or submitted with additional options that deliver little .

Fake it - No matter how easy or convenient it could be you should never bend the truth to make a better story for your press release. Nor should you copy or plagiarise content published by others as you will be found out.

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