How to Write Short, Succinct Press Releases that Speak Volumes

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“In general, those who have nothing to say contrive to spend the longest time doing it.” Lowell wrote this truism eons ago in An Oriental Apologue.

Some things never change. Those wise words still pack a wallop today. Think about the monologues you must listen to daily for business purposes or just because you’re too polite to say, ‘Enough already!’

Nobody likes to listen to endless chatter. The same is true with press releases. In general, those press releases that carry the least amount of real news take the longest time to say nothing. They are dressed up with hype and adverbs, adjectives and exclamations.

Think before you write a press release. Think about what information you would like to know about the subject. Skip the superfluous hype; eschew the exclamation points.

Think about using strong action verbs rather than wimpy adverbs. For example, Use ‘His head shattered the window’ rather than ‘His head hit the window hard.’ The action verb ‘shattered’ is far stronger than the verb ‘hit’ modified by adverb ‘hard.’

Also, in the following sentence, compare the difference in impact between the active voice and the passive voice. ‘They scaled the mountain.’ (active) ‘The mountain was scaled by them.’ (passive)

Since the purpose of this newsletter is to help you write successful press releases, we will share techniques that we and other communication experts have learned through experience. We have asked our interviewees the same questions in the past three newsletters to show differing points of view. While there is no one right way to write a press release, there are basic guidelines that seem to produce more successful press releases. It’s amazing how the same questions often elicit very different answers as you can see in these tips from different professional press release writers, editors and other media people.

In this edition of the PRW’s newsletter, our expert is Ruth Kassewitz, former Public Relations Administrator for University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, one of the largest medical clinics in the country. In a personal question and answer interview with Ms. Kassewitz, we added some valuable tools to our arsenal.

Tips from an Expert for Writing Press Releases that Work:

Question: In your opinion, what is the one thing that really separates the good press releases from the mediocre ones?
Answer: The lead. It should state the most pertinent facts in the first sentence or two.

Question: How long do you feel a press release should be?
Answer: Absolutely one page.

Question: The current wisdom seems to be that if it can’t be said in one page, it’s not a good press release. Do you concur with that?
Answer: Yes, I do. If you can’t say it in one page, forget it.

Question: As most editors are extremely busy, how far into the press release do you actually read before you feel it’s something that may be of interest?
Answer: I read the lead first. If it tells me what I want to know, I read the rest.

Question: If you like what you read, how do you prefer to get in touch with the contact person?
Answer: Usually by telephone.

Question: If there is one thing that should be avoided in press release writing, what would that be?
Answer: Superfluous writing. Sometimes I send along a fact sheet because it gets right down to the important points without any waste of time.

Question: If you had to sum it up, what do you think is the most overall important emphasis in press release writing?
Answer: Being a wordsmith. Getting the message across in bright, succinct language with lots of white space on the paper. It needs air, breathing space.