Press releases are supposed to inform, engage, and spark interest. Yet far too often, they’re written like someone took a marketing brochure, a legal document, and a dissertation, and smashed them together. The result? No one reads them—except maybe your own team, and even that’s a maybe.
Here are five common mistakes that turn press releases into unreadable, self-important noise—and how to avoid them.
1. Cramming the Headline
A headline isn’t your chance to say everything. It’s your one shot to say the right thing. If your headline is a 17-word monster stuffed with product names, dates, locations, acronyms, and three adjectives per noun, stop. No one is reading that. A good headline sparks curiosity and tells people why they should care—fast.
Bad: “Company XYZ Announces Revolutionary New Cross-Platform Enterprise-Level Cloud-Based Productivity Optimization Suite, Now Available in North America, Europe, and Asia”
Better: “Company XYZ Launches Tool to Cut Team Workload by 30%”
2. Using Words That Only Your CEO Understands
Don’t try to impress with jargon. No one Googles their way through a press release. The moment your headline starts sounding like a TED Talk on steroids, you lose your audience.
Big words don’t make you sound smart—they make you sound out of touch. You’re not writing for a panel of industry theorists. You’re writing for editors, reporters, and everyday readers who need to get the gist in seconds.
3. Turning the Press Release Into a PhD Thesis
You’re not defending a dissertation. If your press release is over 600 words, you’d better have something world-changing to say—and even then, less is more. Rambling paragraphs filled with excessive background, endless context, and multi-level analysis don’t build authority; they kill attention.
No one is printing your press release and settling in with coffee. If your key point is buried on page two, you’ve already lost.
4. Starting With a Brag Reel
Here’s a quick way to get your release ignored: open with “We’re proud to be the global leader in…” Nobody cares—not yet.
People want to know what’s new, why it matters, and how it affects them. Starting with how great your company is tells readers you’re more interested in yourself than in anything useful. Save the humblebrag for later (or better yet, let the facts do the talking).
5. Writing Without a Point
A press release isn’t a vibe check. If you can’t answer “What’s the purpose of this?” in one sentence, don’t send it. Self-promotion without a clear news hook is just noise. Want to announce a product launch? A new partnership? A milestone? Great—build everything around that. But if it’s just, “Look how awesome we are,” then it’s better suited for an internal Slack message.
Bottom Line: Respect your reader’s time. Keep it short, sharp, and relevant. A great press release doesn’t talk at people—it gives them something they can use, share, and act on. Anything else is just digital clutter.
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