Have you ever tried submitting your press release to an online press release submission site only to have it rejected for some unknown reason? Or maybe you’ve sent out press releases to the media only to hear nothing back. It could be that your press release was actually an advertisement.
There are a variety of reasons that media won’t immediately pick up your news. It could be they already have a full schedule of stories or your news doesn’t apply to their readership or maybe it just went to the wrong reporter. On the other hand online press release submissions sites really have one main reason they will reject a press release and that is that it is really an advertisement.
Of course there are other reasons, like maybe it wasn’t formatted correctly or you capitalized every word in the headline, but more likely than not what you submitted was an advertisement. Sometimes there’s a fine line between what’s considered news and advertising.
News is anything new to you that you want to announce to the world. For instance, you just added an eco friendly line of products to your offerings, or you hired a new employee, or you just hit the $1 million mark in revenues or whatever. It’s announcing something that is about to happen or just happened, without trying to do any selling.
Advertising is telling about your product and trying to sell it. Anything that talks about how great your product is, is advertising. For example, “Beach Betty Public Relations offers great press release services” is a headline that is advertising services. It’s not news.
Then again, sometimes your press release will be newsworthy yet it still gets rejected from the online press release submission services. Here’s the secret: You need to use words like “just launched” “announces” “forms partnership” “Gets a new” and similar phrases that relates that something just happened or is about to happen. That makes it news.
Remember, as a journalist myself, I’m not advocating puffing advertising into something that slightly resembles news just to get your message out there, but if you have a truly newsworthy press release these are just a few tips to make sure you get the word out.