In today’s world due to a short attention span, people tend to avoid most of the stuff they come across in a day. The same goes for a press release. One must grab the attention of the readers quickly or they will lose exposure in the blink of an eye. The first thing anyone would notice in your press release is the headline. Your desired viewers go through thousands of PRs in a day and deciding upon which one they want to work with mostly depends on which headline attracts them the most. Tedious headlines will most definitely fail to get you the much-needed visibility. The most common errors that people make when they are drafting a press release are discussed below:
Not Including Keywords
People tend to neglect the power of keywords and how Google search works when it comes to PR writing. Google news attains keywords from the first sixty-five characters of your headline, and then it ranks your press release according to which keyword phrases people search in Google News. Crafting your headline with trending and most searched for keywords can put your work in the front line separating you from the crowd and giving you an evolutionary advantage over others. Conduct a proper keyword research before writing your headlines if you want to stay at the top of the game.
Too Many Keywords
Anything excessive is always bad no matter what it is. The same goes for flooding your press release headline with too many keywords. Some keywords never go or sit right with your headline. Clunking the headline with unnecessary keywords will only make it look awkward and forced taking away the charm. The headline can become painfully unattractive and unpolished warding off viewers. Also, search engines have developed a newer SEO algorithm where the more keyword you stuff the lower you rank in the searches.
Too Long
As Google only indexes the first sixty-five characters of your headline, the chances are you are not going to make the cut in topping the searching chart if your headline is way too long. Also with growing short attention span in people, they are more likely to avoid your content if your title fails to attract them being too long. A brief and compact headline that summarizes the whole content quickly and smartly attains better scope at being picked up by journalists and bloggers. So make sure to gather the distinctive elements of your product or company in the headline in a short, comprehensive, and lucrative manner.
Deceptive
Clickbating people to boost the visibility of your press release are extremely wrong and dangerous for your professional aspects. Feeding people with false and inaccurate data through a misleading headline will only result in losing credibility. This could damage your image in the long run with people losing faith in you and eventually avoiding your PRs for good. Always form a good relationship with your target audience with an honest and faithful representation of your product or business through transparent PRs and PR headlines.
Boring
With today’s busy lifestyle, reporters, bloggers, and consumers cannot afford to spend their valuable time reading through all the PRs they come by every day. From hundreds of press releases the ones that pique their interest the most are probably the ones with interesting and eye-catching headlines. If your headline fails to grab their interest immediately it’s a gone case. You must be careful avoiding dull and repetitive words while describing your product or service and arouse the curiosity of the readers with an exciting headline right away leading them to click on your story to find out what it is all about.
Leaving Out Information
A press release headline must always give out the basic information like the issuing company name, product, or spokesperson detail in a brief narrative. This will make you stand out by getting imprinted in the memory of the readers helping them to get back to you whenever they want. This will also help your PR being distinguished from a regular news article. Leaving out the location also fails to garner the awareness of your target audience. Just mentioning the location can make a big difference in your visibility as people are most likely to click on something related to the place of their familiarity.
Treating It Like an Advertisement
While crafting a press release title, one must understand the difference between a press release and an advertisement. PR writers often treat them as such causing the headline to seem like an infomercial. Press releases are supposed to be straightforward and factual statements introducing the world with the product or services of a business or company. Journalists are not interested in that kind of PRs and most probably ignore the one with a headline that sounds like an infomercial. Treating your PR headline like that of an advertisement will only decrease your exposure rate along the way.
