PR in Brisbane is not all about the glitz and glam of attending the latest club opening for a night sipping on champagne or feasting upon canapés. When working on a public relations campaign you’ll spend hours pouring your heart and soul into a press release and then spend equally as long researching who will make it onto your contact list.
After all this work, have you ever felt that your press release isn’t getting the response you were hoping for? You aren’t alone. After all those years of writing at university where long words were praised and flowy sentences gave you brownie points, somewhere along the way you have probably picked up a few sneaky bad press release habits. Are you guilty of the following three?
Bad Habit #1 – Meaningless modifiers
The perfectly presented press release was essentially doomed when the list of contacts actually disagreed upon the value of the individual content and multiple problems ensued.
The sentence above shows how less really is more when writing a press release for your PR campaign. You’ll notice when you start deleting all these words, they aren’t adding value and your sentence still means the same thing. Just like yourself, journalists are busy people and the quicker you get your point across, the more likely your public relations campaign is to pay off.
Bad Habit #2 – Consolidate your sentence subjects
We have no doubt that the subjects of your sentences are all very important, but if your subject is a phrase your best approach is to shorten it to a single word. Just like in the example below
Instead of – The first-place winner will have a dance at the award ceremony
Try – The winner will dance at the award ceremony
Once again you will succeed in providing a sentence that means the same thing, but done much quicker!
Bad Habit #3 – ‘Tto-be’ verbs and excessive preposition use
Once again it all comes back to using longer sentences when there just isn’t any need to in the busy world of PR. Vague words like ‘is’, ‘am’ and ‘are’ can often be replaced with something more specific.
Bonus tip: If your sentence can include an ‘apostrophe + s’, go for it.
Instead of – The opinion of the managing director is that…
Try – The managing director’s opinion is that…
Need a hand with your public relations campaign? Our Brisbane marketing and communications team learned to throw out our modifiers long ago, and our contact list can put you a step ahead. Get in touch today.